Genesis 3
It is not only Scripture which makes known to us that there is sin and misery in the world. There they are, even if Scripture or a Saviour did not exist. The world is a ruin. Man knows well that iniquity and defilement are in him; and nobody is satisfied with his portion here below, because his heart is ill at ease. The word of God explains, as nothing else can, how Satan entered the world, and reveals the consequence of sin in man's relations with God.
The first thing the old serpent did was to put something between the creature and the Creator, to put himself between God and man. This was subtle, and ruinous if successful, as it was; for the only thing which makes us happy is that there is nothing between -- that God loves us.
Satan begins then by producing distrust in God, and so stirring man's will into activity in lust and disobedience. Never does the enemy lead one to think of the goodness of God nor of man's obedience. The woman knew right well that she ought not to eat of the tree, and that mischief must be the result; yet she ate, and gave to her husband with her, and he did eat (verse 1-6). Thus sin is the self-will that sprang from the unbelief which doubted God. By this means Satan made a breach; he persuaded Eve that God kept something for Himself, for fear that His creature should be too happy and too blessed. But Eve was wrong in listening to Satan; she ought not for a moment to have attended to the voice which insinuated distrust in God.
God has warned man of the consequences of sin, as Adam, "in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." But Satan, who seeks always to deny the righteousness of God, says to the woman, "ye shall not surely die; for God doth know that in the day that ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Nor was this altogether untrue. The fall has rendered man much more intelligent relatively to good and evil. But Satan hid from man that he should be separated from God and have a bad conscience. "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons" (verse 7). They acquired a knowledge that shewed them their nakedness, which they strove to conceal from the eyes of themselves and each other. All that is brought near us appears to us more important and greater than what is still far off. The forbidden tree being near Eve, and the judgment of God being distant, she took of the fruit, and ate.
So the spirit of falsehood tells men at this day that they shall not die, and that the threats of God shall not come to pass. He conceals the warnings of God, and then men do what Satan and their own lusts urge them on to do. If a Christian even is not watchful, his conscience will lose its activity, and, in place of seeing God, he sees his nakedness.
Man, besides, takes leaves to cover his nakedness. He does his utmost to conceal from himself the evil which has happened to him; but when God is revealed, it is quite otherwise. God draws near, as if nothing had occurred; then the nearness to God, which would have been a joy for man without sin, becomes on account of sin a source of immense terror, and insupportable. "Adam and his wife hide themselves from the presence of Jehovah Elohim amongst the trees of the garden." They had succeeded in veiling their nakedness from their own eyes; they were terrified at the voice of God, and strove to hide from Him. What a horrible thing for man to be in such a case as to wish concealment from God! (verse 7, 8).
Adam "was afraid," as he confessed to Him who called him from his hiding-place. Conscience trembles at the presence of God. Every hope of enjoying life is taken away when His voice is heard. Man is self-convicted of departure from God because of sin. God "drove out the man"; but man had himself fled from His presence first. His own conscience told him that he could not stand before God; and God made this evident by the words of His call to Adam, "Where art thou?" (verse 9). He was gone from God, banished by conscience before God drove him out. Is he then the one to complain of unrighteousness, whose own heart condemned him similarly before God's sentence was pronounced? The relations of man were thenceforth broken, and in a manner irreparable, as far as man is concerned. "I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself" (verse 10).
Self-justification is as vain as seeking to hide from God. "And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat" (verse 11, 12). How is the mighty fallen! The head of creation stooping, in order to excuse himself of his sin, to cast the fault on his wife -- yea, on God Himself! How debasing is evil once allowed, and dominant! No slavery more degrading, none so immediate and all-corrupting in its effects. Was man then the weaker vessel? or this the way of natural affection? The hardest thing for a sinner to do is to confess his sin truly and thoroughly; to judge oneself is only the fruit of grace through faith. A bad conscience dreads God and the consequences too much to confess, while it knows its sin too well to deny it.
But God will have sin out, and trace it to its source. "And Jehovah Elohim said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And Jehovah Elohim said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (verse 13-19).
If you had full confidence in God, and you were perfectly sure that God loved you, you would be very happy. But Satan is active, and his power consists in producing distrust, and this where there is happiness and intimate relation with God -- to darken, and, if possible, destroy all in the heart. He takes advantage of men who trust their own will and their efforts for their happiness, distrusting God, and neither willing nor knowing how to confide the care of their happiness to Him, and to give themselves up to His mighty love in Christ. And this he does now as ever. He persuades men that God is too good to condemn us because we are sinners; and man, spite of his sins and his conscience, hopes and persuades himself that he will not be condemned. It is the voice of the old serpent.
But God has proved, even by the death of His Son, that He will not endure sin, and that its wages are death, as it will be judgment after death for all who believe not. The conscience being bad, all the effort of man is to hide from himself his nakedness before God. He would put out of the world gross and outward sin, drunkenness, murder, robbery. He seeks by laws and by philanthropic efforts to blot out the exterior effects of sin which shock the world. But these are but the aprons of fig-leaves, which root out nothing whatever, but serve for the moment to conceal from ourselves our nakedness and misery, and to avoid thinking of the righteousness of the condemnation God has pronounced from that day on our sinful state.
Now that sins have come between our consciences and God, one wishes at least that there should be something to hide us before God; and it is with this view that man employs what he calls innocent things. Thus the trees were innocent enough, but what use did Adam make of them? To hide behind them from God. God had given to man all that is in the world; but man now perverts it all to escape from the presence of God, pretending the while to be innocent in such an application of what is good in itself. When the voice of God awakens the conscience, one wishes still for something to hide us from Him; but this is impossible. "Where art thou?" said God to Adam, who had no means of concealment longer. If God were to say so to each of your souls, would it be your joy to be in His presence? God is really the only resource and refuge when we have sinned. It is only God who, by imputing nothing to the believer, takes away all guile from the spirit; Psalm 32. But if you hide away from God, how do you then stand for your souls? God had not yet driven from His presence Adam, who had fled away from Him. Conscience tell us that, if we have sinned and He is a righteous God, there are no leaves or trees to hide us in His presence. Man is miserable in his conscience, and he cannot be happy in sin, save only that there is no God. All the hope of incredulity is that there is no God, or, what comes to the same thing, that He is not righteous or holy. Adam wished to excuse himself, as if he had lusted after nothing himself -- he had only followed the voice of his wife, instead of keeping to the prohibition of God. But if there was no lust in us, no sinful act would result. He had disobeyed the word of God, for which he was responsible.
In the midst of all the goodness of God, who has given His Son for poor sinners, if you have no confidence in God, there is the proof of your sin. No matter how it may be manifested, is not this ingratitude and distrust? Eve listened to and believed Satan, in place of listening to God and believing Him; and this is just what man is ever doing, while he hopes for salvation and eternal life, though he sins. All the efforts you make to be happy prove you are not. The immediate effect of God's presence in your hearts and consciences would be to stop your pleasures: if all your pleasures are thus incompatible with the presence of God, what will they be for you in eternity? Will they carry you to the foot of His throne who is holy and righteous, to shew Him that you have passed many innocent hours far from Him? What is there but disobedience, distrust, falsehood, self-will, unless it be a still worse thing, the state of soul which wishes to divert its thoughts away from the presence of God.
Man may withdraw himself from the presence of God while grace lasts, but he cannot when God will judge him. Satan will help you to hide; your best friends following the world will help you also to keep away from the presence of God, to forget and deny it; but this will certainly not go beyond the time of grace which is granted you. Therefore, while it is called today, if you hear His voice, harden not your hearts.
God knows that you are sinners; He knows that it is the subtle iniquity of Satan, which would make man his prey. But there is to that an answer, of which Satan knew not, any more than poor, guilty, fallen man: the revelation of the Seed of the woman (verse 15). The question is really between the serpent and the second Man -- not the first. It is neither a promise to Adam and Eve from God, nor a hope of improvement in their children; but God pronounces judgment on the enemy, and in the midst of it the revelation is made of the Saviour, child of the woman who had ensnared the man to be ruined of the devil. The woman's Seed shall bruise the serpent's head, but He is bruised Himself first. What grace, yet righteousness! What humiliation, yet victory! If Adam exalted himself as a robbery to be as God, He who was God emptied Himself to be a man, and became obedient unto death, as the other was disobedient unto it. To lost Adam, the first man, there was, and could be, no promise. All the promises of God are yea and amen in the second Man; but they become the portion of every believer. Faith finds and enjoys the promise, not sin and unbelief. To Eve and Adam God only speaks of the actual consequences of sin (verse 16-19). It is in judging the serpent (verse 15) that He reveals the coming Seed of the woman, and the way of His victory. Thenceforward the only hope of lost man is in this revealed Saviour; and before he is driven out he hears of what Jesus was to suffer in destroying the power of the devil; yet not a single sign of repentance appears in Adam after his sin. He had shewn terror of God, cowardly selfishness as to his wife, as much dishonesty in his own case as dishonour done to God. But God occupies Himself only with His counsels of grace in the woman's Seed, whose person and work and glory are developed in all the Scriptures.
But victory over Satan in the cross of Christ is no longer in any sense a promise; it is accomplished. Had man let into his heart that God did not love him? that He kept back what was good for him, through jealousy or envy of his happiness? It was Satan's lie; for the suffering second Man, the woman's Seed, is Son of God, the true God, and eternal life, who became man to die for sinners and destroy the works of the devil. Yet is the unbelieving heart so perverse as to refuse its confidence to the God who thus gave His Son. Jesus, instead of fleeing from God's judgment, went to meet it when the hour came, and took on Him the burden of our sins, instead of listening to the voice of man or Satan. "The cup which my Father giveth me, shall I not drink it?" By His death He annulled him that had the power of death, and gives the believer perfect confidence in God, all fear of death being gone. His love puts us in peace and relationship with God, unscared by difficulties, now that we are forgiven our sins, clothed with Himself instead of nakedness or fig-leaves, with nothing but grace to stand in and God's glory to look forward to, since He bore the judgment for us.
Is your confidence then in the God who gave His Son to save the poorest of sinners? This confidence inspires and strengthens obedience. Nothing to the believer is more precious than God's love in Christ, which makes us prefer His will to all Satan can offer.
May God touch your heart, and give you to magnify Him by receiving all that His love has done in Christ!
Exodus 12
On the paschal night, when Jehovah struck the firstborn of the Egyptians, and passed over those of Israel, a groundwork was laid for the deliverance of Israel from their bondage to Pharaoh, a lively image of Christ, the Passover sacrificed for us; for we were slaves of Satan, as Pharaoh, king of Egypt, was prince of this world, and the people of God his bondsmen. But God was taking notice of the state of His people, visiting them, and about to deliver them.
In one sense Satan has rights over us as sinners, and the justice of God is against us, because He had said, "In the day that thou eatest [of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] thou shalt surely die." Thus Satan can accuse man, though he had said on the contrary, "Ye shall not surely die"; your case is not so utterly desperate as these Christians say. Satan is always the same liar as he was. God cannot say to the sinner as such, Thou shalt not die; but to deliver He must take notice of sin, and lay a righteous foundation, of which faith can avail itself by grace.
Pharaoh had power enough to keep the Israelites, and the more as they were accustomed to slavery, and latterly of the bitterest kind. Pharaoh had no real rights, any more than Satan. Meanwhile he deceives. Such is the state of the world. This is so true, that the higher one's place is in the world, the more one is really enslaved. A poor man may do many things in the street without any one taking notice of it: the rich man dares not to wound its conventionalities and usages. Our will contributes also to our slavery. If one were to tell us that we are directed, led, retained by Satan, we should not agree to it. In fact he employs the things of the world to drag us into sin. Judas was drawn into his sin because he loved money. Satan entered into his heart to harden his conscience, and to strengthen him in sin, by taking away from him all hope of the mercy of God. Thus there is first the lust, or desire; next the enemy furnishes the occasion or means of satisfying it; then he enters into us. Satan tries to retort the sin on others, and teaches us to do the same. So Adam said, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat," making of his heart an excuse for what his hand had done.
In Egypt Israel became the object of controversy between God and Pharaoh, who represents Satan. The enemy says God has no right to claim them, for they are sinners. It is true that they are sinners; and it is necessary that man should completely bow to the justice of God which condemns him. If one is convinced of being lost, it is impossible that one should not seek salvation, perhaps blindly; still one seeks it every time that conscience is awakened. Without this, people content themselves with saying that God is good, that is, that He must take no account of sin. But ought God to make heaven like what the world is? And is not this just what would be if sin were to enter heaven? Could one give a measure to indicate up to what, and how much, people might sin? But our consciences also accuse and tell us that we cannot get rid of sin; and sin begets death.
God has already been dishonoured by sin, and it is in this world from day to day that God is yet dishonoured. It is here, on the earth, that the angels learn what it is that God is dishonoured. It is here that we see Satan degrade all the creation.
Jehovah says, "I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am Jehovah. And the blood shall be unto you for a token upon the houses where ye are; and when I see the blood I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt" (verse 12, 13). This was not the deliverance of Israel, like the passage of the Red Sea, but it was the ground of it; and of the two, the Passover was really the more solemn morally, though the Red Sea displayed God's saving power more gloriously on behalf of His people and against their foes. But on the paschal night it was a question how God could pass over the guilty, even if His people; and the blood of the lamb sprinkled on Israel's doorposts declared that God, though expressly judging, could not touch those screened thereby His truth and justice were stayed and satisfied before that blood. The destroyer was kept from entering. Not an Israelite perished within the blood-sprinkled lintels. It was a question of arresting God's judgment here, of destroying Satan's power in the type of the Red Sea; but the blood of Christ laid the foundation for the victory displayed in His resurrection.
Once the Red Sea is crossed, Israel are pursued no more. They are redeemed -- they can sing. It was not so when they supped on the lamb in Egypt; yet were they screened from God's judgment of their evil. Their deliverance from Pharaoh followed.
But must not I see the blood? says many a distressed soul. It is well for me to estimate its value aright, and growingly; but no person could have solid peace on this ground. Nor was it what God told His people. It was indeed a token to them; but their assurance was built on this, that "when I [Jehovah] see the blood, I will pass over you." The Israelite's business was not to look at it for his safety, but to keep within the shelter of the sprinkled blood to which God had thus pledged Himself. It is He who sees the blood and passes over. God alone estimates perfectly the blood of the Lamb; and faith means not our estimate of it, but our confidence in Him. The blood is the token which recalls to us the love of God, as well as His righteousness, but what is shed for sin looks to God and is for God to look on.
Christ thus presents God to us under three aspects: His righteousness that strikes the substitute for us; His love that provides the Lamb for us; and His glory that has raised Him up when all was clear for us. There is thus entire deliverance. We are in Christ before God. The greatest expression of divine hatred of sin is found in His cross. The stroke of judgment fell; the thunder and lightning are exhausted; the sky is pure and calm for those who believe.
But he who is under the shelter of the Lamb's blood must eat of the Lamb's body. It is no question of appetite for it. Doubtless he who has appetite for it enjoys more; and it is so much the worse for him who cares not for it. But it is no condition to do so. What accompanies the act of eating the lamb is the bitter herbs and the unleavened bread. On the one hand repentance attends faith and characterises the new life, as it takes cognisance of all one has done and is; and in Christ one tastes, on the other hand, of what is absolutely without sin. One delights in the Holy One; one judges self, and it is a bitter thing.
There is need also of having the loins girt, shoes on the feet, and staff in hand. The attitude of strangers and pilgrims is the only one for those who are under the blood of the Lamb. Whilst we are here in the world, we cannot let out all that is within. There is danger within and without. We must be ever on the alert and watch. We have no longer a home in the Egypt world. We are bound for the heavenly land. But we are no more slaves. It is the Lord's Passover we are keeping, and we are His for ever, though not yet in the rest that remains but only on the way, while in another sense we are seated with Him in heavenly places.
The fact that the Passover was to be eaten at night, and burnt, or nothing left to the morning, seems to intimate that it was entirely apart from the whole course and scene in which nature and sense are conversant, a matter between God and the soul, abstractedly in the undistracted claim and holiness of the divine nature. No circumstances entered into it, no question of compassionate apprehension of sin and misery. It was sin, and the holy judgment of God, where nothing else was.
So, as a sign of this deep and infinite truth, all was darkness for three hours with Christ: nature hidden; all between God and Him.
Then all was to be burnt. There was no mixing the lamb with anything common. Israel was sanctified by it like the priests, so that he ate it; but it could not be mixed with other food.
Leviticus 1, 2
The first sacrifice offered was one of sweet savour. For this there had to be taken of the cattle, from the herds or the flocks, a male without blemish representing Christ without sin. On its head the offerer laid his hand when brought before the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, that it might be favourably received for him before Jehovah: not taking from the offerer his iniquities but transferring to him its sweet savour when wholly burnt on the altar, yet making atonement for him. If of fowls, the offering was to be of turtle doves or of young pigeons.
In chapter 2 we have a meat or rather a cake-offering of fine flour with oil poured on it and frankincense, which like the burnt-sacrifice was consumed on the altar, though not wholly, for the priest took from it his handful of the flour and of the oil with all the frankincense. Christ alone is unleavened. He was conceived of the Holy Ghost as well as Son of Mary, Matthew 1; Luke 1.
God has accepted the offering that Christ presented to Him, not only the sacrifice for sin, which comes afterwards in chapter 4, etc., but also the sweet savour of His life which was perfect.
Christ accepted the will of His Father in all its extent, going down, so to speak, from humiliation to humiliation, going on from obedience to obedience, always perfect but perfect as He grew up a man. He advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men (Luke 2); not that His obedience was ever less than perfection, but that it became ever more painful and difficult, till it went even up to death -- death of the cross. The world rejected Him always more and more. There was found in the world only a sepulchre for Him.
Christ perfectly glorified His Father. He rendered testimony to the holiness of His will by accepting it altogether. We on the contrary seek but too often to exalt ourselves even among our brethren; we want their esteem and their respect. Christ sought but "one thing," the glory of His Father, and not His own. For it, and so for us, He always went lower and lower down in this world. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him. He is accepted fully and on high; and if God is satisfied with Christ, we also ought surely to be satisfied with Him. We can find all repose for our hearts in Christ. Are you tired of the world, weary of the desert of sin, of strife? Well then look to Christ, where only is rest, perfect rest for conscience and heart. He is the sacrifice and the offering of good savour.
Christ was perfectly holy, though He took part in blood and flesh, as the children had their common lot in the same, and was tempted in all things (sin excepted) in like manner with us. He fulfilled all righteousness; Matthew 3. He was Himself baptised, when the penitents flocked to John confessing their sins. If He thus put Himself on a level with the Baptist ("thus it becometh us," etc.), He puts Himself also on a level with Peter (Matthew 17) when the temple tribute was demanded, whilst displaying His divine wisdom and power in making the most unruly and inaccessible of creatures serve His good pleasure.
But it was not allowed to burn cakes which contained leaven or honey; Leviticus 2: 11. Oil was there, the Spirit of God; and also the salt of His covenant; but leaven represented the sin we have in us which gives its character to our bodies as they are; and God could not accept it as being corrupt. Neither could honey any more be offered, representing the sweetness of nature which God gives to us by the way, in which our hearts can find some refreshment. So literally did it happen to Jonathan when faint; 1 Samuel 14. All that man has at his disposal is spoilt and cannot be offered to God; nothing can but the life of Christ as the meat-offering, and His death as the burnt-sacrifice, to say nothing here of His suffering for our sins and trespasses. In His perfection throughout God the Father finds His pleasure. Christ is all and in all.
As a new creation in Christ we are called to manifest what God is, not in miraculous power, but in doing and suffering all the will of the Father, owning and proclaiming it as alone good in obedience. It is only Christ who has thus absolutely glorified the Father. Even when He poured forth His deepest expressions of grief such as He alone knew, not a murmur escaped Him. Yea, when forsaken of His God and acknowledging it, He adds, "But thou continuest holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel," Psalm 22. Job on the other hand, though he had not his equal on the earth, could only say, "Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived ... . Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, which long for death, and it cometh not," etc. Such on the one hand was a perfect and an upright man; not such on the other was Christ. In all things He has the pre-eminence.
Job 9
In Job we have an example of a strong and upright soul, not understanding grace, with a great deal of selfwill. He knew he was not a hypocrite but was upright: God said so of him, and Job knew it. But there was a great deal of self-righteousness, self-complacency, and self-will. His piety made him attribute what came upon him to God, and his pride made him rebel against it. It is very interesting to see the exercises of a soul in this state. Job said many right things of God, and he knew God would not treat him as his friends did. He wants to find God. He knows God would do him justice if he found Him. "He is in one mind: who can turn him back?" But he could not find God. Job had not the secret opened as we have it; he was calling himself righteous. The question raised was how righteousness was to be found. Here is a soul in conflict with Satan.
There was life in Job, graciousness in his walk in life, upright dealing, etc.; and God said to Satan, "Hast thou considered my servant Job?" etc. It was not Satan spoke first to God, but God to Satan. God knew what He was going to do, Satan did not. This history shews the resources the soul has when righteousness is called for. This took place before the law was given; if not before promises, before the gospel came. How is a man to be just with God? was Job's exercise. His friends had no thought about that. They were going on the ground of this world being the sphere in which God's righteousness in government is manifested; but Job saw the wicked prospering, the righteous sad.
Some will reason, soundly enough too, and tell us the other world will be the sphere where righteous acts will be rewarded and the converse. But why, if worthy of a good place in the next world, are they tormented here? But it is not so, that the condition of men answers to their conduct. There is another, thing besides righteousness, and that is grace. Grace meets with sin, and yet it does not contradict righteousness. Man knows nothing of this way.
Job had not really learnt what his own righteousness was worth, and he had not learnt how God brings out to a soul the consciousness of its state. Neither Job nor his friends understood God's way of grace -- how God could ride over the sin by meeting it in grace. Job's friends could philosophise, they could tell a quantity of truths; but what comfort was there in that to a broken heart?
Now God in Christ is dealing with sinners: not men acting for God, but God acting in grace, because of man's state. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Christ had not broken the sabbath, but God was working because man was in sin and in misery.
This was not God dealing in law, nor promise, nor full grace, as shewn out in Christ; but here is a man taken up, Satan accusing him, and God dealing with him. A master hand was guiding all in Job's case, though Satan was permitted to sift him. The accuser goes up, and God says, "Hast thou considered my servant Job?" Satan accuses. Now he must go through another process to learn how a man, a sinner, could be blessed with God Himself -- could know Him, could understand His thoughts and feelings. Satan might touch his goods, but not himself. This seems but an every-day occurrence: loss of children, property, etc. God carries it on, shewing how He orders everything. Job stands these losses; he blesses the name of the Lord; but his heart was not reached. Satan says, "Skin for skin," etc. Well, says God, You may go and do it. His wife too comes and says, "Curse God and die." His piety is proof against this also, his heart was not reached; but God has to do His work thoroughly. Job sits in the gate, his friends around him; he was a mark for every one; it is too much for him. Now he curses the day he was born. He was feeling human complacency before, and had not been exercised in the presence of God. Many can say good things of God who have never tasted what they are themselves in the presence of God. What we want is a righteousness that cannot be shaken in the presence of God. We must be brought to this -- not only be conscious of grace, but have truth in the conscience.
Peter needed to learn what he was. There is a practical discovery in the presence of God of all the mischief that is in the springs of the heart; we want the springs of the heart broken up. How many are as discontented with God as possible, not looking after holiness, but seeking to make themselves comfortable! Until the will has been crushed in the presence of the majesty of God, there cannot be a right state before God. God does hate iniquity and love righteousness; but what good is that for a ruined man?
The world goes on the principle of sin being in it. Deceit is the will unbroken in the midst of the consciousness of sin. Those justified God who received Christ. The Pharisees complained because He ate with publicans and sinners; but the publican can say, That is just what I want. The sinner justifies God in owning the sin and receiving the grace. A man never knows God until he gets to that point -- " How shall a man be just with God?" Men are willing to contend with Him; but what good is that? says God. God does love righteousness; but what avails that to me? How many sins today, yesterday, and so on, have I committed? It is no good pleading with God on that ground.
Then Job takes up another case. He cannot answer Him in His majesty, and He does not see His love. "If I justify myself, my own mouth will condemn me." How can I justify myself? How many foolish words this week? If I am unrighteous what can I do? He is vexed in his soul about it. "He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked. If a scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent." A scourge comes, and perhaps the best family falls a prey to it. Shall I give up God then, and not trouble myself about it? But he has to do with God, and he cannot help it. He cannot escape His hand. He is not a man, as we are. Job would have got away from God's presence if he could, but he could not; he was all wrong as to this, but he could not get away from God.
"Yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch." I cannot make myself clean before God. Men pass through the world in an astonishing way, thinking about their character, conduct, and of getting honour from one another, etc.; -- but what are they in God's sight? Whited sepulchres, fair without, but full of dead men's bones within. The more a man labours to be good, the more he finds he is like the Ethiopian who cannot change his skin: the evil is in his nature, and he cannot get rid of it. When there is real integrity of heart, there is struggle. The sense of integrity, without the knowledge of righteousness, is the occasion of much misery in the heart. Job says, "Let not his fear terrify me." He had this fear. God has taken away the fear in Christ, and there is a daysman betwixt us, such as Job felt the need of.
The consequences of sin are not known yet. God is saving now, not judging in righteousness. There is the time coming when He will rule in righteousness. He is saving souls now for a better state hereafter, but then the "sinner dying a hundred years old will be accursed." We cannot judge of people's state of soul by their circumstances; we cannot say those on whom the tower of Siloam fell were worse than all that dwelt at Jerusalem.
When I come to that point, to say (not the world is wicked, but) I am wicked, I have the "daysman" between me and God. He is the One who has come to me in all the wickedness of my heart, and has come to me because I am so. Now I have, not only God working in me, sending Satan to plough up the fallow ground, and to shew to my conscience what was there long before, but God doing a work for me. He brings in a righteousness (His own) for the sinner. He works a work for us.
The first thing I find then is that this my state has not kept Him away from me, but it has brought Him to me. That is grace, not righteousness. Hiding my sin from me would not be mercy. Not letting me see things as God sees them is not mercy. It is in meeting me just as I am, and acting above the sin, that He has shewn mercy. Christ never alarms people who come to Him in their need. To the hypocrite He speaks terror, but to the poor in spirit it is "fear not: I am all that you need." You say, "I am such a sinner." Christ says, "That is just the reason I am come." You reply, "I have an awful will." "That is the reason I am come" says Christ: "I will break your will." "Neither do I condemn you," said He to the woman accused by the Pharisees.
I defy you to find a case where Christ brought fear upon a convicted conscience. He takes the fear away instead of causing it. He comes in the poorest and the lowest way to meet with those in need, and that they might not be afraid of Him. Grace reigns -- it has come in God's own blessed sovereignty.
How different are men's thoughts of righteousness now from God's! We can let all go on quietly without trying to set things right, knowing we have something better. We are made the righteousness of God in Christ.
We have a daysman not only laying His hand on man but on God. He is the mediator to reconcile. If a day is assigned in a court of law, the daysman is the one who appears on my behalf to undertake my cause. Not only has Christ come to me in my sins, but He has come to answer for me, taking up the whole cause. He has done it -- settled the whole thing as to my sins, and is gone back to appear in the presence of God for me. He has appeared for God amongst us, but now He is gone to appear for us in the presence of God. I have given up all attempt to answer for myself: He has taken it up. Has God accepted His answer for me? Here faith comes in to accredit God when He says He has accepted Him. The work that the daysman has done is accepted. We know not only that there is a daysman, but that the daysman has sat down, the work being finished, no more remaining to be done (as to the sacrifice). The Holy Ghost is the witness of that: "their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more."
Righteousness is there. Where? Before God. I am not talking of the fruits of righteousness, but of righteousness itself there. God's mind is that He has accepted Christ. God has given Him, and that is love. He has accepted His work, and that is righteousness. Now there is no fear. Grace reigns through righteousness. I stand in the presence of God by virtue of the perfect righteousness that has been presented to God. Where is love to be seen? Very feebly indeed amongst Christians, but love is not feeble in God. I find in Him perfect love. He has broken my heart because it was a hard heart.
Here was all the country set in movement to get Job's heart right! -- Sabeans, Chaldeans, etc. God has been working in all this. I have the key to it all now through the gospel. Self-will, pride, all must be broken; but God is perfect love. He has taken away the sin by the cross, and He has provided righteousness. Then what have I to fear? Though He will exercise our souls that we may know good and evil, it is all love. I can glory in tribulation, knowing that it worketh patience, experience, hope.
Now, beloved friends, are you resting on the daysman? or are you saying, "If I can make my hands a little cleaner, my conscience a little quieter, I shall be all right?" If you were to stand in the presence of God, that would be all spoiled; Job 9: 31. What righteousness is that which is spoiled in the presence of God?
It is the blood which has made atonement, and Christ at the right hand of God is our righteousness.
Psalm 16
I need hardly say that there are many aspects under which we may consider the Lord Jesus. There was His glory with the Father before the world was. He is Son of man; He is High Priest of His people. He was the manifestation of truth, and everything is made manifest by the truth. There is no real truth anywhere but in Christ. If I knew what God is, He is not known really but in Christ. If I want to know what man is in perfection, I see him in Christ. If I want to know what sin is, "He was made sin"; I see it there, the power of death? I see it in Him. Love? It is in Him I seek it. Hatred? True, it was not in Him, but it was made manifest by Him. All is known really through Him. "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." The truth shall make you, free indeed; and then, a little lower down in the context, the "Son shall make you free."
We have seen Christ as the last Adam, and the power of redemption, the real deliverance He has wrought out for us. He is "the second man, out of heaven." "As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly." And again we have seen, from Psalm 22, where Christ has brought us. Having come out of death, raised by the glory of the Father, He praises in the midst of the congregation, and gives us to chant the same song with Him, we being brought into the condition of the last Adam before God, although we have the treasure now in "earthen vessels." Death and resurrection are in Psalm 22.
There are two other characters regarding Christ very precious, because drawing out the affections until by-and-by we shall see Him. He has not only delivering power, whether by life or death, but He is an object, in glory as in humiliation; and there is a third thing: He is a Priest for us, and this character in which He is to us is connected with these new affections, not as an object, but connected with affections.
Christ said, "I go to my Father and your Father," John 20 "In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you," John 14. The congregation must not jar with His praise, and are therefore placed in the same position with Him before "My Father and your Father." Our place before God now is in Him, the Christ in glory. Such is our place, and we are predestinated to bear the image of the heavenly. This gives us power of hope; we are excited by it to run the race; it is not so much dependence marks it (although we must always be in dependence or fall), but the energy and joy of hope. We wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. We do not hope for righteousness, we have it, or rather we are it. Christ is the righteousness; He has entered into the glory, and this is the consequence of the righteousness. "We wait for the hope of righteousness"; we wait for the glory. The Spirit now takes of the things of Christ, and shews them unto us down here -- then in glory. The law was a ministration of condemnation, the Spirit is the ministry of righteousness. When Christ was glorified, He sent the Holy Ghost down to seal our persons and make us partakers of the glory to come; the effect of this is, that beholding Him we are changed into the same image from glory to glory. This is practical realisation, and it becomes fruitful in us. Seeing Christ glorified, by the Spirit, has this effect on our hearts; we are conformed to Him. It is through looking at Christ in glory.
There is another thing of great moment, namely, our looking at Christ as Advocate. "When Jesus knew that his hour was come ... he took a towel and girded himself." He became, in a certain sense, their servant. Whenever we see Him taking a place down here serving, the affections are drawn out in a different way from that which excites the energy of hope. God put before Christ an object of hope, "who, for the joy that was set before him, endured," etc. So He gives us an object to encourage us and brighten our hope all through the way. We are not counting ourselves to have already attained, "but press on towards the mark." But when we think of ourselves in weakness and infirmity, there is the sense of dependence on One either to restore or to keep us going on. In this there is daily much exercise to be kept walking before Him (not touching what we are in Christ), and that is very fruitful; 1 John 1: 7.
Am I under law? No! "We have an advocate with the Father," 1 John 2: 1, 2. Have I to run to Him to be forgiven? No! We run away from Him when we have sinned. He restores us as Peter. Christ looks at him directly he has committed the fault and brings him back. So now He brings our souls back by the Spirit. He is an Advocate, the One who carries on our affairs before God. The same word is also used of the Holy Ghost who carries on our affairs down here. When we fail, or there is the need that we should fail because of self-confidence, it is Christ's work on high to bring us back to communion with the Father and the Son. I do not speak of our going to Him to do it, but I am dependent on Him to do it. "To humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart," Deuteronomy 8: 2. This God does to make us discern between good and evil, which it is needful for us to discern through the fall. He sets us in righteousness first, and then carries us on by His priesthood, maintaining us in the whole scene of our dependence. Christ is not so much an object in all this as an agent.
In this psalm (16) He is more the object before the soul -- our food. Christ becomes properly the food of our souls, not Christ in glory, but here in humiliation. "I am the true bread that came down from heaven"; it does not say the bread that went up to heaven. Then eating His flesh is needed for life. We must know Him as dead. We cannot feed on Him as the living glorified Christ, but as the dead Christ. What draws out our affections to Christ is what He was down here. He was going through all the difficulties here -- made His passage through everything about which He has to intercede for us.
God had His food in the offering, but there was the meat-offering and part of the peace-offering which the priests ate. He says, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again. Then we find the Father has given us the very object He delights in for the object of our affection. The Father could not be silent, when Christ was here. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." The perfection of the object is the reason of the imperfectness of our apprehension of it; but that is the way God brings our affections into tune with Himself. He could say at the beginning, because of His intrinsic perfectness, and at the end because of His developed and displayed perfectness, "This is my beloved Son." Then what do we say? In weakness and poverty, yet surely each can say with unhesitating heart, I know He is perfect. We cannot reach to His perfectness, but we do feel our hearts, poor and feeble as they are, responding. The Father has shewn us something of His perfectness. The Father is communicating of His delight. "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," not in whom you ought to be well pleased (which is true too); but His way is to communicate to them of His own love to Christ. It is a wonderful thing that the Father should tell of His affection for Christ, and that when He was here amongst us, the Son of man on earth amongst sinful men.
A person need not know that he is righteous in Christ, before he can be attracted by this communication with Him. With the woman in the Pharisee's house it was what was revealed in Christ to her made her love much, not what she got from Him. The blessedness of what was in Christ had so attracted her and absorbed her mind that she found her way into the house, though not invited there. She was taken up with Him; she wept, but had nothing to say. Jesus was there. He commanded all her thoughts, her tears, her silence, her anointing of His feet -- all noticed by Him, and all before she knew what He had done for her. Attracted there by what she saw in Him, she got the answer as regards peace of conscience from Himself.
Now a person may be attracted by grace seen in Christ, but the effect of that will be conviction of sin, and, if forgiveness is not known, the presence of Christ to the soul becomes quite the opposite of God's righteousness, and holiness will take the form of a law. Many rest satisfied with being only thus attracted for a season, but then they can slip back into any vanity, because righteousness is not known to the conscience. Righteousness sets us in conscience before God as Christ is -- in the light. If I have not peace, I cannot have fellowship with another Christian. My sins are all my thought, if my conscience is awake. "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship." It does not say, if we walk according to the light; but the case stated is being in the light. The Christian state is being in the light, and we have fellowship with one another and cleanness in His sight. There is no communion in sin, but wretchedness and misery. When we are there (in the light, as He is) we can feed on Him.
There is no real feeding on Christ as bread come down from heaven, when not feeding on His flesh and drinking His blood. The power of death must be known before the heart can be given to be occupied with Him. The Lord gives Himself to us, and He expects us to be occupied with this affection towards Him. "If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I go to the Father." What a place! The Lord comes down here so low and takes such a place amongst men, that He reckons on their affection being such as to rejoice in His joy at going away, though it was for them to be left without Him. This affection that He looks for now cannot be known, unless He is known as salvation.
"In thee do I put my trust." This is quoted in Hebrews 2 to prove His humanity. There are two things make perfection in a man, dependence and obedience. They were in Christ, the contrast to what was in Adam when he sinned. Christ was ever the dependent and the obedient one. Independence is sin: there is the principle of sin in it. All thought of freedom from the will of another, where one's own will is at work, is a terrible thing. With Christ there was no will but His Father's. This was not any check but motive. It is most blessed for us to see Christ taking this place of dependence. It is natural to us to say, I must do something. But no! you should not eat or drink unless He tells you. Whatever you do, do all in the name of the Lord: yet it is all liberty.
So in family life, no person who has his father in his affections at all times would do anything without a desire to please him. Love makes it perfectly indifferent to the child what is to be done. It is done to please the father. Would not a child like even in eating and drinking to please his father? It is not the thing that is of consequence, but the relationship and affection to him. Satan tempted Christ to make the stones bread, when He was hungry, and He could have done so. He might have had twelve legions of angels, but He had taken the place of dependence and waits.
His heart could be moved with compassion; not only could He shew His power in working miracles. And it is in seeing the place of this dependent obedient One down here that the heart gets food. What traits are seen in Him! Asleep on the pillow, He can rise to still His disciples' fear. When sitting wearied on the well, He could converse with the poor woman who came there in need.
He was able in love to go through all; He was thoroughly man -- able to touch others, being untouched by evil Himself. The fact of being untaintable made Him go forth in love dispensing blessing to all. "O my soul, thou hast said unto Jehovah, thou art my Lord," verse 2. Now I take the place of a servant. Thou art my Master. To the young man in the gospels He said, "Why callest thou me good? none is good but One, that is God." I am my Master's; I am taking the place of dependence, leaning on Thee, looking to Thee. Then comes fellowship.
Verse 3. "My goodness extendeth not to thee; to the saints that are in the earth, the excellent," etc. No matter how feeble, how poor, how ignorant, they are "the excellent." It is not what they had, but what they were. He has taken the place, going before the sheep, finding out all the difficulties because He leads, and meeting all the dangers in the path before them. There is not a step of the path of life that He has not trod. He has shewn the path of divine life up to blessing. "In whom is all my delight." All His affection flowed out to them. He takes delight in them, not necessarily in their state. There was enough in Him, and He did draw out the affection of His Father, as a man down here (of course, as the Son also) in this path of life. "Thou wilt shew me the path of life." How dependent for everything! He does not say, I will rise up, but "Thou wilt shew me." He passes through death in dependence on His Father (there was the blessed perfectness of a man with God); and, at the close of His career, "knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God and went to God, he riseth from supper," John 13. He could go back unsullied to the throne of God, and take man back with Him into the glory, out of which He came. There is manhood now in the presence of God.
In Matthew 3 is John's baptism. They came to Him confessing their sins: "fruits meet for repentance" were needed. The beginning of all excellence is to confess we have none. "Fruit" was confessing they had brought forth none. The instant the Spirit of God is working, Jesus goes to be baptised with them; not of course having any sin to confess, but doing His Father's will He takes His place with them; He had come for that; and the consequence is, that He takes His place after to praise in the midst of the congregation. He must be alone in death, but no sooner is He risen than He must have them with Him; He then will be in company.
Verses 4-8. "I have set Jehovah always before me": still dependence -- perfection: "because thou art on my right hand, I shall not be moved." "Thou wilt shew me the path of life." It is most blessed to hear Christ say this. It is the path of death in verse 10; how did He find that of life? Adam found the path of death in his fall and his self-will, but back from it never. The tree of life was never to be touched in the garden of Eden; he had taken the other path. Thus we see there are two trees all through the world -- that of responsibility, and the gift of God which is life. All man does ends in death (but it is too late to speak of that); he is dead in trespasses and sins; but now Christ came, bringing life into a world that drove Him away, where Satan the prince of it was, and everything was bearing the stamp of its prince.
In this place of death then He makes out a path for us. He is shewn by His Father and God the "path of life." He was the life, but then the path of life had to be tracked through this place of death, where no one thing testifies of God -- one wide waste, where there is no way. Christ has tracked the path Himself: it is for the Christian I am speaking now. The gospel shews He gives it to those who believe. He had to make out the path of life through a world of sin and wretchedness, in obedience, up to God. It must be through death for us, because we are sinners. Now He says to us, If any man serve Me, let him follow Me. We must take up the cross. The cross to Him was atonement -- that was the path. As He came for us, it must be by the cross. He has gone through it perfectly and absolutely. What is the consequence? The end is, "In thy presence is fulness of joy." He would rather die than disobey.
Notice well that death is gone to us -- the end is gained; but we have to tread this very same path that He trod up to His presence, where there is "fulness of joy." Christ is the blessed Object for our affections. Alas! how little affection we bear Him. In the wide waste of sin, "a dry and thirsty land where no water is," He could say, "Thy favour is better than life." Why all this? It was for His own glory and His Father's doubtless, but it was for these "excellent of the earth." "In my Father's house are many mansions ... . I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also."
We have to follow Him. It is not the quantity we do, but the measure of presenting Christ that is the value of our service, in a world where there is nothing of God. "All that is in the world ... is not of the Father." In that world the Son of the Father has marked out this path of life up to the Father. "Let my sentence come forth from thy presence" -- in the controversy with man in this path; then in the end "I shall behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied when I awake up in thy likeness," Psalm 17. Here we get the two parts of the blessedness for us -- with Christ, and like Him, in the Father's presence. If we were constantly before Christ, with the consciousness of not being like Him, it would be constant distress. Now we are unlike alas! but "in thy presence is fulness of joy." With Him and like Him we shall enjoy the light of the Father's countenance. In Revelation 4, elders are first seen sitting in peace, then prostrate in worship.
In the Psalms we get Christ walking with the Jewish remnant -- Christ first humbled, and glorified in the end; His own experiences. Christ is the object of our study when we have righteousness in Him. When brought into blessing, we can study Him who brought us there. It is this searches the thoughts, affections, motives in the path; then we go through the death in taking up His cross; then in the end we are to be like Him. The Lord give us to know the blessedness of being identified with Him, following in the path He has tracked out for us.
Psalm 17
This and Psalm 16 give us two great principles of divine life -- trust and conscious righteousness. We find them running all through the Psalms, and any godly person's life as well as that of the Jew. But it is worthy of remark that it does not give the foundation fully on which we stand; according to the New Testament our position is different. You do not find in it the foundation of God's righteousness at this time. Souls in the condition of having divine life, but not knowing their standing in divine righteousness, find the suitability of the Psalms to their experience. Psalm 16 is the first that brings in Christ's own experience: for the first time here He takes His place in humiliation amongst them. Psalms 2 and 8 are prophetic of Him as King and as Son of man. In Psalm 16 He is taking His own place amongst these excellent of the earth. The first characteristic of the divine life is Christ putting His trust in Jehovah; as a man He does it. Hence in Luke, where we see Him more as a man, we see Him praying, the true expression of dependence. "Preserve me, O God," etc.; there is the principle of trust.
Then another principle of divine life is the consciousness of integrity. In Peter there was the same when he said, "Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee" There may be both these things -- trust in God and consciousness of integrity -- without peace with God. Job said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him"; and he pleaded his own righteousness against God -- "Till I die, I will not remove mine integrity from me." He had the consciousness of sin and the sense of righteousness, integrity in himself, at the same time. The soul cannot be at peace in this state. Job was entirely wrong in making a righteousness of his integrity; his friends thought him a hypocrite, but he had the distinct consciousness of not being one. The second principle you have in Psalm 17. God stays up the souls that are trusting in Him until they see Christ. Having got a promise they trust, but cannot say, I have the righteousness of God. Christ having taken up their condition and borne it, they have the consciousness of integrity through Him, and it is the stay of their souls, but not peace.
What a stay it is to find one's feelings expressed in Scripture! Should not I cry out of the depths? You say, I find it in Scripture, "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee." The word of God gives expression to certain thoughts and feelings; they are in the word. A person taking up Psalm 88, expressing entire darkness under the curse of the law, may say, If one saint has been in that state, another may be, and so I may be a saint after all, and get comfort in that way by the sanction of the word. There is not peace in this, but it is a prop and stay to the soul.
This applies to the remnant surrounded by their enemies, as we see here; Psalm 17. We have spiritual enemies. Here is the reality of enemies pressing round Christ. Thousands of hearts will be found trusting in God, come what will, and have the consciousness of integrity, Christ having put Himself in the very place; and they will find every imperfectly formed feeling has been perfectly expressed by Him. In the perfect unconsciousness of sin (2 Corinthians 5: 21), He has come into all the trial and given expression to it. He has borne the sin too.
There is another thing in the Psalms -- mercy always going before righteousness; and they never meet till Christ appears at the end to the remnant. I cannot say righteousness and peace have kissed each other until I know the perfectness of redemption. I may get hope, but I cannot have peace until I get righteousness. It may be said, "Righteousness and peace have kissed," etc., when Christ comes again (this for the Jew). A Jew under law would put righteousness before mercy; this is the law, and Israel never stood on that ground. They had made the golden calf before the law was given to them. Then God retires into His own sovereignty, and, to spare any, mercy comes in. It was the resource of God when wickedness came in. They were going about to establish their own righteousness and would not have Christ, who is the end of the law for righteousness; but when they come back, it will be on the ground of mercy and hope. How many Christians are on this ground instead of in the certainty of possessing righteousness! It is mercy and hope, instead of righteousness the ground of hope. They think of the throne of mercy, and promises coming out to help them, not being founded on righteousness. Of course they could not be saved without it; but the state of their souls is that they have not got into it.
We are not like those who refuse to believe till they have seen Him; we have the end of our faith now, even the salvation of our souls. We know that righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Christ is gone into the holy place, and the Holy Ghost has come out, to us the proof of it, and we are certain of the reception of Christ within and of the accomplishment of divine righteousness. "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight," etc. (Romans 3: 20.) "But," it is said, "in Jehovah shall all the seed of Israel be justified and shall glory." It is not 'shall' to us, but "being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus." God had been forbearing in mercy with the Old Testament saints, because He knew what He was going to bring in. Now it is declared -- it was not declared then. "Not to themselves, but to us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven" -- "to declare at this time his righteousness" -- "being fully persuaded that what he had spoken he was able to perform."
I do not simply believe that God is able, but that He has raised up His Son from the dead. One may trust He will help, but not be conscious of being helped yet; this was the patriarch's portion. But I do not expect Him to do it, but know that He has done it. It is "the ministration of righteousness." I am not merely hoping in His mercy to do something for me to stay me up; but, besides this trust and consciousness of integrity in the heart, there is the knowledge of accomplished righteousness: righteousness is declared. They could not judge sin in the same way when they had not righteousness as a settled question, which it now is for ever. The Spirit of God now demonstrates righteousness to the world by setting Christ at God's right hand. Christ said, "I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do"; and God says to Him, "Sit thou on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool." And, as regards the believer, righteousness is on the right hand of God for him. The affections ought to be more lively, now there is the certainty of accomplished righteousness, than when there was only the hope. The Spirit of adoption is given us: we can cry "Abba, Father."
But, note, there is another sense connected with righteousness here -- mercy going before righteousness, but righteousness appealed to on the ground of promises: the soul in the lowest depth of feeling; Psalm 42. "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts"; "Out of the depths have I cried," etc.; "Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps," is in quite a natural kind of experience. There is either the sense of hope in His mercy, or consciousness of sins: when thinking of the mercy, trusting in God; when under the sense of sin, down in the depths. This is not having the sense of everlasting righteousness brought in. All these exercises of soul being expressed give warrant, as it were, to these experiences of heart. It will give comfort, when down in the depths, to know that One has gone down into the depths for him; the soul will find Christ has traced all the way for him. The Spirit of God in Him, going through all these things for us, shews that not one place, from the dust of death to the highest place in glory, but He has been in for us, sins and all having been gone under. The feeblest Christian now knows more than the apostles could when Christ was on earth. Should we be surprised at His speaking of the cross and His rising again? The Holy Ghost has shewn it to us. We feed upon that which frightened them -- " Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood," etc. What frightened them was a dead Christ; they fled from it when they saw it in the distance. When once founded on righteousness, it is different. How sad to see a saint crouching on the other side of divine righteousness, instead of having on the "helmet of salvation," having communion with Him in the efficacy of His death!
There is another thing to mark in these two Psalms: the character of hope flowing through them, now we tread in this path of life. What was the trust Christ had? He trusted in the goodness, in the infallible love of God. He delighted in communion with His Father; it was the spring of His joy. With us it is the same thing, though mixed up with all sorts of things. What did He delight in? In God Himself. Then as to righteousness, what was that? (See end of Psalm 17.) In Psalm 16, where we see Him trusting in God's love, what is the consequence? Reward in glory? Not a bit; but, "In thy presence is fulness of joy; and at thy right hand," etc. In Psalm 17, glory is looked for as the crown for a faithful walk. "I shall be satisfied when I awake up in thy likeness."
Christ looked to return to the glory He had left, from the path of humiliation down here: the reward for it would be glory as a crown. This applies to us: when we see Him, we shall be like Him. The highest and most blessed thing is to be with Him in the Father's house; this will be infinite, unspeakable joy; but there will also be the crowning with glory and honour. Paul speaks of this: "The crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me in that day, and not to me only, but also to all them that love his appearing." But his brightest hope was to win Christ. As the reward of walking with Him in communion, there will be joy in His presence; as the reward for faithful walk, it will be the place in glory.
He will come to set everything to rights in power; "judgment will return to righteousness, and all the meek of the earth shall," etc. That has never been known yet. When Christ comes in power, judgment and righteousness will go together. Power will be given to the Judge, who will act in righteousness. Is that all I am looking for? No; I am going up to meet the Lord in the air; the hope is founded on righteousness of course, but I am not looking to be justified. What the church gets in the rapture is (as Christ was raised up by the "glory of the Father," and so taken up into His presence), we shall have the blessed joy of being with Him for ever; 1 Thessalonians 4. No getting righteousness is there; the best thing is looking out for Himself -- to see Him as He is -- to be ever with the Lord. When responsibility is spoken of, it is always connected with the appearing; there is the crown, the principle of integrity and faithfulness owned (Psalm 17), connected with the life down here. When speaking of going to be with Christ -- the rapture, all go together to enjoy the grace and presence of Him who has done it all. It is very important to lay hold by faith of the truth of the rapture to Christ of the church of God.
Receiving crowns differing each from each is one thing; but all going together is another thing, all alike being associated in His own blessedness, as He said, "I go to prepare a place for you," etc.
The exercise of soul after divine righteousness is very different from these things before one stands in the divine righteousness. One who has this does not speak of crying out of the "depths." There is an immense change. We have the Spirit of adoption. If I am going through all the difficulties and trials of the world, it is as a child I am going through them. My feelings and affections flow from the certainty of relationship. "I have declared thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them." What was Christ's place on earth? Was He uncertain as to His Father's love? Never; but, on the cross, bearing our sin under the hiding of God's face. There was in Him perfect obedience, but as a Son. If we are led by the Spirit, we have liberty, "not bondage again to fear." Have you liberty? If I have the consciousness of Christ having been in the depths for me, I am out of them, and am no more to be in them; consequently I am sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. The cross behind me, having come by that to God, I look by the Holy Ghost at the cross and see my sins put away there.
Faith is my thinking God's thoughts instead of my own. God says, "Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more"; I think so too. God says, "children of God through faith in Christ Jesus"; I think so too. God says, we stand in favour; I think so too. I do not know how God could prove His favour more than by sending His Son. He says, an "heir of glory," "joint-heir with Christ." I have everything Christ has, as a child with my Father. Now comes conflict; but I have the experience of a free man with God. One dead, quickened, and raised up together with Christ is the experience of a Christian, into all which he enters by virtue of divine righteousness in Christ. In the "fulness of time" He came. They were servants before He came; but now we are sons, and the Spirit of God is in us the Spirit of adoption. This is my place. I do not always act rightly in it: the Holy Ghost reproves and humbles me; but that is my place.
Psalm 23
The blessings into which, as the Shepherd, the Lord leads the flock are not merely temporal but spiritual. The veil is now rent from top to bottom, and we are brought to God. God is not only caring for us all the way, but the exercise of our souls should be to walk in the light with Him, and, if by any means, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. The care He takes is to bring us up to walk in the power of that heavenly glory with Himself. "Keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me." God is not only known to us as Jehovah, giving us mercies all the way along the road; but it is the Father blessing us with spiritual things. True, the hairs of our head are all numbered; but there is discipline for our souls as well, which leads into blessing.
Any pious Jew, having a renewed nature, in old time might know and use this psalm, saying, "Jehovah, my Shepherd." The holiness of God was not fully revealed; and therefore the conscience not disquieted, and the distance not felt. They knew the favour of God and counted on His goodness then; but now we are brought into the light and see what judgment is The veil is rent, and God's holiness is manifested; for we are in the light, as He is in the light, through Jesus. "The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth."
Now that sin has been fully shewn out -- the death of Christ proving what the enmity of the heart was -- this matter must be settled. I cannot say, "I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever," if I have not the knowledge of sin forgiven. I cannot talk of confidence, if I have a fear of judgment and I see the desert of sin in the light of His holiness. I cannot consistently speak of One who may be my Judge, that He is my Shepherd, and I shall dwell with Him. To know Him as our Shepherd, we must not have it an unsettled matter about sins being forgiven. God cannot let sin into His presence.
There must be a conscience purged. Christ has been accepted, and He puts us into His place, having made peace through the blood of His cross. "He has put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." He has "entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption." God does not see sin in Jesus; indeed in Him was no sin: and we who believe are in Him; therefore He sees no sin in us. The comfort and peace Christ had, as a man walking on the earth, He gives us. "My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." Now I have come to put you in the place of unhindered confidence with the Father; and that is, what you could never have, if the least sense of sin were upon you. The peace is made: therefore He can not only say, "Peace I leave with you," but "My peace I give unto you." These were not idle words, and we can see how He could give it to us, having brought us to God and put away everything against us.
Now the question is one of happiness with God. Conflict by the way there is also of course; but God is my Shepherd. Not only has He done something for me, but He is something to me: therefore it is said "that your faith and hope might be IN GOD." I believe in God as seen in Christ, as one who has loved me perfectly and manifested His love by putting away my sins. "The kindness and love of God our Saviour towards men hath appeared." The thought I may now have of God is that He has done all this for me, and that He is all this to me. I may fail and so get into evil, and this will make me ashamed; but it should not destroy my confidence, because my faith and hope are in God Himself. Now God is my Shepherd, and we may have confidence in Himself, for it is not merely said, He has done this, and He will do that, but "I shall not want." There never can be a want to the soul that has the supply. It is the application of this power and goodness of God to my every-day need that I shall feel, and all this must go on the ground of sin forgiven. Now I have found out, not only my need of being justified, but that He has justified me. Whom He called, them He also justified; Romans 8.
The starting-point of Christian experience is "God for us"; and "if God be for us, who can be against us?" I am the object of His favour, which is better than life. "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters." I shall find good everywhere. I shall lie down, no one making me afraid. Though the wolf may prowl in the way, I lie down in green pastures. It is "He leadeth me," and that must be in perfect peace and enjoyment "beside the still waters." This is the natural Christian state. We realise all things ours, for God is for us; therefore we may lie down. We shall have conflict, etc., but amidst it all enjoyment. If the sorrow gets between our souls and God so as to produce distrust, it is sin. Even if sin comes in, sad as it is, He can restore the soul. Whether from trouble, or from offending, He can restore. See what thoughts are here given about God! The Psalmist does not say, I must get my soul restored, and then go to God, but "He restoreth my soul." So "if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father." Who can restore but He? There may be something to correct in us, if not actually a fall. There may be hardness in my heart, which trouble shews me, and the like. For our good in this way He sends trouble, as well as that which is our proper portion following Him who was the "Man of sorrows." But if He restores, it is "for His name's sake." Here am I, a poor, fainting, wretched creature, and the Lord comes in and lifts me up -- why? "For his name's sake." Whatever I am, God is for me; and not only in this way, but also against enemies. "For, though I walk through the valley," etc. (verse 4). Man had reason to quail at death before Christ came; but now in the fullest sense, we need "fear no evil." Death is "ours" now. "We have the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead." If they took my life, they could not hurt me, for I am trusting to One who could raise me. Paul as good as says, If they take this life, I have lost nothing; nay, it is positive gain, for it hastens me on the road. Death is not terrible now. Why? "Thou art with me." It is terrible without this. "Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." It is not a rod, but Thine, so I shall fear no evil. No one can compete with God. Death is the very thing by which Christ has saved me, and it is that by which He will take me into His presence -- " Absent from the body, present with the Lord." It may come as a trial to exercise my soul. Well, I have to remember, "Thou art with me."
There is not only failure in life and failure in death to meet, but there are mighty enemies (verse 5). Nevertheless I can sit down amongst them, and find everything given me for food. I feed on this dying Christ, and it was in His death Satan's power was most put forth. In another light Satan comes and tempts me with the flesh, but I can say to him, I am dead; I have a right to say it -- I may fail in saying it, but that is another thing. Satan cannot touch anything but my flesh; and if I am mortifying my members, he has no power. If my members are alive, Satan cannot count me dead. In the presence of all then I can sit down and say, I have done with them all -- "for Thou art with me." I have found that power by which they are made nothing to me. Then we arrive at further security, joy, and blessedness still: "Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over." Now that Christ has ascended and the Holy Ghost has been given, there is triumphant peace and abounding in joy through the power of the Holy Ghost.
I now find God Himself the source of all, and not only this as a present thing, but seeing what God is, I can say, "goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of Jehovah for ever." We shall never want goodness and not find it. "Goodness shall follow me." Assuredly the goodness of God is better than man's, even if we could get this. There is a place to dwell in: that is my hope. For us it is the Father's house. There are not only blessings conferred, but a place to dwell in with the Father for ever. As He brought Christ through, of course He will bring me through too, and I am there now by faith. I am at home with my Father. He would have us feel that all the correctings and chastenings by the way are founded upon the fact that He is for us. When peace is really settled through the work of Christ, I have all these exercises; and what is known only to faith at the beginning becomes afterwards experience, though always faith too; but, every step having had this experience, we can say that we know it. Whatever it be we meet with by the way, we know it is all for good, and we shall dwell for ever with Him. Wonderful grace!
Psalm 31
The special subject of all the Psalms is connected with a remnant of Israel, or with such of the Jews as have their hearts touched by the Spirit of God, and look out for deliverance from the circumstances in which they are placed. In some of them the interest which God had in them is then taken up, though prophetically, in great detail; and the Lord Jesus is treated of as passing through circumstances of great trial on their account. It is not but that there are many things we may delight in, and godly souls have found great comfort in all ages in the Psalms, and rightly so. Still it is well to understand what the purpose and intention of the Holy Ghost is in them.
In Psalm 1 (which, with the second, is a sort of preface to the book), it is the distinction between the godly and ungodly man. The godly are called the righteous, and the ungodly are always called enemies. That the Lord should not spare any wicked transgressors is not the grace of the gospel. There are many passages where there is the call for judgment, because there must be the destruction of the enemy to allow of the deliverance of the Jewish remnant who seek rest on the earth. We could not consistently use this language, just as it is in itself, and say, "spare not any transgressor." Having received grace we cry, "Spare them, pity them, save them, O Lord." But judgment will be executed another day -- when the church is out of, and the Jews are in, the scene. If they have taken the place of adversary against the Lord, then it must be judgment. When the patience of God has been fully exercised, and the continuance of mercy would only be to sanction and perpetuate iniquity in the earth, "the master will rise up and shut to the door." Then will be a time, not of grace as now, but of judgment. And then it will be seasonable. The Holy Spirit will warrant their looking for the deliverance which will cut off the enemies. The distinction in Psalm 1, and so throughout the whole book, is between the righteous and the wicked. "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly," etc. "The ungodly are not so," etc. "Therefore the ungodly shall not stand," etc.
In Psalm 2 the heathen are raging, the kings or rulers of the earth set themselves against Jehovah and His Christ. But God asserts and will enforce the rights of His Son on earth. Wherever the Spirit of God is working, there is the cry of the Spirit in the soul which must meet an answer. Now is a day of unmingled grace; but here the Spirit of Christ speaks of them as enemies, and is looking forward, as the only remedy, to their being cut off in judgment, unless they bow. Christ Himself is interested in this remnant, and is brought in as bearing their burdens. "They parted my garments among them" is a direct prophecy about the Lord. He joins Himself with their sighs. He has been with them for their sins, and He will deliver them from their foes. The tone and character of this book gives us the expectant blessings to Israel in letter: the spirit of it we take to our soul's comfort. I find in my soul certain anxiety and distress -- no doubt very imperfectly expressed -- but it is more or less the same in us as in the remnant; I look up to the Lord, but it may be my own fault brought me into the trouble, and I do not know what to say: then the Spirit gives me in the Psalms an inspired feeling of what is right under such circumstances. Thus I hear God's expression of my sorrow. It is a great comfort to the soul, but it must be understood how far they apply. Then again there is sin or Satan. In either case it is wrath against sin which is the source of wrath on our departure from God. Here is the power of Satan and the wrath of God. Christ had to come under the power of death, and therefore He had to come under the sin, I do not say morally, but substitutionally, as bearing the whole burden of our sin; to deliver us He must take it on Himself. He had to drink up the cup of wrath for us -- whether for Israel for earthly blessing, or for Christians for heavenly blessing. It is important to see the special bearing. Yet there are certain principles, immutable and that always apply, eternal truths that never vary -- whether earthly people or heavenly people are concerned. Only Christ can put us into blessing. The displayed ways may change, but the fundamental principle must always be the same. Sin is at bottom the same, and love is the same too; though the development of both may not be so.
In this Psalm the evil looked at is the bondage of sin; not only servants of sin, but slaves of Satan. He is the god of this world and the prince of its course, and he holds it under thraldom. There are two points in verses 7, 8, I wish to speak about. "Thou hast considered my trouble, thou hast known my soul in adversities and hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy: thou hast set my feet in a large room." These are the two things God has taken notice of. I would take the great principle of it; true to a Jew, but in a much larger way to us. We are now identified with Christ at the right hand of God. The High Priest is there. He is carrying on His work there. His place is there. Aaron's place is on the earth. God's love is set on this remnant. There they are -- there we may be -- held in bitter bondage. It may seem liberty because our wills are in it, but it is real and thorough bondage. A man knows a thing is wrong and foolish, yet he goes on doing it. He is away from God; so that there is no power to deliver himself from sin, from his passion, and he is not able to keep from it until he gets back to God. What he did, he did to render himself independent of God. This ruined Eve. Adam was led astray by her, and lost all his blessing, though our blessings are more than Adam lost. Adam thus cast off God's authority and became the slave of Satan's power.
There is no such thing as independence: man is perfectly incapable of it. He must have something to govern the heart. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Not where your heart is, there your treasure is. A thousand things may govern the heart, but there is something -- it may be vanity, or anything else; but naturally it is governed without God. If you had been in paradise now, it would not be independence. "All power is of God." If not, He would not be God. There can be nothing independent of Him. Creature independence is but setting up another god; any other power is not God. Nothing is independent of God. Satan, cast at last into the lake of burning brimstone, will shew that he is not independent. The moment the heart departs from God, it must get some other object. When Adam hears the voice of God in the garden, he hides himself: that is not to be happy. Sin gave him the consciousness of his nakedness, and God had immediately, in his eyes, the character of a judge. Worship and prayer are vanished, the moment we have sinned and God takes this character before us. Man goes out of his mind if he has not an object. He has lost God as such, and he seeks some other, of which he makes himself the centre. We have left God, and He has got the character of a judge, and so the heart seeks something below itself -- looked at as made for God, something to satisfy its nature. An animal could not carry on a course of sin -- it has no intellect to indulge in sin -- but man does; and thus the superiority of our human nature is used to corrupt ourselves by vices. Man is a slave: the god of this world, the enemy of our souls, has got power over him through his passions, and it is thraldom. A man dare not do anything that would set him at variance with the world.
Man has lost the knowledge of God (not that there is a God, but the knowledge of God), and this aggravates his guilt. He has a knowledge that there is a God, but he does not know Him. I may know there is a great potentate, but I may not know him. A man's intellect may say, "No God"; but his conscience says there is a God, though he has shut God out, and does not know Him. We have lost, in a great degree, the power of measuring good and evil. Would not the young man have known it was unseemly to be feeding on the husks the swine did eat, if he had been living happily in his father's house? We are by nature darkness; God is light. By the fall man lost the image of God -- gained the knowledge of good and evil, but not the knowledge of God by which we can judge the things around us. Satan has blinded you by motives. "I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained unto life, I found to be unto death." The moment the word reaches the conscience, then you say, "I am all wrong." There may be almost despair, but the revelation of God's light alone comes in and shews me I was in darkness. Man's very unconsciousness of evil, and contentedness with what he is without God, the thirst in his heart for other things, and the asking, "What harm is there?" prove he has not God. If you talk of sin when men are enjoying what they call innocent pleasures, and speak of either grace or judgment, it stops them immediately; it is all gone. They will tell you, "It is not the time." Man's pleasure is never the time for God's presence. They will talk about God, will tell you what He ought to be, but they cannot bear His presence. The Lord may use outward means, trouble, etc., as in the Psalms; or work without outward means, and then we know the struggle against sin. "Thou hast known my soul in adversity." It is better to be struggling against the tide than going down the stream with the world. When the light shines in, there is the consciousness of need; the world sees it; Satan sees it and says, There is a soul escaping. He has got the consciousness that God is not there. It will be detected if the divine nature is at work in a man.
"Thou hast known my soul in adversity" -- not my soul has known thee. There is as yet no full apprehension of His grace. I know I have been wrong, but "Thou hast considered my trouble." I am in distress. What am I to do? Well, God has considered my trouble. There is not liberty yet; but if the word has reached the heart, there may be ever so little perception of God, but there is a link between the soul and God. "Thou hast known my soul in adversity." "Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a pleasant child, for since I spake," etc. If there is any reader that knows he has been going wrong as connected with the conscience, and he wishes to get back to God, I say, God knows it, He considers it -- weighs the whole process, and He will surely deliver. The soul may know and have to pass through a good deal of exercise; but He is considering it. "Since I spake against thee," etc. His eye is always upon it. "Thou hast known my soul in adversity."
There is not only sin but the power of Satan to overcome. You cannot be independent of Satan. You cannot go after the smallest vanity, not even a little bit of dress for vanity's sake, without making God a liar and believing Satan. Eve did this when Satan said, "Thou shalt not surely die" -- God knows if you disobey, you will become as He is. He treated God as a liar, and she trusted Satan for truth, and so God was entirely cast off. In everything you may be deceived by the same enemy.
Man incautiously trusts Satan for truth, and even for goodness. But when you begin to struggle with Satan, he will trouble your soul, if he sees you want to get away from him. He will send friends and temptations to you, so as to deceive (and that is the difference between the devil and Satan). The Lord comes in; Satan claims his right over us and says, You have sold yourself to me already; but God says, "Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?" Satan was displayed specially as the adversary when he said, "Fall down and worship me." Then the Lord said, "Get thee hence, SATAN." Satan uses scripture for his own wicked purposes and quotes what God has said -- "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." You sold yourself to me. No, says the Lord, My eye is upon you: thou shalt not die. The judgment of death is with God, the power of death is with the devil! Christ comes and places Himself in blessed grace in our place to bear the whole weight of Satan's power -- puts Himself under the consequences of our sin: "was made sin for us." Thus grace brought Him where sin brought us, that He might deliver us from the whole force of evil. Christ, having not only delivered us but glorified God perfectly by the cross, having made good His tide at all cost, goes into that glory by virtue of redemption, with the full joy of the firstborn among many brethren, enters as Man into the presence of His Father.
This gives the character of what we are made partakers of. If He enters there, it is in a certain sense our entering; it is for us, as "our forerunner," in virtue of His entering. We have entered in Him as our Head; we sit "in heavenly places in Christ." "Thou hast not shut me up in the hand of the enemy, but thou hast set my feet in a large room." There is liberty. The state of the heart delivered corresponds with the deliverance into a large place. "Set my feet in a large room." We are in the presence of God without the possibility of wrath. The cup of wrath has been drunk -- it is not now to drink. God's eye was upon me when I was in my sins. He has "known my soul in adversity," and I am brought into the presence of God -- into the sunshine of His glory, without a cloud, by virtue of redemption. It is after I was a sinner, I am brought there through the efficacy of the work of Christ. I am there necessarily to be the proof of the value of His blood. God looks upon me as the fruit of His Son's work: I am set according to the value of God's Son in His sight. This is how I know His love, in the perfect favour of God -- not only in divine favour without a cloud, but assured that there never can be a cloud. And there is another thing -- "Sin shall not have dominion over you." Not that it will not be there; but that we are set free from sin and death. The same power that raised Christ into the presence of God has delivered me. I may slip through unbelief, but I am delivered, and am then one spirit with the Lord.
Satan has no power against Christ up on high; all his power was exhausted at the cross, and it is all gone. God "hath delivered us from the power of darkness," and set our feet "in a large room." That we may enjoy this large room, the Holy Ghost is given. "Stand fast in the liberty." Satan has no right or title against Christ. In Him I am delivered. I am entirely out of the enemy's reach (I do not mean if going on in the flesh): in Christ is my title and portion. I have received the Holy Ghost. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." "If led by the Spirit, we are not under the law." By the Holy Ghost, I "know the things that are freely given of God," and have the power of enjoying them (1 Corinthians 2), an "earnest in our hearts," 2 Corinthians 1.
I add another thing that puts the crown to all: "we joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ." I know it is for ever. The Spirit has sealed me "until the day of redemption." Well, now I can trust and joy in God. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" No creature can separate us from the love of God. There we find ourselves; and the apostle is not afraid to say, "We joy in God." This is a "large room." All the holiness of God is our delight. He that first descended is ascended into the proper glory; and we are brought into it all. If I cannot see the end of it, I can see it is boundless blessedness. And Christ is all and in all. The Lord give us to dwell there! Surely it is "a large place."
Psalm 84
We get ourselves so accustomed to certain things by their constant use that the power of their meaning becomes destroyed. It may be a bad word or a good word, but words that would deeply affect others thus fail to move us. This we find but too true, as regards the scripture-truth itself. What an effect such an announcement as that in John 3 ("God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son," etc.), would have upon us, if listened to for the first time, and the value of its meaning entered into! Just the same is it with this scripture before us. "How amiable are thy tabernacles O Jehovah of hosts," etc. Would not such a thought as being in God's court, as men dwelling in God's own house, greatly delight and surprise us, if heard for the first time and its meaning understood? What an effect such a truth as this would have upon us if fully believed -- God going to make us dwell with Himself in His own house!
He does dwell with us now, as we know; but we are not yet dwelling in His house. God never dwelt with Adam, nor did Adam dwell with God. He made a suitable dwelling-place for man and put Adam in it. He did come down to visit him, but He did not dwell with him. Indeed the first time we read of God coming down His word is, Adam, where art thou? The paradise on earth was not God's dwelling-place. We read in the Revelation, the tabernacle of God is with men, and the Lamb is the light and the temple of it.
"How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Jehovah of hosts! my soul longeth, yea fainteth for the courts of Jehovah." The heart that has found God longs for a dwelling-place with Him. It was this desire that moved the disciples on the mount of transfiguration to make a request for three tabernacles. It was Jewish of course; but they could not bear the thought of the Lord Jesus going away. They wished Him to stay with them; they wanted to keep Him down here. He could not remain, but left them and us words of comfort. "Let not your heart be troubled ... . In my Father's house are many mansions," many chambers. "I go to prepare a place for you ... . I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." This new thing is brought out here most blessedly -- that man shall dwell with God in His own house. The Lord Jesus could not stay with His beloved disciples down here, because it is polluted; but He will have his people with Himself, where there is holiness, and everything suited to meet the need and claims of holiness. His people shall dwell with Him. "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am."
The first thought in the heart of Moses (Exodus 15), whilst recounting God's acts of power and delivering grace, is the desire to make Him a house: "He is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation." But verse 13 gives us a fuller thought of faith: "Thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation" -- the redemption song of the Lord's strength and power. In verse 17 we get the clear promise of this new thing -- a dwelling-place with God, which He Himself has made. That is what He will do for them: not merely a rest in the wilderness, but the blessed purpose of God is to bring His people into His sanctuary which He has made. What! man to dwell with God! Wondrous fact! The thought of this new thing fills my soul with the deepest joy.
The heart that longs for God finds rest in the altar of God. "Thine altars, O Jehovah of hosts," etc. "My heart ... crieth out for the living God. Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young." How beautifully this parenthesis shews us the tender care God has over all His creatures! He fails not to find a house for the most worthless of birds, and a nest for the most restless. What confidence this should give us! How we should rest! What repose the soul gets that casts itself upon the watchful tender care of Him who provides so fully for the need of all His creatures! We know what the expression of "nest" conveys, just as well as that of "a house." Is it not a place of security -- a shelter from storm -- a covert to hide oneself in from every evil -- a protection from all that can harm -- a place to rest in, to nestle in, to joy in? The term is just as familiar in the scripture as that of "the house." The prodigal well understood the comfort and plenty of the Father's house before he turned his face towards it; but it was the Father that knew the claims of the house, and He must clothe him suitably for it before he is admitted into it.
"Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee." It is this new thing -- that men should dwell in God's own house; not be there merely as a visitor, but a dweller. The visitor does not know all that belongs to the house; but nothing can be kept back from a dweller: he is at home, and must know all the privileges and blessings of the house. Surely there will be perfect blessedness in that house, where Christ has prepared everything -- where God is at home and has arranged all according to His own wisdom and power and glory -- the Lamb being the light and the temple. Now those who dwell there must have the moral qualities of the house; their tastes, and enjoyments, and nature, must be suited to the house.
In time past God did come into the temple after a Jewish order; but the people were shut out from even this glory -- the very opposite to dwelling with God. They were a favoured people, it is true -- separated from the nations by God's grace; but they knew not the constant increasing blessing of the house.
There is another thing -- the way to this house; the road to that place where God and His people shall dwell. He has been dwelling with them, but He will have them to dwell with Him, and His heart has ordered the way. When we were sinners -- merely sinners -- and could do nothing but sin, He put it all away. "Christ suffered, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God." He has given us a new nature, which has the moral capabilities of enjoying a dwelling-place with Him in His own house.
God has dwelt with man; the God-man Christ Jesus has tabernacled down here, and His glory was displayed in grace and truth.
In Exodus 29 we learn a further truth of the tabernacle and the altar; but the grand thought all through is not only God dwelling with His people, but He must have them to dwell with Him.
In Ezekiel we see the glory that had rested on the temple departing gradually, reluctantly, yet really. But this had not been the fulness of His indwelling in the Christian; neither was it His presence in the church which is His body. "Ye are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit."
How this new thing occupies God -- the thought of His own house! His word declares it; "prophets tell of it"; grace puts us in possession of it; faith gives us the enjoyment of it; the Lord Jesus is the way to it. The First Epistle of John brings out this truth very fully. (See chapters 3 and 4.)
Now, how is it that we feel ourselves wonderfully more united to a Christian we may only have known for half-an-hour, than to a mere acquaintance we may have known all our lives? Is it not the reality of the truth, God is there? God dwells in us, and we in Him. It is something more than a new nature, for it goes on to say, "We know that he abideth in us by the Spirit he hath given us." In the next chapter we get that wonderful word, "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love," etc. Oh, the joy this knowledge gives the heart! What comfort the soul gets in such proximity to God! How the thought of this house delights one! -- this house that God is bringing us to, where we shall learn Him most fully, and love Him without hindrance.
How complete, how perfect, is God's work! He gave Jesus to die for us, and He has sent down the Holy Ghost to teach us, to assure our hearts that the Lord Jesus Christ has done everything for us. He has fitted us for this house, and we have in Him all we need. He gives us the moral qualities of the dwellers of the house, the new nature that can enjoy the glory of the house. "Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee." Nothing but praise becomes those who shall dwell in God's house; it will be their unwearied untiring employ -- continual praise. "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are the ways." If by faith I am dwelling in God's house, I have perfect rest. If I am counting on His strength, let my difficulty be what it may, I have entire repose. Communion with God always gives confidence in His power. This is the key to the psalm before us. If my heart has learnt the love God has for me, and what His purposes are towards me, I can trust Him to order the way. God's love was displayed in His Son -- revealed in the gift of Him; and the Son will give grace and strength for the way. "Of those thou hast given me have I lost none." God has fully provided for our need. He has quickened us -- cleansed us -- sealed us. If Paul had to say, I am not already perfect, he knew it was the way up, the way to the house, the way home. If my heart is set upon this glorious dwelling-place, I shall not be so much occupied about the ease or comfort of the way, as I shall be to know that it is the way. The glory of the inheritance will be far more to me than the character of the things that are round the pathway to it.
Everything may be against me -- all may seem united to hinder my progress. Should I be trying to make myself comfortable, desiring to settle down in a place and a world which is striving to keep me from my house and my home, depriving me of enjoyment and blessing? No; the one thing that should occupy me is the way out. I shall not be distressed much by what is going on down here if I can but learn that it leads up there. Is it the way home? Will it take me to the house? This will be a vast deal more important to me than all else. It may be a dangerous road, a rough road, a difficult road; but is it the way up there? If I do but know that, I shall not care for the difficulties of the hill, nor fear the danger of the descent. Shall I be looking for an easier road, a smoother road? No. Is it the road? Is it the way there? If I am told there is a lion in the way -- well, I have no fear: God is my strength -- I cannot go without Him. "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" were the words of Jesus. He had to suffer, so may we; but is it the way there -- the way to the home on which my affections are set -- the way to the home of blessing which the Lord has prepared? This settles every question, and delivers from ten thousand sorrows. I do not care for the difficulties nor the dangers: it is the way there. I am kept up in it by the strength of God; I am kept up through it by the love of God.
"Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well" (verse 6). The valley of Baca is a place of sorrow and humiliation, but one of blessing also. To Paul it was the thorn in the flesh -- something that made him despicable in his ministry to the Galatians. It was truly humbling, and called forth from him a thrice-repeated prayer. But when he heard the Lord say, "My grace is sufficient for thee," he no longer pleaded for its removal. No; he rather gloried in his infirmity, that the power of Christ might be known. This was the place of blessing to Paul: he found it a well. The valley of Baca was turned into a spot of untold intimacy and nearness to God. With some of us this valley may be the loss of that nearest our hearts, or the thwarting of the will -- something that will humble us; but it is a place of blessing. We get far more refreshing from the painful than the pleasant things. The valley of Baca is made a well. Of which of your pleasant things can you say, you make it a well? The refreshment and the blessing come from that which has pained us, humbled us, emptied us of self! This is God's way of shewing us what He is; and so, in passing us through the valley of Baca, He makes it a well.
So we read in 1 Thessalonians 5, "In everything give thanks." How is this to be done? Did Paul give thanks for the thorn -- the very thing he supposed would hinder his usefulness? Not whilst looking at the thing itself: it was only when his eye was fixed on the heart and the hand that had done it. There are many things in themselves that we cannot give thanks for -- the snapping of the cord nearest the heart, or the cutting to pieces of what our affections are set upon. We must see the love that has ordered it, and the hand that has appointed it; and then we can give thanks.
"The rain also filleth the pools." The Lord can make springs in the desert to meet His people's need, or send down rain from heaven to supply their wants. He knows neither difficulties nor impossibilities: to lean upon Him is undisturbed security. He will bring His people safely through every trial; and every fresh victory should increase the strength of their confidence in Him.
"Behold O God, our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed." In every sorrow God is our shield. Oh! but some may say, My sorrow is brought on by my sin. Sad it should be so! But even then we can say, "Look upon the face of thine anointed." God can always look upon His Son with delight; He is ever well pleased in Him: and we can plead what Christ is. There is no position a saint can be in but that he may go to God for help. No; although his very sorrow is the fruit of his sin, and there is no other way of getting rid of your sin and out of your sorrow but by going to God and hiding yourself behind His Anointed. You may not choose to say, Look upon me; but you can ever say, "Look upon the face of thine Anointed." Christ is your only shelter. He is a covert in every storm -- ah! even that which your own failure has brought upon you. There is no getting back to God but by hiding yourself in Christ -- taking shelter behind Him.
There is just one other word about the way, and I have done. Now, what are your ways? What is your walk in the way to the place you are going to? Is it in keeping with the character of the house? Are your ways suited to the home God has prepared you for? -- His own dwelling which He has prepared for you? Are you so behaving yourselves as to rejoice in the thought that this world is crumbling? Is the hope of the Lord's coming your daily delight? Does it influence you in the ten thousand details of your every-day life? Or are you so walking hand in hand with the world that the very thought of His coming fills you with shame? May the Lord grant you grace to take heed to your ways! May you walk well-pleasing in His sight, caring more for His glory than your own ease! "No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly." "Blessed is the man that trusteth in Jehovah."
Matthew 3
The word of God presents to us this very precious fact, that we do not only find there certain truths and doctrines, but also every relation between God and man fully developed on earth, and each day we can clearly see all these things in the Person of Jesus. It is a great mercy of God to have brought Him so near to us, as so to make known to us those relationships in the circumstances in which we are ourselves found. At bottom the life of Jesus was like ours. He was in all things tempted in like manner as ourselves. It was indeed God manifested in flesh; but it was also life, and the expression of a life; perfectly acceptable to God.
In order to make progress in spiritual life we must study the Lord Jesus; whether in the grace of His Person or in the circumstances of His life; or, lastly, in the glorious position He has near the Father, and which we shall by-and-by share with Him.
We see in Christ, from the beginning, the accomplishment of the life of faith, which was tested in Him, and of which He manifested all the perfection.
Jesus is to us a tender and mighty friend; and, while travelling through the wilderness, we know that at the end of the way will be found the glory in which He now is. That is what is said in Hebrews 12: 1-3: "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith" -- rather "the leader and completer of faith." As captain, He has gone before us; as shepherd, "he putteth forth his own sheep," and also "goeth before them." He "despised the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds."
Divine life is seen in that Man who walked in the midst of all difficulties and temptations, who surmounted all, and who, alone amongst all, was not touched by the evil one.
Now He has entered the glory at the right hand of God; and we shall share with Him that glory when He shall appear, since we shall be made like unto Him.
We shall see a little how the Spirit of God presents Jesus to us, at the beginning of His life, when He enters that painful race of faith.
An important thing to remark is, that the light manifests all that is in man.
It is true that God saw what was in the heart of Abel and of Cain, before anything of it was manifested; just as He saw a remnant in the midst of the Jews, in whom grace was working; but things were never brought to light under the law. God was, as it were, hidden behind a veil, and He allowed many things because of the hardness of their hearts, as Jesus told His disciples; for the full light was not yet manifested. But in Christ the light shone in the world.
In the Christian, who possesses the life of Christ, that which is true in Christ is true in him, as it is said in 1 John 2: 8: "Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth."
It is always well to bear in mind that, in the former dispensation, God hid Himself, but that He sent certain messengers who were to reveal what was entrusted to them, but without making God known. The law did not manifest Him fully. It is true it says, Thou shalt love; but not, I love thee; it does not reveal a God of love. It does not shew us what God is, save that He is a just God and executes vengeance. It tells us nothing at all of what God is for man, nor of what He is in Himself. The law did indeed make known to men what they ought to be toward God, but it was silent as to what God is for them.
A man is always under law, as long as he is occupied with what God demands from him, instead of understanding what God is for him; for this would produce much more excellent effects. God, being thus hidden, required obedience in order to grant life. It was no question of being able to place oneself in the presence of God. The high priest alone presented himself once every year into the holiest of all; for the way into it was not yet made manifest, and there were many things that God bore with, without approving them. There were ceremonies and ordinances, which were intended to remind man of his dependence, and to bring him into relationship with God, according to certain things which acted upon the flesh and adapted to the flesh, because man was in it, and God placed Himself in a relationship with him. The holiness of God who was hidden was not seen, but there were ceremonies which maintained the relationships between that God who remained hidden and man.
But when God manifests Himself, it can no longer be so; for God is holy, and He is love. He is perfect in holiness, and man must necessarily enter into relationship with what God is. God can forgive sinners -- can wash them; but He cannot bear with anything that does not answer to His holiness. If there is grace, there is also holiness, but God cannot, because of His holiness, bear with man, a sinner, just as he is; for God is "of purer eyes than to behold evil."
Let us meditate upon the example of Jesus, the Light upon earth, entirely separated from sinners, which constituted the perfect beauty of His life. On one hand, we see that He is alone, perfectly alone; He is the most isolated man that one can imagine. The disciples themselves know not how to sympathise with Him. The woman of Samaria, to whom He addressed such touching words about the water "springing up into everlasting life," can understand nothing else but "the well is deep." She says, "From whence then hast thou that living water?" If Jesus says, "Look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest"; if He speaks of "a meat to eat" that His disciples "know not of," it is ever the same He meets with no real sympathy in the midst of men. We feel that this was painful to Him, because He had a man's heart, and would have desired to find some one who could understand Him; but He found nothing anywhere. On the contrary, as to Him, we see that He has a perfect sympathy toward all. Jesus was the most accessible man, most within the reach of the simple, of the ignorant, and even of the most degraded of sinners. He manifested in His life something that had not its equal. No, there never was all that holiness and love, which is above all our thoughts.
There is so much selfishness in the heart of man that the love of God is to him an enigma still more incomprehensible than His holiness. No one understood Jesus, because He manifested God. I do not as yet speak of His work, but of what He was, when He was manifested in the midst of the world. He had to shew that all the ceremonies cannot make God known; for the thing is impossible. Jesus alone manifested God as He is, and man also as he is.
No religion as such can change man. Man puts on religion as a clothing; but his religion leads him farther away from God.
The first thing God does is to lay us bare in His presence; He takes away everything. He is occupied with us, and not with our religion. Then is all quite removed, and we stand before Him, such as we are. Well! that is what took place when Jesus was here below; and therefore He was unwelcome and found Himself in conflict with every one.
It is impossible we could like to find ourselves in the presence of God, just as we are. A man accustomed to dirt does not know he is dirty, because his whole way of living is fashioned to it; but if he finds himself in certain circumstances, which give him light as to himself, he will feel disgusted to see what his whole life has been. Such is the heart of man; but when the light of God shines in his conscience and in his soul, he sees himself such as he really is in the sight of God, although there be doubtless some defect in the perception of it. This is very humbling; one does not like it, for it is too painful. Once more I say, before God it is not a question of our religion but of ourselves.
Such is the necessary effect of the presence of God in the world. The light shews us in God all condescension, all goodness, all grace: and in man a selfishness which betrays itself before God. One sees that man cannot be saved through himself. A certain man says, "Suffer me first to go and bury my father." Is it not as good as saying, There is something else that holds the first place when Christ calls me? It is not my will to serve God entirely. "I have bought five yoke of oxen," says another; and a third, "I have married a wife." What does this mean? That the heart is fixed on quite another thing; that it prefers its oxen to the feast that God has prepared. Thus all is made manifest, and the heart is laid bare.
All disappears before the testimony of God. Man's self-righteousness and his pride lead him to hide from himself his own state, in order to take advantage of a religion which descends from his ancestors. But John the Baptist said (Matthew 3: 7-9), when he saw the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance; and think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." It is God who works as He pleases, and in His own power, to create children unto Himself. All your pretensions, as Jews, descendants of Abraham, God takes no account of. He works in that supreme power, in which He is able, even of stones, to raise up children unto Abraham; and that is the reason why He takes no account of your righteousness: He must first have sinners.
There is yet another thing to observe here. John says (Matthew 3: 11, 12), "He shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
Jesus is going to establish His kingdom, and that will soon come to pass. It is a kingdom in which that which is not according to His heart will be burnt with fire. Such was the testimony of John. "The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached." God had given the law to that people which He had gathered and ranged round Himself; He had sent prophets who, as witnesses for the moment, called upon the Jews to walk according to the law. John the Baptist came to announce to them quite another thing: The kingdom of heaven is at hand. God is about to establish a new order of things: are you in a state to enter it? Have you energy to penetrate there? Judgment is there also. He has His fan in His hand. Have you any fruit? If not, "the axe is laid unto the root of the trees." "Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father." Thus it was that John taught; such is the place he takes. As to Jerusalem, it is about to be set aside, and John preaches the testimony of repentance and of the kingdom about to be established; he presents himself in order to draw out every thought towards Jesus. After having announced the testimony of repentance, the Lord Jesus presents Himself to our hearts and souls. Let us rest -- rest our thoughts upon Him, who shews Himself to us personally.
The object of God is not only to cause sin to be felt, although that must take place, but to make Jesus known and to place the soul in the enjoyment of God Himself -- to act in grace towards it in order that it may forget itself and be filled with the thought of Jesus. This is the way God does it. He presents the Lord "as a root out of a dry ground." There is in Him no beauty for man, as there was in the temple; nay, nothing of that which attracts the flesh and might tempt it -- nothing of all that. It is on the contrary, a root that none "should desire." To the eyes of flesh there is absolutely nothing to render Him lovely. Who is it then? It is a poor man who goes preaching! He "hath not where to lay his head." He is a man condemned by every clerical authority, by all the wise men and all the Pharisees. The Sadducees condemn Him, the priests condemn Him. Thus was Jesus received. In Him is "no beauty that we should desire him." It was needful He should present Himself thus, that it might be shewn if the heart could discern God, and because He would not supply food to fleshly feeling. He must put the heart to the test, to prove whether God is enough for the heart, and whether the moral beauty that is in God -- His love, His holiness, His word that penetrates within the heart; whether, in a word, all that is infinitely precious in the divine nature -- can be discerned by man.
When He comes as the light, He never adapts Himself to that which He is going to destroy in the heart: man would do it, and he would call this religion; but it would only be to hide God, or to deny Him. Thus the Lord Jesus presents Himself without anything which could attract man, and that is what we find here. Of course every testimony of grace and goodness, necessary to our poor heart, is there; but nothing to meet its desires. The testimony given by Jesus was perfect and placed before the heart the grace it needed, to be rendered capable of tasting the grace of God itself.
Jesus has shewn Himself to our faith in all the grace of His divine Person; but He took His place among men as being nothing, save as the object of faith.
The angel appears to Joseph in a dream and says to him: "Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins," Matthew 1: 20, 21.
It was as Oshea that God caused Joshua to be called, which means Saviour, for God had charged him to bring Israel into the land of Canaan. It is God Himself, it is Jehovah, who comes as Saviour. It is the first thing that is presented to us: "Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." What a great and precious truth -- "God with us!" Then God, so to speak, begins over again with man.
As soon as Jesus appears, Satan seeks to destroy Him. It is astonishing to see how forgetful man is. The magi who came from the East had owned Jesus as King of the Jews born in Bethlehem; they had borne a testimony to Emmanuel, to the Son of David. The shepherds, after having worshipped, had spread abroad what the angels had told them; and in spite of that, Jesus, although approved of God, was disowned and rejected by men.
God begins over again the whole history of Israel in the Person of Jesus. He must call His Son out of Egypt, where He had sent Him, because men wanted to slay Him the moment He had come into this world. Israel was really lost, and God must begin over again all their history in the Person of Jesus. Herod seeks the young child to destroy Him. Thus we find that opposition shews itself against Jesus, even from His cradle.
Satan has carnal motives enough to persuade souls to do away with God. His great work is to supply us with motives powerful enough to lead us to do without God, and to shut Him out of our hearts. Here we find the way he begins. He stirs up Herod against Jesus. Then Joseph takes the young child and departs into Egypt. After that he returns into the land of Israel and dwells in Nazareth, for it was written, "He shall be called a Nazarene." This is in fact where Jesus begins in the midst of the world. And who is it who dwells there in Nazareth? It is Jehovah, the Saviour; it is "Emmanuel." And what is that city? It is so bad a place, that to be found there is enough to make men say, Ah! I will have none of it. Nathanael said to Philip, "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? "
It is God whom I first see in the Person of Jesus; but God in the circumstances which the flesh repels, because it is wicked. To know God the flesh must be entirely mortified, and grace in our hearts must lead us to value the love of God in spite of the flesh. This is the history of Christian life.
Outwardly Jesus was only a poor Nazarene; but perfection was in His ways and in His heart, and it manifested itself in the midst of every difficulty, of all contempt, and all that was false. Faith alone could discern the ways of Jesus through want and every misery. The broken heart saw this perfection of goodness manifesting itself in the midst of every care. It is necessary our hearts should see also, in that despised man, God Himself, who reveals Himself to our souls and takes His place in our midst.
Then Jesus comes to John to be baptised. John forbad Him, because he owned the dignity of His Person. "I have need to be baptised of thee; and comest thou to me?" Jesus then "said unto him, Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." Whom do I find here? It is the Lord Jesus and His Person owned; but, in spite of that, His will is to take His place with the least of the saints. "Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." Who are they, these we? It is John and Himself. Where does He place Himself? He places Himself there, in connection with the first movement of His Spirit in the heart. I place Myself with those who repent, said Jesus. There are some who come to be baptised; I also, I come to be baptised. As soon as there is a movement of repentance in the heart of the sinner -- a response to the testimony rendered by the word -- Jesus takes His place there with that heart. It is not only that He manifests as an object that which, by faith, becomes the crucifying of the flesh, but He goes with the heart also, and the poor heart sees all that; and what a consolation for us! The one in whom the fulness of the Father was manifested is there, and it is the Son Himself. If a soul is broken down -- well! Jesus is with it. If it is in fear, because already "the axe is laid unto the root of the trees," He is there to encourage it and to shew unto it His grace. He takes His place with His people, and thus we see the perfect goodness of God. It was He Himself who produced this movement of repentance in that heart, and He takes His place with that soul; Jesus is there. If He is to us the most high God, the One who manifests all this light, He is there also as man, meeting the least of our feelings. He is with us, believers, in all our misery and in all our circumstances.
The consequence of the baptism of Jesus is that the heavens are opened unto Him. It is not only the God incarnate, but heaven is opened over Him; He has the full approbation of God, and thereby we see all the extent of that grace presented to sinners. Never was heaven opened before. God had sent messengers, but never had there been on earth a man upon whom heaven opened.
When Jesus has accomplished the work of atonement, He places us in the same position as Himself. "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God." Heaven is open. There is no longer any veil on our heart.
As man, Jesus was perfectly righteous, and although He placed Himself in the position of those poor sinners who drew nigh to God, He was none the less acceptable to God; and indeed never was Jesus so acceptable to God, as when He bare our sins on the tree. It was at the moment of His death that He perfectly glorified God in all that He was as man, and that He also at the same time bore testimony to the perfect and infinite love of God towards sinners.
Heaven is opened on Jesus -- well! it is also entirely opened on us. No sin can be tolerated before God; all that is not of Christ, on whom heaven could be opened, God beholds, and He cannot tolerate sin. But there is no longer a veil as to us: we look on His glory in Jesus with unveiled face; and the glory of God shines on man as he is in Jesus, just as it shone on Jesus Himself. All that is not Christ is condemned. All that is reprobate is manifested by Himself.
There is another consequence of the acceptance of Jesus; it is the Spirit of God, who descended upon Him like a dove, and the voice from heaven, which made itself heard, "saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
Such is the position Jesus takes. He manifests His grace in testimony to man when he is in his sins. He adapts Himself to the circumstances of the sinner in his lowest state; He identifies Himself with him in the first step he takes under grace, but at the same time we see as to Himself that there is a voice "saying, This is my beloved Son." This is the perfect Man in the presence of God -- the friend of poor sinners, and the expression of all that God loves to see in man in the midst of the world.
But further (Matthew 4), if we are the children of God, His beloved children, as we believe, loved as Jesus is loved (as He said Himself: "That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them"), we are through grace in the same position as Himself in the sight of God. But it is needful that this perfectly beloved Person should be tested, and we, not merely to know if we are children of God, nor as sinners; as such, we have already been tested, and we know we are lost. It is needful that grace should work; and when it is a question of grace, it is always the perfect grace of God toward sinners. All that is good must be on God's side, for in man there is nothing. The light manifests that in God there is nothing but that which is good, and in us no good thing. This love of God, in us, produces a new life. We are in the position of children of God, like Jesus; but then, the Spirit of God being in us, we must be put to the test. There are many things which hinder us from enjoying the love of God. There is selfishness, self-love, levity: therefore we must be put to the test, as Jesus Himself was. Paul says, "We glory in tribulations also ... and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts."
Thus we are conscious of being children of God, being looked upon by Him as Jesus Himself. Then all is begun; but all is not finished. As to acceptance indeed all is finished. The child that God may have just given me is truly my child, though its education be not gone through; but it is as much my child, though just born, as when he will be twenty.
Jesus, owned of God, takes His place according to our weakness, and He is "led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." What Satan always seeks is to make us forget our position as children. In ourselves we are slaves of the devil; but we have been set free by God. Satan wanted man to abandon his first estate which he had in Eden; and he succeeded. There were "angels which kept not their first estate," neither did Adam keep his. Whatever the position in which man was placed, he always failed. Nadab, Abihu, Solomon, were not able to keep the estate in which they had been placed. Satan always seeks to make us fall. Hence, although God brings into blessing, He brings us also into trial; yet we know that "He who hath begun the good work will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." If Jesus leads His sheep out, "he goeth before them." Satan rises up to make us fall if he can; but man must in this world undergo the temptations of the devil. Well, Christ also underwent them, and in that position He acted as we ought to do ourselves. He does not at first say to Satan, "Get thee hence "; but He places Himself in the same position as ourselves, and He fasts forty days and forty nights. But He is there with Him who said to Him, "This is my beloved Son." He was conscious of being the Son of God; yet, as man, Satan begins to tempt Him. Do something, he says, inconsistent with your position, something that is not obedience, to please yourself, to satisfy your own will. "If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." But Jesus answers him, "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
If Jesus had obeyed Satan as the first Adam did, He would have fallen; but He could not. Grace places Him in all the difficulties in which we may be found ourselves. What is precious for us (it matters little in what circumstances) is that in Jesus we find not only life but also the maintenance of that life.
I have life, because God gave it to me; but in a practical sense, if I do not eat I cannot live; John 6. There is not in our souls one single spiritual quality but what comes from God. And, besides, see how Jesus acts practically. There is not a single word in the book of God which cannot feed our souls; and therefore it is important for us to know how to handle that word by the power of the Holy Ghost, in order to be enabled to keep Satan at a distance.
"Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." Satan quotes to Him a promise, but Christ will not abandon the position of obedience, and He answers him, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." We have here a principle of the utmost importance. We have indeed the whole word of God, as a means to gain the victory over Satan; but it is in the most simple obedience that we find strength. If Christ has not a word from God, He does nothing. He came to do the will of His Father; and if that which He is asked to do is not according to that will, He does not act.
The true affection of Martha and Mary leads them to beg of Jesus to come, saying to Him, "He whom thou lovest is sick." This appeal was very touching; but the Lord does not respond to it immediately: He had received nothing from God, and He does not go. He does not listen to His natural affections. He had indeed healed others that were sick; but if He had healed Lazarus, Martha and Mary would have learnt nothing more. Jesus then suffers Lazarus to die, and allows their heart to feel all the bitterness of death, that they may learn that the resurrection and the life are there.
Such is the obedience which is the principle of the life, and not the rule only; and, as a Christian, I ought to do nothing but what God wants me to do.
But besides I find here another important principle, which is, that I should have in God such perfect confidence that I never need to make a trial of it. It is tempting God not to have the certainty that He loves us. I ought so to reckon on His love and faithfulness as not to need even to think of it.
Again, Satan says to Jesus, "Cast thyself down." Ah! I need not do it, thought Jesus; I know full well that God will keep Me. The Jews said, "Is Jehovah amongst us, or not?" Well, in that they tempted Jehovah. We ought to have such assurance in God as to be able to think of nothing else but His will.
As soon as the devil said to Jesus "and worship me," then it is plainly Satan, and the Lord answers, "Get thee hence ... . Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."
The two great principles in which Jesus walked are obedience to the word without having any will, and perfect confidence in God. We also can reckon upon God, because we are sure to have Him for us.
I would also call your attention to the way in which Jesus placed Himself in our position. We see Him taking His place with sinners who needed repentance, but in the act which was the beginning of the divine life in them, associating Himself with them in that baptism where their heart responded to the testimony of God about their sins. They were truly the excellent of the earth, those poor publicans and sinners.
Jesus is found in the position of the obedient Son, and thus fulfilling all righteousness. Heaven opens. Is the temptation there? Jesus is found there also. He is everywhere in order to sympathise with sinners. When He presents Himself in this world, it is God Himself who comes, and He shews in Him all that He would put in us. It is a God who has placed Himself in such a position that flesh finds nothing there. One must absolutely learn that it is the heart which must value God in His love, in His holiness, and in the midst of a world entirely lying in the wicked one.
How blessed to have Jesus! He puts Himself in our place; and we have to do with a God who has manifested Himself in the midst of the world, and who would have us for Himself, but without sin. Having put away our sins, He draws us to Himself, but without sin, to bring us to enjoy what He is, in spite of every obstacle, and of all that is in the flesh. He would have us to enjoy perfectly that God whom, by His grace, we have known as He is.
May God grant unto us to value the perfect beauty of that Jesus who came to us! We know Him. Ah! how happy are we to be enabled to say, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded he is able to keep that which I have committed to him! "
May God shew us all the perfection of Jesus, and that even in temptations; for we shall find the beauty of One who will not forsake us up to the time He will have placed us in the same glory with Him!
Matthew 11: 25 -- 30
The Lord, though deeply and thoroughly sensible of Israel's rejection of Him, bows completely to the will and wisdom of God in it. (See Isaiah 49.) "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." In this His blest supremacy was fully shewn. "Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight." The knowledge of God makes all necessarily good to us, for it comes from Him. It may be very contrary to our nature. To Jesus men's rejection of His message was of course painful. It threw Him on the sovereignty of God His Father whom He knew, in the fact that His Father had hid these things from the sages of the world, and revealed them to the despised and weak. He acknowledged the Father in the thing done, and in its suitableness to the whole order of God's dealings in such a world. That of course was all that the Son of God, or we taught of the Spirit, could desire, but it was in circumstances which required perfect submission of heart and will.
But this perfect submission of the Son gave rest, and brought His Person out to light. If He was thrown entirely on the Father, it was because He was Son, and because of His entire rejection in that character, in which, while perfect and shewing who He was, He had not taken His glory, and would have taken but the earthly dominion. The secret was that this was but "a light thing." All things were delivered to Him of His Father, and by reason of the very glory of His Person, being Son of God, no man knew the Son but the Father His service now was to reveal the Father in the prerogative of grace. For none knew the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. "Come unto me," says this only patient witness of love -- "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." Here I am, the rejected One, to whom in sure title all things are delivered of my Father; but One whose heart has bowed in all long-suffering of love, who has learnt submission, who has felt what it is to be pained and scorned and outwardly to find no refuge but submission. Come to Me. Men may have rejected Me, but I am the Son, and none knows the Father but as I reveal Him. Whosoever is burdened and passes not on with this haughty world, whosoever labours and is heavy-laden, here I exercise My love. "Come to me, and I will give you rest." I have learnt how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. (Compare Isaiah 50 and the end of Romans 8, with its full extent of blessing to us.)
It was the Lord's submission under such circumstances which brought the sense to His soul, and the revelation to others, of a much better portion than that of Messiah according to the law and the prophets. In regard to this, so to speak, He was rejected, and blessed be God for it! He had manifested patient gracious love to the nation, but they repented not even where His mighty works were done. The dispensation, although Messiah came in Person, ended in failure. "Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and in vain." He had stretched out His hands to a rebellious and gainsaying people. When He came, there was no man. For His love He had hatred. Reproach broke His heart. His hopes for the people, the title that He had, the title of His own love, were cast aside. Still there were babes who saw what was hidden from the great. "So it seemed good in thy sight," was the hinge of the Lord's comfort. This was enough. But what follows on this rejection? "All things are delivered unto me of my Father"; a wider, fuller, and more real glory. Yet, high as He is, He bids all come and declares He will give them rest -- the rest of the revealed Father's love.
There is none else to come to. All have proved faithless. Come to Me! Who could say this but the Son of God? Who could give rest to all that come but the Son, Jehovah Himself? But One will give rest freely and bountifully, the meek and lowly Son of God. He gives rest supreme, as one who knew what peace was in trouble as none ever did. He speaks the secret of it to others. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." It is not now "I will give." That He could do as Jehovah and God the Lord; that He would do. But the word here is, "ye shall find." I have learnt the way. ("Lo! I come to do thy will, O God.") It is found in the path which Jesus has trodden. He alone trod it, or could tread it, perfectly in this world.
And yet it is not violent or laborious. In one sense it is easy, as the Lord says. Submit! Say, "Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight." Such is His yoke, and thus we learn of Him, who ascribed all to the Father, not to the circumstances. Hence He gave thanks to the Father always for all things, as we may and ought to do in His name. "It seemed good in thy sight." That was enough. It was perfect submission, and the Father beamed out in it. Its value hangs on the perfect knowledge of sonship. The whole is most blessed, and to be learnt only in Christ. The infiniteness of the Son's divinity was kept up, in His humanity, and therefore apparent humiliation and present inferiority, by His absolute inscrutability therein thus specially and signally maintained; while His oneness with the Father was made known in His competency to reveal, and supremacy of will in revealing, the Father. Both hold their place most beautifully, maintaining the Person in the glory of communion with the Father, and the inscrutability of God thus manifested while the Father was revealed.
How wise, perfect, singularly divine, is Scripture! There is nothing at all like it. No wit of man could have framed such a sentence as that.
Matthew 26
I feel some difficulty in speaking of the subject before us here, not as to the doctrine itself but simply for the excellency of it; for where Christ is presented in His own perfectness all our thoughts are so inadequate. The excellency of the Lord so surpasses all our thoughts. He is sufficient to be the Father's delight: surely He ought to be ours. But it is of importance that our hearts should be occupied with Him, and this in His low estate. He is at the right hand of God now: we should look at Him in glory that we may be changed into the same image; but when we look to be the same mind as Christ, we must look at Him down here. Thus in Philippians 2, "let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus" -- when was that? When He who being in the. form of God in all the glory up there thought it not robbery to be equal with God, made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men; then when He was a man, found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. There are the two steps as it were as He is descending: first, when being in the form of God He came down to be a man; and then when He who so humbled Himself became obedient unto the death of the cross.
This is the way in which He came from the actual glory of God -- came down: nothing stopped Him even then. But here He is before men. Putting away sin He was alone with God. It was all darkness: man had done his worst, and Satan. It was what the twenty-second Psalm brings before us when He speaks of the bulls of Bashan (verse 11-18). "But be not thou far from me" -- it was an appeal to God in what I may call human trials; He was cast into that -- all this wickedness; His rejection in His perfectness cast Him upon God; and then to find He was forsaken of God! There we get the efficacy of the sacrifice in putting away sin. But it is the traits of Christ's character in the path I desire to speak of.
If we come to the cross, we must come by our wants and sins; no one comes truly, unless he comes as a sinner whose sins brought him there. But when we pass through the rent veil into the presence of God in perfect peace through the efficacy of the work He accomplished, and look back at the cross by which we came, in contemplating it in a divine way we find that the cross then has in it a glory and excellency all its own, of which everything in God's ways is the result -- even the new heavens and the new earth. God was perfectly glorified in it. It was the climax of good and evil: all was met there. We must come to the cross as sinners to find the good of it; but if we have found peace by it, coming into God's presence reconciled, it is everything we shall see for ever. We never shall forget the Lamb that was slain. But still we can contemplate it in a divine way.
I get in the cross the perfectness of man's sin, positive enmity against God present in goodness. Nothing would do for man but to get rid of Him -- "Him ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." "If I had not come and done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin," then they would have been justified in rejecting Him, "but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father." There I get the extreme of man's wickedness: when God was presented in goodness, it only drew out his hatred. The power was present in Christ to meet all the effects of sin by His word: the manifestation of it drew out the enmity of man's heart against Him, and they crucified Him. There you get all that man is brought out in the presence of God. He had broken the law before; and now God had come in in perfect goodness and power (power that could remove all their distresses), but it was God's power; and they would not have it, they crucified Him. On the other hand we see there all the power of Satan: therefore it says, "Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out": they were all led by him against Christ: "this is your hour and the power of darkness." He had overcome him in the temptation in the wilderness; it is said in Luke he departed from Him for a season. Now He says, "The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me": he who had power over the earth (for Satan was really the prince of this world) had come back and succeeded in moving up the hatred of man's heart against Him.
But now see the absolute perfectness of the second Man -- "But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, so I do." I get in man (more than man) perfect love to the Father and perfect obedience, and when He had the dreadful cup to drink (mark the absolute need there was of it!) that perfect obedience and love to the Father made good in the very place where He stood as sin. On the other hand in the cross I find God's infinite love and grace abounding over sin: perfect love, giving His Son for us; and then at the same time perfect righteousness judging against sin, and God's majesty vindicated. "It became him for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." I see thus perfect evil in man and Satan, perfect good in man (but He was God), and perfect love in God, and righteousness in God against sin when it was met as such, all brought out in the cross; evil and good meeting there. And it is what has laid the immutable foundation in righteousness for all that will come in in goodness and blessing in the new heavens and new earth, resting not upon responsibility but upon the accomplishment of the work the value of which never can be known.
The more we think of the cross (we have come as sinners needing it, but as Christians, reconciled to God, we can sit down and contemplate it), we see it stands totally alone in the history of eternity. Divine glory, man's sin, Man's perfectness, Satan's evil, God's power and love and righteousness, all were brought out and met there. Accordingly it is the immutable foundation of man's blessing, and of everything that is good in heaven and earth. Then, when our souls are reconciled, we look at Him and learn of Him: "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest." He sees that the world had given Him up: there was no rest upon earth. He searched with wonderful patience for a place of rest, but there was no such thing to be found. He knew it, and had tried it; the Son of man had not where to lay (not merely outwardly) His head, but to rest His heart; no more than Noah's dove found rest for the sole of her feet. "I looked for some man to take compassion, but there was none." Yet feeling this, it is just there He says, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest: take my yoke," etc., "and ye shall find rest unto your souls."
I desire then that, while we rest in the blessed efficacy of the sacrifice, our thoughts should be formed by the blessed One -- that is the practical secret of going through this world; "He that eateth me shall live by me." No doubt the taste ought to grow continually in us. There are the two sides of Christian life; if it is to give courage, victory over the world, I look at His glory as in Philippians 3. There it is the energy that runs after to win Christ at the end, counting all else dross and dung. In the second chapter it is the other side, not the object, but His lowliness in coming down is set before us.
In Matthew He is specially the victim. All through in a wonderful way you get His entire submission, but along with that, what is most striking, the depths of His path of suffering, Thinking of the cup He says, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." In Luke we read of His sweating as it were great drops of blood; it is as a man there. But you find this extreme sense of what the terribleness of God's wrath was. In the measure in which He knew what it was to be holy, He felt what it was to be made sin before God. In the measure in which He knew the love of God, He felt what it was to be forsaken of God. His suffering was in that sense perfect, infinite, in that He was contemplating it with His Father. Looking at it with Him, He says, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." You find His soul going through this utter depth, so that He sweat as it were great drops of blood; but when He comes back to His disciples, there is not a trace of it. He speaks to them as graciously and tenderly, entering into their thoughts as if there was no cup at all to drink. "What! could ye not watch with me one hour?" It is wonderful to trace this, you will find it all through Christ's life, perfect sensibility to all that was around Him (except in the extreme case when He was forsaken of God), but always Himself -- never governed by it though He felt it all perfectly. The instant He turns round to the disciples, He has nothing to do but manifest the greatest tenderness and kindness. You see it all through; even before Pontius Pilate He says nothing, He is as a lamb led to the slaughter; as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth; He was dumb unless kindness and good was to be done to another: then He is as if nothing was happening, perfect goodness, perfect sensibility to all. It is His perfect submission, His perfect sense of the dreadful thing He was just about to go through we see; yet, because He felt it entirely with His Father, He could turn round and be just as perfect as to it with His disciples.
Now they come to take Him. He looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters but found none. He is God over all, yet still and thoroughly a man. Yet, as another has said, He never asked them to pray for Him; but says, "Tarry ye here and watch with me." To me it is most precious to find thus, that He who was with God and was God made flesh, felt as a man in everything. When asking His disciples to watch with Him, He knew the world was against Him: He looked to those that He had been most with, that they should be with Him. But He must have nothing. He was tested and tried to the last degree of human suffering and sorrow, standing alone in this, praying in an agony and alone. Where were the people that were going to prison and death with Him? They were asleep, deceived; asleep in the presence of the glory of the kingdom on the mount, asleep in the garden! That shews what poor things we are -- not sin exactly; but it shews what Christ was to have as His portion in this world; none to sympathise with Him. Mary of Bethany was the only one, but for the rest never one had sympathy with Him; never one that wanted it that He had not sympathy with. Moved by Judas they say, "To what purpose is this waste?" What kind of hearts had they? It is just there God gives testimony to Him. In John (chapter 11) you have testimony borne to Him as Son of God in raising Lazarus. God would not allow Him to be rejected unless there was this testimony. Then Mary puts this ointment upon Him; and when all were against Him, the Greeks come up desiring to see Him; and the hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." There is that care in which God secures a testimony to Him; but I do not think you will ever find another instance of sympathy with the Lord's heart. How would you like that? It is dreadful! It was a dreadful world to Him. He was perfect and went through it. Here at the very moment that He asked them to watch with Him, they are asleep.
Then He goes all alone with His Father, going through it in spirit with Him. Now, that the answer to that cup might be fully drawn out, He cries, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not as I will but as thou wilt." It was not possible. "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." Now having been in this agony He comes back to His disciples and says to them in the gentlest way, "What! could ye not watch with me one hour?" What gentleness of grace -- "watch and pray lest ye enter into temptation." Now He is thinking only of them. Where is the cup? He had gone through it all with the Father, and therefore His heart is ready in service; even at that very moment He is ready for any service. If we in our little measure carried all our exercises, our little troubles, to God, to go fully through all with Him, our hearts would be all free and happy to turn round and care for others.
The depth of His misery He went through perfectly in His spirit with God; it was fully out with God: and for that reason being thus fully out, He could turn with perfect peace to say to others, "Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation." It is the only place you get His sense of where He was -- His saying, "Watch and pray." Everything that meets us is either a temptation or an occasion of obedience. It was to Him an occasion of perfect obedience: "The cup which my Father hath given me shall I not drink it?" Everything you meet with is a case in which you serve Christ or do your own will, and this is entering into temptation. See how He speaks in grace to Peter: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Oh I know you love Me; your hearts are all right, but it is this poor weakness. What perfect grace! Counting on their hearts in one sense when the temptation was coming; and when they had totally failed, He thought of the danger to them and says as to it, "Watch and pray ... the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak"; when the instant before His sweat was as it were great drops of blood. What perfect submission! What lowliness of heart! And therefore what perfection of service, of love to God and to others! Just what we should do. "He went away again the second time and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me except I drink it, thy will be done. And he came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. And he left them and went away again, and prayed the third time saying the same words. Then cometh he to his disciples and saith unto them, Sleep on now and take your rest, behold the hour is at hand." You have no need to watch now; the time for it is over.
All through this is the character of Christ -- He had gone through it with His Father. On the cross it is -- as in all the rest -- entire complete submission. He is a victim here, led as a lamb to the slaughter. Even with Judas -- "he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss that same is he: hold him fast." It is terrible to think of Judas urging them to hold Him fast! In Judas you get lust of money; you see a progress of sin. He was a thief and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. Then Satan tempts him to betray Him, I do not doubt with the idea that He would get free. Then after supper Satan enters into him, and he was hardened against all natural feeling, for many a bad man would not betray his friend by a kiss. "And forthwith he came to Jesus and said, Hail, Master, and kissed him. And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they and laid hands on Jesus and took him."
Then we get simple submission on the part of Jesus, meek and lowly in heart. He might have had more than twelve legions of angels; "but how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must he?" Mark what is most striking here: at this last wonderful moment when He was going to drink that cup of wrath, when the Word, the blessed Son of God as a man, was going into that which none of us can fathom, that there is nothing like in heaven or earth -- to endure that which was due to sin -- the Scriptures, the word that God had spoken, must be fulfilled. What a testimony of their being the expression of divine thoughts -- of His Father's mind, even to the Lord Himself! And so they ought to be to us. When Satan came, he gets a text -- "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." When Satan comes again, "It is written." Now at this last moment the Scriptures must be fulfilled. Scripture to Him sufficed as the expression of God's mind. He was in perfect infinite communion with the Father. Look at the gentle patience with which He speaks to the multitudes -- "I sat daily with you teaching in the temple and ye laid no hold on me."
In John we look at the divine side of it, "No man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come." The time was come, "All this was done that the scriptures might be fulfilled." What a scene of obedience, of perfect submission to God's mind! The moment it comes to this point, "all the disciples forsook him and fled." He was to have no comforter. When He is brought to the chief priest, He answers nothing until the high priest adjures Him. If a soul sin and hear the voice of swearing, etc., is a witness whether he hath seen or known of it, if he do not utter it, then he shall bear his iniquity. So He utters it then: "Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, From henceforth shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven." On His own testimony they condemn Him. He was the truth, and was put to death for being the truth. It was the same way before Pilate, who asks, "Art thou a king?" Jesus answers, "Thou hast said." We have seen the perfectness of Christ with His Father in all the depths of that which He had to suffer; also His way -- the same blessed way -- before men. "It was not an enemy that reproached me, then I could have borne it; neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me, then I would have hid myself from him." In every circumstance He went through all that was most absolutely painful to man's heart, and at the same time was there the expression of divine goodness.
I will now just look at the same scenes as they are presented in John and Luke. In John it is the other side of these truths; it is all through the divine side. When they come out to meet Him, He asks, "Whom seek ye?" and they went backward and fell to the ground. Looking at it as a Man, He had only to walk away. It is the divine side of power, while we see His absolute submission as man: "therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down and power to take it again." He says the second time, "Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he; if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way." He puts Himself freely forward, the divine Person giving Himself, and lets the disciples escape. There is no attachment to Himself manifest on their part; but He fills the gap, and they are safe. It is the same on the cross: there is no cry of "my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" there; it is His divine perfectness above it all. "After this [having committed His mother to the disciple] Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst." Then He said, "It is finished, and he bowed his head and gave up the ghost." When all that the Spirit of God had said would come was fulfilled and finished, He gave up His own spirit to His Father -- it is the divine side of it all you see in John.
In Matthew we get the victim; He is the lamb going to the slaughter. But I must say a word on Luke.
In Luke we get the perfect blessedness of the Lord and His sufferings in Gethsemane more fully than anywhere else, but on the cross not one expression of sorrow; He is fulfilling Scripture. Just as in John we have seen the divine side, here I find Him still more distinctly brought out as a Man. "Being in an agony," in deep affliction of soul, He is cast as man on His Father -- "he prayed more earnestly." So great was His confidence, perfect in His agony. It is there we find "his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground," and an angel from heaven strengthening Him. So also in Luke you get Christ praying much more often than in the other Gospels, because the object is to present Him to us as Son of man. On the cross you do not get one expression of sorrow -- He had gone through it perfectly (I speak of the cup). "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" is not in Luke. The sorrow was there, it is true, but it is not that side. We get then the perfectness of Jesus who had gone through it all with His Father in the garden. And so entirely is He above it that at the close occur the words, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said this he expired." We have the blessed Lord thus presented in these various characters.
John gives a divine Person: "as soon as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward and fell to the ground"; He could have gone away, but it was not for that He had come: "If ye seek me, let these go their way." You see divine power and the divine perfectness of love, not exercising the power, but putting Himself forward to stand in the gap that they might escape. And on the cross He gives up His own spirit. In Luke I find His own sorrow and suffering as man in Gethsemane, more than in the other Gospels: and on the cross above all the circumstances He commends His spirit to the Father. In Matthew He is the sheep going to the slaughter.
The more we look to follow the blessed Lord in His path here, the more our hearts are bound in right affections to Him. He stood alone, ever as a man down here perfectly alone; and there is nothing more trying. "All ye shall be offended because of me this night." Again He says, "Behold the hour cometh, yea is now come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own and shall leave me alone, and yet I am not alone because the Father is with me" -- nobody else! He looked for compassion, and got none; for some to watch with Him, and they fell asleep: to stand by Him, and they all forsook Him and fled. He is betrayed with a kiss. He felt it all: it was not an enemy, but thou, a man, my companion; "yea mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted which did eat of my bread has lifted up his heel against me." Follow Him all through: it puts down the pride of the heart; it sets us men very low, but it sets Him as man in a wonderful perfectness; not man in the glory, but a man going through everything that could test the heart in the purest possible way; a man tested in every possible way, bowing His head as a victim, feeling it so that His sweat was as it were great drops of blood, going through it all as man so that our hearts might follow Him -- going through every depth, and we poor creatures only standing by to look at Him. It is well if we are not asleep too! That is where it draws out the affections. It sifts the will. The will and affections never go together; will is self, affections rest necessarily in another. He is the perfect object -- "therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life that I might take it again." To see Him in the meekness of His path giving Himself for us, never turning Himself aside, perfect in going through all, just as quiet with Him as if nothing had happened. He suffered it so with God. We want our hearts to get right; we want our wills to be broken down; if we go and look at Christ as thus presented to us in Gethsemane, can we seek to satisfy the will now?
Thus I get what is outside myself as an object that sets my affections perfectly right, and that does not leave a possibility of my will working. Looking at One that is beyond me, I find One that does not leave the possibility of the working of my will, but that draws out the energy of the affections of my heart and sets my will aside. He could say, "Therefore doth my Father love me ": so blessed was it, so perfect was He in it, that it gave a cause to God to love Him. Only divine perfectness could give a cause for divine love. The heart knowing that He is now in glory gets filled. "I am the bread that came down from heaven," that we might abide in Him. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." We are to be like Him in this character -- He humbled Himself, He went always down till God took Him up. Are we content to follow Him? Looking at Him and seeing His perfectness, are we content to have all our affections filled with Christ, and no will at all? We are going to be with Him for ever; and we can enjoy what He is in heaven, in which His perfect blessedness is before our hearts and has been tested by us. How far have our hearts tasted of that bread, and how far are we kept, our wills subdued and occupied with Christ? It is what God the Father delights in. There is the efficacy of His work as the foundation; but how far is Christ Himself the object of our souls' delight, dwelling on Him so that they are kept awake? There is nothing that forms the heart, breaking down the will in us, like the delight that we have in Christ in fellowship with the Father.
The Lord give us while resting in His precious blood to go and contemplate Him, feed upon Him and live by Him: "He that eateth me, even he shall live by me." See Him the lowly blessed patient One at God's right hand now, the One that God has given to keep our hearts right in the world of folly and pride. The Lord give us to live by Him.
Mark 7
It is said that the Lord is the truth, "I am the way, the truth, and the life"; and He does bring out everything in a remarkable way. He shews out what God is in Himself, and what man is; and God's grace has come with Him: "grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."
In this chapter we find truth first, truth as to man's condition; but there is also the grace of God's heart. It is a great thing to have the two together. If truth had come without grace, we could not have borne it a moment. Man is a sinner utterly unfit for heaven; but it is immense comfort that grace and truth have come together. God's two essential names are Love and Light. If we had not love with light, it would have condemned us; but we have perfect light in presence of perfect love. Our comfort is that light does come and reveal everything. Being in God's very nature, we cannot separate the two things, light and love. Just the same things appear in the details of the Christian's life.
In many instances in Scripture we see how light penetrates: but there is an attractive power along with it. There is never real working in man's soul without attractive power. The Christian stands "accepted in the beloved"; but the light of God comes in on all his ways. Take the prodigal: the light shines in and shews that he is a lost sinner, but there is attractive power too. "I will arise and go to my father." Take the woman that was a sinner. There was a sense of sinfulness because light comes in; but the measure in which light shone into her soul cannot be separated from the love that came with it. Take Peter, falling at Jesus' knees, and saying at the same time, "Depart from me." Wherever the blessed God reveals Himself to our souls, nothing is left in the dark. If anything is not completely revealed it may come out in the day of judgment; but all is revealed. We have a perfect revelation of God as light and as love; and both are working in the soul.
If you have an idea of God's love without the conscience being reached, it may pass away as the morning dew. It is a blessed thing that we are brought to God, and that everything is fully out. The blessed Lord bore our sin; there was full light and full love at the cross. There are two parts in the gospel; one is the revelation of God; the other is the work done by the Lord standing as Man for us on the cross. First we find the revelation of God Himself, then the work of the Lord.
In the chapter I have read it is rather the character of the Lord as thus revealing God than the work which He has done. Here you see first, religious, very religious, man; the authority of the elders, the cleansing of the outside. It is much easier to wash one's hands than to wash one's heart. Man hides the state of his heart by all these outward things. The Lord comes in, searching and judging all the religion of man. Where the heart has not been purified, where the soul is not right with God, religion only hardens. Cain was just the expression of this; he was just as religious as Abel, and his religion cost him more than Abel's.
"Ought" is not the question now; there is another: what we have done and what we are. The question is not whether the law is right, but whether I am right. Abel recognised that he was wrong, a sinner out of paradise and without hope, unless God would save the lost. Cain's offering was nothing but perfect hardness of heart. If the light of God shines into my soul and finds nothing but sin and impurity, my conviction is that I cannot go to God in myself, unless He has found and given a blessed way. The real question for people's souls is, not what they ought to do, but what they have done and what they are. Think of the audacity of people coming to God as they are! Man is doing all he can; his thought is trying a way to satisfy God and purify himself outwardly -- he feels he cannot inwardly. Here it is not professed religiousness, but the heart of man detected. The Lord goes right through this veil that is over the heart of man to the heart itself, and He tells what proceeds from it. What about the good? He says nothing of it whatever. In us dwells "no good thing." Man is a judged creature. He will set up man in a thousand ways; but God has judged him. There are the natural faculties of man -- all true; but what has that to do with the soul? "When his breath goeth forth, all his thoughts perish."
When God was not dealing in a special way with man, he became so bad that God had to bring in the flood. Then, when He did deal in a special way, the golden calf was made as soon as the law was given. Last of all He sent His Son. We are now living in a world where man has rejected God in grace.
The first thing we read of man was that he departed from God; that was Adam. We see the same in Noah before, in Solomon after, as in the Israelites when they made the golden calf. When the priesthood was instituted, Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire. There was the patience of God going on saving souls all the time: I do not deny this. Man was lawless when he had no law; he broke the law when he got the law: he was God-hating when the Lord Jesus came into the world. It is better that the light should come in and shew me what I am.
God has since set out a meeting-place with man -- the one way, the altar of the tabernacle. This is God's one meeting-point with man. If you do not come as a sinner, you do not come in truth, you do not come for grace. Having ripped up the veil with which man tries to cover himself, the Lord shewed what the heart of man is -- a terrible picture, and terrible because true. He whose love spoke it, comes as light into the world. When light comes, I do not say, man is a sinner, but I am a sinner; "And we indeed justly." There is truth. So far we have it told, but grace had come to tell it. Then all dispensations are set aside, and God comes out as sovereign. There are two things in the gospel: God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and Christ made sin by God. Here it is God coming into a world of sinners.
People know there is a judgment coming, and they hope to get into some kind of preparation for that judgment. In contrast with this thought we have, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." Those who are Christians ought to judge everything by the judgment-seat of Christ. It is very fruitful to the Christian, but is not in itself Christianity. The grace of the gospel is the very opposite to judgment. God comes into a world of sinners not imputing their sins. The gospel is this blessed truth, that God is dealing with men above all their sins. He comes into this world to shew holiness itself -- a holiness that never could be contaminated, and to bear love into a world of sinners. The Syrophenician had no title to promises. Being of a doomed race, as to dispensation, she had only curses, the very opposite to promises. The Lord first deals with her on this ground: "It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs." He brings her to her true place as He always does. You may try and spare the soul, but it must be in truth before it learns grace. Would you all say, "Yes, Lord, but the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their master's table?" She had not a word to say for herself; but she had a word to say for God. The publicans and harlots justified Him, and He justified them. So it always is where He works in grace and truth. I believe there is overflowing goodness for the children; but there is something for the dogs too. Could Jesus say there was not? It was real knowledge of God and herself.
The heart must be brought to this, "I have no righteousness, I have no promises, but I have God come into the world to us as sinners, and because we are sinners." He never said "Come to me" till He had first come Himself. There was perfect light to convict, but the convicted sinner finds himself in the presence of perfect love. Have you ever said "Yes, Lord," owning that you had no righteousness and no promises; only that you trust the perfect love that brought Christ into the world? Then the thought of what God is towards you takes the place of what you are towards God. Here I am, just as I am, in the presence of perfect love -- love that cannot deny itself. The sinner finds he has a title in God's heart when he can find none in his own. The woman that was a sinner loved much because much was forgiven her. It was a broken heart that met the heart of God, and the heart of God met a broken heart. It is wonderful when the heart of man really meets the heart of God. The moment I am brought through grace into full distinct consciousness that there is no good in me, I find this; I find the perfect blessed love of God which has met me where I am in His presence.
At the cross you see sin meeting God, Christ being made sin for us, and the nature of God glorified -- far more than merely sin being put away. While the Lord puts away sin, He prepares the way to the accomplishment of all the counsels of God. At the cross I find man made sin in the presence of God -- a divine Person too, of course; and this not to screen but to sustain Him. There is love that has met me in my sins, and now there is righteousness in the presence of God, our Forerunner being there. The truth is there; but there is also the perfect love of God to put away sin. The heart is then free to trust the love unhinderedly.
Remember this, beloved friends: I am not my own at all now; I am in a new place altogether -- a place into which I have been brought in perfect love, in divine righteousness, in the presence of God Himself. We have power now -- the power of the Holy Ghost. The Christian is in this world to shew what Christ is. If you call yourselves Christians, you are the epistle of Christ: it is not merely said you ought to be, but you are. He sends you back to the world to witness what God is. You have responsibility as a Christian now, not as a man. All responsibility flows from the place we are in. If Christian responsibility is measured, as a child of God, nothing that does not suit the blood of Christ suits you. Is Christ the motive of everything you do, and this in things of every-day life? For you are not to be heroes and heroines. Is Christ all and in all? "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children." Walk as children of the Father.
Mark 14
There are two sides in the sufferings of the Lord Jesus; the sufferings which, during His career, He endured from men, and the sufferings which He knew when, taking the cup He had to drink, He bore the weight of the wrath of God.
The extent of man's iniquity appears in two ways; directly in all that man did in opposing and rejecting Jesus, but, above all, in the weight of sin the Lord Jesus had to bear when He drank the cup which the Father had given Him. For Him this was no light thing. He "began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; and saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death" (verse 33).
Among those who may read this, are there not several who have never been saddened because of their sins? Is there anything which more lays bare the folly and levity of the heart of man? We who by sin have made so bitter and awful the cup which Jesus drank, we may consider sin as trifling in the eyes of God! But it is He -- it is Jesus who found how horrible it was. If our hearts, miserable as they are, feel not sin, Christ felt it when He drank the cup for us and bore sin for us. If the heart does not understand the gravity of sin, not to the same point as Jesus knew it, but at least in some degree -- if, feeble as it may be, the feeling of the gravity of sin is a stranger to us -- we have not at all entered into the mind of Jesus.
It is very different to have the heart touched by these things, or merely to have the knowledge of them; for it is not of this knowledge that I would speak here. To have the knowledge of the gravity of sin, of what sin cost Jesus, and not to have the heart touched by it, is even worse than to know nothing about it whatever. The state of the heart is, in one of these cases, even worse than in the other.
We are going to see feebly, very feebly, what were the sufferings of Jesus.
No one alas! can fathom to the bottom what those sufferings were. Every day you have thoughts, you say and do things, you have the sins which caused Christ to drink the cup and undergo the wrath of God. And, in spite of that, you perhaps think that you have not been so wicked! If you have the thought that Christ suffered for your sins, you will find that Christ did not judge that these sins were not most grave. He was sore amazed and very heavy for them. In the garden of Gethsemane Christ prepared Himself for others to meet with His God, according to the holiness of His judgment. His soul was "exceeding sorrowful, even unto death," Matthew 26: 38.
You who think to prepare yourselves to meet your God, have you these sorrows and that sore amazement? However vague may be the thought you may have of them, if you would learn what they have been, consider how in Gethsemane Christ was heavy and sore amazed at sin! And if you have not done so, no more have you appreciated the love of Jesus, nor the work of Jesus in grace. What is important and needful is, that our consciences should be touched by the thought that Christ was there for us in suffering, that He might bear our sins. If my soul is not brought to own it, it is necessary that I should pass there myself, and suffer for myself the wrath and justice of God, such as Christ has undergone. If, when His Son, His beloved, who had no sin, was made sin for us, God had to smite sin in Him; if His justice and His holiness could not spare Jesus, think you to escape when you meet the face of God? And when I consider Christ suffering the wrath and curse, can I think that my sins are a trifle? The evil I had done was so serious in the eyes of God and in those of Jesus, that, when Jesus charged Himself with it, this evil made Him agonise, and caused to fall on Him the weight of God's wrath. Christ suffered on the cross the wrath of God, and why? Because you deserved this wrath and eternal condemnation?
Often, without knowing it, souls go to meet God with their sin upon them. Souls are often there without having the consciousness of it. Is it not true, for many among you, that you walk in this life to meet God, and to face His judgment, and that you fear nothing? And if it is thus, if you thus walk at ease in the face of this judgment, what is it to say this, except that the conscience is not awakened (nay, is even hardened) in spite of the agony of Jesus, in spite of the sufferings of Jesus, and in spite of which Jesus had to drink because of sin?
How beautiful it is to contemplate Jesus in the midst of this agony and of these sufferings! We see Him perfectly calm, and weighing with calmness the weight of the cup that He would drink. And in what circumstances? In the midst of all that which was calculated to break and bruise the affections of His heart. The more the world rejects and despises us, the more also have we need of affection. Jesus was full of goodness and of tenderness for His disciples. He had loved and borne with them. What happiness to Him? What does He find in their midst, when the iniquity of man is about to be let loose against Him? What He finds is, that in the midst of those He loved, of those with whom He was at table, and lived as with His friends and companions (verse 18), Jesus can say, "Verily, I say unto you, one of you which eateth with me shall betray me." Yes, one of you who have been with Me, one of you My familiar friends! His heart is wounded to the bottom. And as they began to be sorrowful, and to say unto Him one by one, Is it I? Jesus shews how His heart is broken. "It is one of the twelve that dippeth with me in the dish." One of you who have known me, who have seen me, and who were received into my intimacy. And Jesus was perfectly calm.
Verses 22-26. They went to crucify Him. Of whom does He think? Of His disciples. His body was going to be broken, and His blood shed. He was about to undergo the wrath of God, and He explains to them in peace the cost of what He is going to do for them. He transports Himself beyond those ages in which we live to the time when, satisfied with the travail of His soul (Isaiah 53: 11), He will drink anew in the kingdom of God the fruit of the vine (verse 25). How beautiful it is thus to see the Lord Jesus cast His glances through the ages! In the midst of the frightful circumstances in which He is found, His soul is calm enough to think of the everlasting happiness achieved for His disciples by His sufferings, and of the joy that He will experience in again seeing them in this state of glory. Without letting Himself be turned away by the thought of His sufferings, without agitation, without amazement, He contemplates in peace the value of His sacrifice, and the happiness of again finding His disciples at the end. The treason of Judas, the denial of Peter, the forsaking of the disciples, the rejection of the world, the enmity of Satan, nothing troubles Him. "They sung a hymn" (verse 26).
Verses 27, 28. "Jesus saith unto them, All ye shall be offended, because of me this night." To be ashamed of Him, miserable as we are! And yet how this puts in relief the unutterable love of Jesus! He tells His sheep, who are going to be scattered, that He will rejoin them shortly, and that, as soon as He shall have completed all this work which is to save His own -- to manifest alas! all the feebleness of the flesh in them, and all the perfection of obedience in Jesus, He will go before them into Galilee.
Verses 29, 30. Peter has the false confidence of the flesh. Does Jesus reproach him with it? What does Peter's presumption produce in the heart of Jesus? He warns Peter, and prays for him. His love stedfast, unchangeable, never slackens. His heart is not discouraged. It is He, He who was to bear all the pain, who encourages and consoles His disciples.
Verse 31. It may happen to others beside Peter to say, "If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise," for "likewise also said they all." Where Christ is honoured and owned, in the midst of His own, in the midst of such as confess His name, people may easily own Him, they may well have a Christ, though rejected of men: but in other society, in the midst of those who reject Him, how ready is the heart to conceal that it knows Him! And if you find it evil in Peter to have thus denied Him, is that less awful in you? And if when we are exposed to disgrace for His name, we do not love to confess it, do we not deny Him as much as Peter? And it is done because the conscience is not awakened and touched because Jesus suffered for sin. What I desire is, that the conscience should feel the weight of the sin which made Jesus suffer, and this sin is yours: it is that your heart should be touched by the feeling of the love of Jesus, by this power of love, in virtue of which Jesus has charged Himself before God with the weight and the responsibility of sin, and in virtue of which He has borne all this weight, when He was "wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities" Isaiah 53: 5.
Verses 32-39. Jesus tells His disciples to pray (verse 38). It is no more for Him the time of consoling His own. He must meet for them the wrath of God. He now reviews in spirit before God that which He is to suffer in drinking the cup of the wrath of God. Jesus, who was holy, and who had abode in the love of the Father, alone understood what was the holiness of God, and of what cost His love was. He was thence so much the more capable of alone understanding how horrible sin was, and how awful was the wrath of God. Indifference to this wrath cannot be found save in those who, being in sin, know not the holiness of God and who, strangers to God, have not tasted His love. It is awful to see us calm, contented with ourselves, and careless, when one knows the pangs which sin has cost the Lord Jesus, and why He was sore amazed and very heavy.
In His career of obedience Jesus suffered the contradiction of sinners. Never did He turn away from them, and never did He demand that such a cup should be taken away from Him. Why this then? Because this was not merely the cup of the iniquity of men or of Satan's malice, but that of the wrath of God. In what He had had to suffer before from men, He had the joy of accomplishing the will of His Father; but in this cup, which was that of wrath, there was not one drop of sweetness. Jesus prays that, if it be possible, this cup might be far removed from Him. And why impossible? Here is the reason. It is impossible that God should endure sin, and (since Jesus Himself was made sin for us) that the wrath of God should not be accomplished against sin.
Behold, dear readers, where you are! If Christ has not borne your sins, impossible that you should escape the judgment that God has pronounced against sin. It is a serious thought. Weigh this expression of Jesus: "If it be possible." Certainly, if that had been possible, God would have heard Jesus, and He would have spared His beloved Son this unparalleled sorrow. Why does Jesus say, "If it be possible?" Because He who knew what the love of God is was also in a condition to know how terrible is His wrath.
What was the state of the disciples? They slept (verse 37). They had not enough affection for Him to watch one hour. Peter, who was willing to face prison or death, could not watch one hour. He had slept on the mountain during the transfiguration (Luke 9: 23), and he sleeps in Gethsemane. This discloses, at the bottom of our hearts, the selfishness which is a stranger to the affections which make our hearts enter into the glory, as well as into the sufferings, of Jesus.
Verses 40-43. Was the love of Jesus disheartened or fatigued by all that? No; He must, He would, glorify His Father, and save His own, and He is not arrested by any difficulty. Impossible that we should be saved if He drink not the cup, and He takes it. His love is mightier than death. He presents all to God. And from the moment He found it impossible for this cup to pass without His drinking it, calm again possesses His soul, and He takes it.
Verses 44-50. Of what is not the heart of man capable? God has allowed that all the perfidy of the heart should be laid bare, and that man should betray Jesus by a kiss. Not a pang, not a trial, that Jesus has not to endure in order to put His heart to the test. Without that, something would have been wanting to the cup which He had to drink. The trial of the Lord would not have been complete, and the question of man's iniquity would not have been cleared in the presence of the judgment of God; but Jesus has perfectly glorified God His Father in the midst of all the iniquity of man and all the malice of Satan. All that which could wound and crush, God's wrath, Satan's wickedness, man's iniquity, all bruised His heart to pieces, and all made the immeasurable excellence of Jesus to shine before God. The heart of Jesus was probed to the bottom. And what is, after all that, the position of sinners? There remains nothing but the cost and worth of Jesus for them; and in the eyes of God he that believes has all the worth of Jesus before God. He may present Himself before God, as loved of God, to the point that God has given His Son, and as having the cost of all the sufferings of Jesus.
Christ being presented to you, one of two things results; either you are guilty of the sufferings of Jesus, if you despise them; or, if by grace you lay hold of their infinite value by faith, you enjoy the effect of these sufferings. If you despise them, you will be treated as those who despise them. If by grace your eyes are open to understand what Jesus has done, all the efficacy of His work is applied to you, and you enjoy the love of God. Either you are guilty of the sufferings of Jesus, or you enjoy the cost of His sufferings.
To confess what are your sins which have made Jesus suffer is really to believe that He has borne them. If you say, It is I who have made Christ thus to suffer, you also say, For me, I shall never suffer like that. If Jesus has borne my sins and undergone their consequences, I shall not undergo them, and I am delivered and set free from condemnation.
May God, by the feeling of the love of Jesus, touch your hearts, and make you conscious at what infinite price it is for you that Jesus presented Himself, in order to undergo the wrath of God! Oh, how precious is the love of Jesus!
Luke 23: 39-43
We do not find, except during the three hours of darkness on the cross, that by any sorrow, weariness, or trial, the Lord Jesus was ever hindered from entering into the sorrow of others. None could put Him in a place, except when working out atonement, where He did not enter into human suffering: such unweariness of love do we see in Christ. Still He was light; and the more we look into His history, the more comes out the terribleness of the heart of man. It was never manifested till then. There are amiable natures and unamiable natures; but we never learn what the heart of man is till then. The thing that tries the human heart is, What is its object? not, What are its mere natural qualities? "There is none that seeketh after God." Man saw no beauty in Christ. There is nothing in the heart that looks at the Lord so as to find in Him an object and a delight. There is no root till the conscience is reached; there may be attraction, but until the conscience is in the presence and sight of God, nothing is done; it is like the morning dew which passes away. "The same is he which heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it, yet hath he not root in himself."
Wherever the conscience is reached by God, there is some sense of goodness. Fear and terror may predominate, but there is attraction, and the heart cannot let it go. Faith always gets both: God is love, and yet He reaches the conscience There is that which reaches the conscience, and that which inspires confidence, when the eye is on Christ.
On the authority of Christ Himself we have the certainty of salvation, that is, the Christian state; and no other suits the Christian. It is the only real Christian state which the word of God owns. The condition of the Christian is the effect of the work of Christ. It is not that there is no conflict, but that Another has taken my responsibility. My place before God is not the effect of what I have done, but of what Christ has done. Christ is the ground on which I stand before God: if it be so, what has He done for us? He died for our sins; then they must be put away. He is the Judge, but He cannot judge what He has put away. That we might walk with God in peace, He has sent the One who is to be the judge first to be the Saviour. Confidence is connected with righteousness now.
In the history of the robbers we have both sides.
In the other malefactor taunting Christ, we see how the heart of man is enmity to God. It was the triumph for the moment of the first man and of Satan too. It is sad to think what our hearts are if left to themselves. When the heart is let out, where will it stop? Satan is over us. Here then we have the triumph of the wickedness of man over the goodness of God. We cannot get rid of Satan's power yet; we may bind it in a sense. The heart of man cannot bear the presence of God. There is not a vanity, not a bit of dress or money, that has not more power over the heart of man than all that Christ has done or is. You never yet found a man enjoying himself who would hear of Christ. The world would not have Him when He came in grace, nor would it now; but it must have Him when He comes in judgment. Take the majority of people in this city, and suppose them let into heaven! They would get out as fast as they could.
In the repentant robber, on the other hand, we see grace. He was crucified on a gibbet; but no matter, gibbet or no gibbet, when God and the soul meet, we have the simple and immense fact that the soul is brought at once into His presence. When God has dealt with the conscience, we make no more promises for the future. Unlike the naughty child that says, "I'll be better to-morrow," the soul confesses sin today. "Dost thou not fear God?" is the word, not "Are you not ashamed of being a thief? "
Have you ever been brought into God's presence? "The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom." If you have not been consciously in God's presence, wisdom has not begun for you. Before Christ you must be, and you must be there in truth: the difference is whether you are before Christ in the fulness of His grace, or before Him in judgment. "We indeed justly." He did not say that the world was guilty, but that he was the guilty one; it is not simply that sin is sin, but that I am a sinner. His thought is that he himself is justly there. It is a personal thing, not merely that God is holy, nor merely that the world is guilty, but that you are guilty.
"This man hath done nothing amiss." He would guarantee the whole life of Christ -- it contrariwise was a divine revelation to the soul. Who is there that is a Christian that would not lay down his life for this? "This man hath done nothing amiss." It was a divine revelation of the perfectness of Christ's Person. Could your soul answer for Christ in that way? Here is a man who does so when everybody is deserting Jesus: here is divine faith that He was perfectly sinless: his eye is opened, his heart brought to the consciousness of it. It is not only that he has the fear of God, but he sees the perfectness of Jesus. Heaven was opened when Christ came out for public service; there never was a man before of whom God could say, "That is all I want." Has your heart echoed, and said, "That is all I want"? Nowhere else can the heart so rest when we see the evil around, and the imperfections even of saints. His mind, having got hold of Christ, finds rest in Him. All around is a wide waste of waters, the heart would get wearied, but it turns to Him; and what a rest! Things would be unbearable but for this, but the heart, when it turns there, enters its sanctuary.
"Remember me," said the converted robber. What sign was there that Jesus was Christ the Lord? There was not a cloud on this man's heart, because he was divinely taught. One heart recognises that He is Lord in spite of everything. Pilate had washed his hands before all the people, and given Him up to the Jews; He was denied by one of His disciples, betrayed by another. Everything was against it. "Lord, remember me"; without a sign, the robber owns Him -- how bright to faith! This man had no time to grow, or serve, or walk; but there was thorough conversion, full faith, a sense of what the Messiah was, and belief in His coming in His kingdom. Faith in itself is always certain; it may lead us to doubt about other things, but it is always absolutely certain. The believer has set to his seal that God is true; he does not say, "Perhaps He is true." Wherever I receive it as the word of God, I receive it with absolute certainty; if it be not so, I do not receive it as the word of God at all.
"Remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." His whole concern was that Christ should remember him. We see in him boldness with a bold sinner, lowliness as to himself, a sense of the perfectness of Jesus and the knowledge that He would come in His kingdom. Happy are we if we are in the state of this robber! If you were in suffering, in trial, is it the only thing you would care about, that Christ should remember you?
Another thing is Christ's answer to him: "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." The character of Luke is to bring in present blessing. Before ever the kingdom came, he would go straight to paradise. Faith never looks at my heart, but at the object God reveals. When brought to the consciousness of what I am, my eye rests on Christ Himself. When the thief looks to Christ, he has Christ's answer. The rest given to our souls is the positive answer of God. We have the positive declaration that this robber, taken up for his crimes, was that day absolutely fit for paradise; so perfect is the work of Christ. Observe this robber, and the woman that was a sinner, how they understand Christ, because they want a Saviour! When I come to God with Christ in my hand (like Abel with his lamb), God says to me, "You are righteous." By faith I see Jesus is sitting on the right hand of the majesty on high; when did He go there? "When he had by himself purged our sins." Then I know my sins are purged before God. There is no progress here, no such thing as being fitted for heaven. Growth there ought to be in us, if left here, progress in likeness to Christ; but it is never in Scripture connected with fitness for heaven: Christ is my title. There is growth, but it is never treated as our fitness. This robber was fit for paradise at once; he went there, any way, that day; I suppose he was fit for it, since he was fit to be with Christ! Suppose I were to make all the progress the most blessed saint ever made, could I say I was fit thus for Christ? God forbid! yet I am fit. Death for the believer is simply that he has done with all that is mortal and sinful.
How little the outside is the truth! The Jews sent soldiers to break their legs: how little they thought they were sending the robber straight to heaven, to be the first companion (there were Old Testament saints, of course) that followed the blessed Lord!
It would be well for us if we were as close to Christ as that poor robber. When the veil was rent, the whole thing was changed. The Old Testament was a declaration that man could not go to God in the light: God did not come out, and man could not go in. The gospel says that God did come out, and man can go in. "We have boldness to enter into the holiest through the blood of Jesus." If sin is there, how can I enter into the holiest? I am in Christ, not in the flesh. Our sins He bore; we have died with Him, and should enter into the holiest. Access is free, the veil being rent; we are accepted in the Beloved. Until the work was done, He did not give up the ghost. Now, as a present thing, we have boldness to enter into the holiest. Are you there? The veil is rent; you cannot have God afar off. There is no more a veil; we are before the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. So full and complete is the revelation, that I see God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ, the witness of salvation accomplished. The glory is in the face of the One who bore my sins. In the presence of the absolute light and righteousness of God you must stand, or you cannot stand at all. The world may blind your eyes, but there is no veil on the presence of God.
John 1:1-13
There is one remark that furnishes a most important key to the Gospel of John, which is illustrated very simply and manifestly in this first chapter. The object of the Holy Ghost is to assert the personal glory of Jesus; and hence it is that there is not perhaps a single chapter in the New Testament that presents our Lord in so many different aspects, yet all personal, as this opening chapter of his Gospel. His divine glory is carefully guarded. He is said in the most distinct language to be God as to His nature, but withal a man. He is God no less than the Father is, or the Holy Ghost; but He is the Word in a way in which the Father and the Holy Ghost were not. It was Jesus Christ the Son of God who alone was the Word of God. He only after a personal sort expressed God. The Father and the Holy Ghost remained in their own unseeable majesty. The Word had for His place to express God clearly; and this belonged to Him, it is evident, as a distinctive personal glory. It was not merely that He was the Word when He came into the world, but "in the beginning was the Word" when there was no creature. Before anything came into being that was made, the Word was in the beginning with God; not merely in God, as if merged or lost in God, but He had a distinct personal subsistence before a creature existed. He "was in the beginning with God." This is of immense importance, and with these truths our Gospel opens.
Then we find His creation glory stated afterwards. "All things were made by him." There is nothing which more stamps God to be God than giving existence to that which had none, causing to exist by His own will and power. Now all things exist by the Word: and so emphatically true is this that the Spirit has added, "and without him was not anything made that was made."
But there was that which belonged to the Lord Jesus that was not made: "In him was life." It was not only that He could cause a life to exist that had not before existed, but there was a life that belonged to Him from all eternity. "In him was life." Not that this life began to be: all else, all creation, began to be; and it was He that gave them the commencement of their existence. But in Him was life, a life that was not created, a life that was therefore divine in its nature.
It was the reality and the manifestation of this life which were of prime importance to man. Everything else that had been since the beginning of the world was only a creature; but in Him was life. Man was destined to have the display of this life on earth. But it was in Him before He came among men. The life was not called the light of angels but of men. Nowhere do we find that eternal life is created. The angels are never said to have life in the Son of God. They were kept by divine power and holy. Theirs is a purely creature life, whereas it is a wonderful fact of revelation that we who believe have the eternal life that was in Jesus Christ the Son of God, and are therefore said to be partakers of the divine nature. This is in no way true of an angel. It is not that we for a moment cease to be creatures, but we have what is above the creature in Christ the Son of God.
And this "light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." It is striking to remark here the entire passing over of all the history of the world of which we are apt to make so much, yea, even of the dispensational dealings of God with men. All is passed by very briefly indeed -- those ages that man thinks all but interminable, in which God gave being to the creature and in which He may have changed over and over again the various forms of the creature, where science is endeavouring to pursue its uncertain and weary way. All this is closed up in the few words, "All things were made by him." Scripture, and this chapter in particular, summarises it with striking brevity. "All things were made by him." The details of it were left completely aside. What was good for us to know we are told in Genesis 1. There is nothing like that chapter even in cosmogonies which borrowed from it. And all that man has thought or said or written about a system of the world is not to be named with it for depth or certainty, as well as for simplicity, in the smallest compass.
But there is a reason why all such matters vanish after two or three words. It is because the Lord Jesus, the Word of God, is the object that the Holy Ghost is dwelling on. The moment that He is brought out creation just pays Him homage, owning Him to be the Creator, and is then forthwith dismissed. "All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made." It is enough to say that He created all. He remains in His own grace. Now we learn what is the Spirit's object in this. It was not to give us details of the creation; it was to acquaint us with Jesus as the light of men.
In what condition then did He find men? Were there not great differences among them, as was thought? There were some, most indeed, idolaters, yet wise and prudent, worshipping stocks and stones; and others who were not idolaters but very zealous for the law as given by Moses. Not that a word is said yet about the law, nor about any differences, but that the Word of God was the light that manifested everybody: whether Jews or Gentiles, they were only darkness. It is not therefore only that the physical creation is passed by most curtly, but the moral world is closed with almost equal brevity. "The light shineth in darkness," and whatever the boasting of the Gentiles, and the law of the Jews (which was real as compared with the Gentiles), here all is measured and put out, as it were, by the true light, the Word of God. Jew or Gentile, they are but darkness, and the light shines in darkness, and spite of all its pretension and pride, the darkness comprehended it not. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God." When the Holy Ghost is come down, things are also tested and convicted by Him; and He is brought forward by Paul somewhat as John here introduces the Son of God. It shews how poor all of man is in comparison with God, and how little he is capable of appreciating the truth in the Son or by the Spirit.
Then we find John brought in. The reason why he is singled out from all others I believe to be this: he was the immediate forerunner of the Lord Jesus. He would surely not have been named here if it were not, because he was the moon that derived its light from the sun -- from the Lord Jesus just about to come. His was only a derivative light, and he seems brought in here because of that peculiarity. Other prophets were too distant from Christ, but John was near enough to be an immediate precursor of the Messiah. "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe." It is no question of law-testing or proving. All this was very important in its place; but the glory that the law had is completely eclipsed by a brighter glory. Scripture therefore takes pains to say, John "was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light." He might be a burning and a shining lamp (as it ought to be in chapter 5), but he was only an earthly and derived light. "He was not that light." "That was the true light"; Jesus is the light, the true light, which (as rightly rendered) on coming into the world lighteth every man. It is speaking of the effect of Christ's coming into the world. It is not every man that cometh into the world; but that, when He comes into the world, He is the One that casts His light on every one here below. There had been a time when, as it is said in the Acts, God winked at the ignorance of men; but now everything must appear in its own light or rather darkness, because the true light was come; and therefore when He comes into the world He lights every man there: all are brought out just as they are and none can escape. "He was in the world, and the world was made by him"; and the awful result of this darkness was that "the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not."
The world was guilty enough, it was so dark that it did not even know Him; the Jews had abundance of truth by which they might know Him, but their will was still more set against the Son of God than even the poor Gentiles. "His own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power [title or right] to be children of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." What a blessed place! and blessed to know that this is our place to which grace has entitled us now in His name! May we seek to make Him known to every creature with all our hearts in the measure of power the Lord has given us, honouring thus, and in every other way, the Lord Jesus, whom the Holy Ghost loves to honour.
We have other glories of His brought out afterwards. We hear of Him as the Son, the Lamb of God, the Baptiser with the Holy Ghost, the King of Israel, and the Son of man. All these are successively unfolded to us in this chapter. Indeed it would be difficult to say what glory of our Lord is not presented here except that of Priest and of Head of the church. John never gives us the priesthood of Jesus. He touches what is close on it, when He speaks in his first epistle of advocacy with the Father; but the business of John was to shew His divine personal glory, yet as man on earth. Priest was what He was called to be in heaven; and as Head of the church He is there also. But John shews us what He was in Himself as coming from heaven, and that He does not lose one whit of His glory by becoming a man. In His being Priest and Head of the church we see special glories which He received on going up to heaven, and these Paul develops fully. John's point is God and the Father manifested on earth in the Person of Jesus Christ His Son.
John 1: 29-34
This chapter is remarkable inasmuch as it brings before us the various titles or names of Christ, almost all that He is in His varied titles, unless indeed the relative ones. You do not see Him as Head of the church, nor as priest, nor Christ; but you get Him as only-begotten Son of God, who reveals the Father, Son of and King of Israel, the Lamb of God, Life, the Light, the Word, the Creator, the Son of man, the Baptiser with the Holy Ghost, all the names that tell what He is in His own Person. In an abstract way you have what His nature is, His personality, light, life: only that, when John brings in man's condition with the testimony to what man is as rejecting Christ, "The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not."
The three other Gospels present Christ to man to be received, and close with His rejection, but this Gospel takes up His rejection from the very beginning, "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not; he came to his own and his own received him not," and you then have what grace does and the objects of grace distinct. After the abstract statement of what He was comes the testimony, not of what Christ was, but what He became. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." There His Person, as incarnate, is brought out, not what He was abstractedly but "became flesh." Then, in the verses I read, you get His work. You have thus what He is essentially and in His nature, then what He became -- incarnation in a word, and also His revealing the Father -- "No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him"; and also we receive of His fulness. He becomes the source, and He is the fulness of which we have all received; and then in the verses read we get the work of grace from the very starting-point of the Gospel.
You get this work in two parts; it is the second I shall chiefly speak of; but the first is Christ as the Lamb of God, and then He is the Baptiser with the Holy Ghost. It is not that He does not exercise also His priesthood -- He does; but it is not the subject here. I guard this because it is important to remember that He is Priest. But here He is the Lamb of God, and He that baptiseth with the Holy Ghost.
This last is a wonderful expression, and contains in it the whole power of our relationship with God. It does not weaken the truth that He is the Lamb of God; yea, it is as to us founded on it. He is that, as is said in Genesis 22, "God will provide himself a lamb" -- One therefore that is fit every way, perfectly acceptable and accepted, as perfect for the thing He had to do as God's mind was who gave Him to do it. The Son of God is the Lamb of God. Just as the first man brought in sin, so the second was to put it clean out of the way. Those who rejected Him, of course, as He said, died in their sins, but He is the One that takes away the sin of the world. There will be a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness; that, and that only, will be the full result. The sacrifice has been made, the Lamb has been slain; but the grand result will be that God will have a heaven and an earth before Him in which there is not an atom of sin, but wherein shall dwell righteousness.
We had an innocent world, paradise: this was soon over; then a sinful world, though with grace working in it; but we shall have, not an innocent nor a sinful world, but a righteous world; and it will be founded on that which can never lose its value so that itself never can be touched. It is the immutable basis of God's new creation, which is therefore immutable in its blessings where all His ways are manifested. That will be the full result of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The first world was set in blessing, but it depended on the faithfulness of Him who was placed at the head of it; the final one rests secure on the value of that which is perfected, coming after a work finished and done, a work in which God has perfectly glorified Himself. The basis of the new creation on which it is founded is finished, finished completely and absolutely.
The work upon which the security (morally speaking) of the new heavens and the new earth is founded is finished -- finished so that Christ who wrought it is sitting at the right hand of God, and sits there until His enemies are to be dealt with. The work is finished, nothing can ever be added to it, nor can it lose its effect with God; and the blessed result is that which will come in as I have said. The work is done: all moral questions have been settled at the cross, what sin is, enmity against God, what perfect love to God the Father and obedience in man to Him is, what righteousness against sin is, what love to sinners, have all been shewn in the same wondrous work. Unless in the cross, men try in vain to reconcile righteousness and love, love and God's dishonoured majesty, truth as to the wages of sin, and His goodness -- all the attributes together.
If Adam and Eve had been cut off when they ate the fruit, it might be quite righteous (you might say they got what they deserved), but there would have been no love in that. Or suppose, on the other hand, every sin had been passed over, what people call goodness -- the natural man would think this very right and call it love, but then sin would be no matter, and righteousness not exist; and so the majesty of God, which has been utterly trampled in the dust by the success of Satan with man, must remain so cast down; there would be no means of conciliating the righteousness and majesty of God with His love.
The moment I get the cross, all that is settled; it became Him; it became God, in bringing many sons unto glory to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering -- that became God. His majesty is maintained in the highest way. The Son must suffer if He takes up this cause. Then I find perfect righteousness against sin, but along with it infinite love to me, a poor worthless sinner. There I get, consequently, the Son of man glorified and God glorified in Him, and all moral questions in presence of God's revealed nature settled for ever. All is perfectly settled according to God's nature and for God, and by that which passed between God and Christ alone, perfect consequently according to their perfection. As to myself, if I look at the cross, I say, the only part I had in it was my sins and the enmity that crucified Christ. I am put in my place and humbled, and yet I see the great righteous basis of all-divine counsels in it and infinite love to me; but this brings me to know myself too. Nothing ever shewed like the cross the full development and manifestation of evil. Let people say what they like, the perfect development of evil was there on our part, and the full development of good before and from God.
When I look at the present effect of all that in this scene, in a broad sense there is none. The scene is not changed, looking as the general state of things. Christ has gone to heaven when He had by Himself purged our sins; but as to the state of the world at large there is no effect, though many souls are saved. You get new forms of evil -- infidelity as to this love and righteousness, and so on; but as to the state of the world, it remains in the same state, modified only by the rejection of Christ. Sin has not gone out of the world; men are trying to bind it and restrain evil, as of old they bound Legion with fetters and chains; they have set to do their best, and a bad set-to it is, but there it is, to be bound. They talk of progress, and in a certain way, as to physical discoveries and conveniences, there is; but is there morally? I do not see any progress in the obedience of children, nor in the devotedness of servants, nor in faithfulness in all the relationships of life; but I see wonderful restlessness, and greater than ever.
There is progress in railways and telegraphs, and so on, or we might not have been here together as we are; but that has nothing whatever to do with the relationship of man to God or to his neighbour. Cleverness in what is merely material is neither here nor there as to moral state: you might get the cleverest man in telegraphs or science, and find he was a blasphemer or a man walking near to God; it has nothing to do with it. And, after all, when you die, what will it be to you whether there is a telegraph or not? The soul's state belongs to another sphere of things, save as it ministers to his will and lusts, in which good and evil are brought to an issue through the cross and God revealed in grace and righteousness, perfectly glorified (as indeed there only) as well as our sins borne. The work is all done and finished on the cross, and accepted too in righteousness; and Christ is sitting down at the right hand of God until He takes His great power and reigns. When the Lord Jesus Christ comes again, He will reign until all His enemies are put under His feet, and blessedness is complete in a new heaven and a new earth.
But then I get a second thing, which is that in order to do all this He became a man, and, consequent upon His going up to God, risen from the dead, the Holy Ghost is now come down. The presence of the Holy Ghost on earth is consequent upon Christ's exaltation to the right hand of God. His presence here is that which puts a man down here who has the Holy Ghost into association and relation with Christ in heaven. And so, further, you get the great truth that God now dwells down here on earth. And this is an immense truth; it never was the case before redemption. God never dwelt with Adam though He came down to visit him innocent, nor with Abraham. But the moment that Israel was redeemed out of Egypt, He says, in Exodus 29: 45, 46, "And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God, and they shall know that I am Jehovah their God, that brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them." And all this was written for our admonition, and God shewed Himself in the shekinah glory of the tabernacle dwelling between the cherubim upon the mercy-seat.
Now, however, it is the Holy Ghost who is come down, and who dwells either in the individual believer or in the assembly of God, the temple of the living God; and the consequence of this to me is that I have the knowledge of the whole value of the work that is done, and I have got, through the Holy Ghost here, complete and entire association with Christ where He is, and I rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Until that comes, God dwells already in those who believe in Christ. Mark how it comes in; He was anointed with the Holy Ghost; "And I knew him not, but he that sent me to baptise with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on Him, the same is he which baptiseth with the Holy Ghost." Before I get the baptising (Christ is not said to be baptised but anointed and sealed) on the day of Pentecost, Christ had been anointed and sealed. He had taken this place as a man, as the pattern of it all; as Son, as a man here, the place into which He introduces us by redemption, the relationship in which He is with the Father and into which He introduces us.
Is Christ alive for evermore? Well, He is our life. Is He righteousness? He is my righteousness; and, though all the results are not yet accomplished, we have certain knowledge of the work He wrought, and we now rejoice in hope of the glory. The heaven was opened, the Holy Ghost came down like a dove, and Christ took this place amongst us, the Son of God amongst men -- us -- Himself the expression of the place into which God by grace brings everyone that believes on Christ. You read in Proverbs 8, "I was daily his delight rejoicing always before him, rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth, and my delights were with the sons of men." And when the Lord Jesus Christ became a man, or the Word became flesh, as set out in this chapter, we get the angels declaring God's predilection as to the race of men: is it not beautiful to hear them, with unjealous hearts, delighting in God's glory, announcing the blessing to others: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in man"?
I speak of the thing in itself, not of the accomplishment of the results, for the present effect was not peace but division; but, when His people take the first step in the right path in obedience to the word, He falls in with them, they indeed confessing sin, He fulfilling righteousness. And thus, at His baptism I get the blessed Lord, coming as a man, as He did publicly then, in full obedience, entering by the door; and He then receives the Holy Ghost, who comes down on Him as such. And how could He receive the Holy Ghost? Because He was righteous in Himself, and we through His work. He was both anointed and sealed, and thus we find Him attributing His works to the Spirit: "If I by the Spirit of God cast out devils." It is remarkable how the Trinity is brought before us in this. The Son wrought on earth, cast out demons by the Spirit, and the Father that dwelt in Him, He did the works. His work shewed how the Trinity is brought out in specific connection with that purpose in man, through which the Son became man. It is first fully revealed in the passage in Matthew 3. Christ the Son was there, the Spirit descended upon Him, and the Father owns Him, a man on the earth, as Son. So through the eternal Spirit He offered Himself without spot to God. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth, says Peter, with the Holy Ghost and with power.
I notice all this to shew how He who was God over all, blessed for ever, took, in sovereign grace, His part with man. This was the great preliminary path to all blessing. He upon whom the Holy Ghost descended and abode, He it was who baptised with it: not that it was only this, for we must be sprinkled with blood to have it, and He must be glorified as man to give it. Hence, we read, He being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Spirit, hath shed forth this. But here He entered truthfully on the path of all this, He associated Himself with the godly remnant, Himself to be the channel, through redemption, of His own blessings to others. Thus Christ was anointed as man and was baptised with the Holy Ghost. We enter into the intelligent place of the blessings which are ours in Him before the accomplishment of the result. We are brought into the same place and relationship, and know the fruit of His being the Lamb before the results are actually produced externally.
But, further, before we arrive at the glory, He is entered as man, He is glorified, and so I get an object; I rest in the thought of being glorified with Him, but I cannot rest in myself. I look all around in the world and try everything in it; but Christ says "Are you weary of all that?" "Yes." "Then you come to Me and you shall find rest." There is that which gives the heart rest. You may be weary and heavy laden without being able to explain it; now, are you that? Christ is the true rest. God found His rest in Him, and never anywhere else. God could not rest even in the exercise of His love, or any object till Christ was there. He could exercise His love, but not rest in it; but in Christ God did find His rest. I do not talk of His own blessed nature, of course, sufficient to itself; but never anywhere else here could God find rest. And so can I a poor wretched creature, a vile sinner. Well, come, see a man that told me all that ever I did, and this is the One who can be my rest, for He knows all and is perfect love and grace to me when He does. As an object I have nothing more to seek, I have found my rest where God found His, and I have found God Himself in love. As to my circumstances and sinfulness, I find a full discovery of all that, and at the same time in the Lamb of God, who meets it all and puts it all away for ever; and so through Christ I know God. Very glad I am that God does know all. Thus all was in that which He did, and now I can have truth in the inward parts in God's presence. Take the poor woman in the city that was a sinner: the Pharisee says, "If he knew what she was, he would not let her touch him; he is no prophet," but Christ shews He was a prophet, for He tells out what was passing in Simon's heart. He did know all: but there was that which Simon did not know, the perfect grace of God towards the sinner; and then He takes up the poor woman's case, and says to her, "thy sins are forgiven"; "thy faith hath saved thee" (this goes farther), "go in peace."
We have the real declaration of the Father in Christ, and His love shewn by the work in which righteousness was established: I find the perfect love of God, honesty in the conscience and heart by the knowledge of it, and I find these nowhere else. I can find no person that is perfect in searching my heart out to the bottom, and with perfect love to me, and that has the right to be perfect love to me. But I have got all that in Christ. I find this blessed One, the perfect sinless Man, and Him sealed with the Holy Ghost that I might understand He so came, and that I might be sealed with the Holy Ghost through the work that He has accomplished.
If an angel wanted to see God, he must look on Man, on Christ, "God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." Then, with all this goodness towards us, where has this Man gone, the One who glorified God perfectly in the place of sin? He was God, manifested in love to man; and if you have not yet got the blessing of it, still it was God coming to win back the confidence of your heart to God.
The beginning of all sin was loss of confidence in God. The devil suggests to Eve, "Why should God keep back the fruit of that tree? He knows if you eat it, you will be like Him"; and so confidence was lost. But, if I do not trust God to make me happy, I must try and make myself happy; and thus enter lust and sin and transgression and ruin. But Christ comes into this world where I am a sinner, and in Him I get God winning back my heart to Himself, not by hiding my faults -- I get them all told out and put away -- and the confidence of my heart won, so that I can trust God; and more, I know God's heart a great deal better than I know my own. I cannot trust my own heart a minute. Test it: I say I love the brethren; but am I not cold sometimes? I have a double heart (I do not say wilfully but there it is); and I must humble myself before God about it, but I cannot deny it. Do you find anything like that in God? I find the perfect love of God in the gift of His Son, and there is no double heart there. And so I get rest. If our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence before God.
But this is not all. If Christ was the manifestation of God in love to us, He was man made sin before God, and if, won by His grace to confide in God, you set out towards God, you will find the cross in the way, Man made sin before God; but then the whole question settled there, and, coming by faith, the question settled for me touching all my sins in His presence, settled by what is done and finished, and that according to the glory of God's own nature; so that I can even look sin in the face fully, and find it has been judged for me, while also I have the perfect love of God resting on me in perfect holiness and righteousness, and I am standing in the light as God is in the light in virtue of that which is finished. Through Christ I am brought into God's presence, accepted in the Beloved, as white as snow, while God is perfect in righteousness in accepting me, and grace reigns through righteousness.
Thus it is we get the double character of Christ manifested down here: God in grace towards us; and man made sin before God, but as putting it away for us by His work in drinking the cup His Father had given Him to drink; and, mark, the only part that we have in that work is the sins that put Him to death; and the hatred that did it, when He gave Himself up to it in love. But this is all finished; and when Christ had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high; and thereupon not only is it the fact that the Holy Ghost comes down, but Christ receives it again, "being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear." And I find this, that in virtue of that work of putting away my sins, and having cleansed me and washed me and justified me and redeemed me to God, the Holy Ghost also is given that I may go and understand and enjoy all that Christ is, all that Christ has done, and that He has made my portion in consequence. True, I am here in weakness, a poor earthen vessel that the excellency of the power may be of God; all quite true. But I have the relationship. I am a child, I want to be taught by my Father; and alas! it may be sometimes a naughty child and I want to be whipped by my Father, but I am a child, a partaker of the divine nature.
Now, it is this distinctive character of the Holy Ghost come down that I want to speak of. It is what constitutes the state of the Christian. He is a man who stands between the first coming of Christ (and the work He then accomplished) and the second coming of Christ, when he is going to enjoy the glory; and, between these two, he has the Holy Ghost. He has all the benefits, not as to his body but as to his standing before God, of Christ's work. Look a little at that.
Him that has taken this place, as now redeemed -- I speak of those who are believers -- the Holy Ghost is come down to dwell in. You get it in the figures. When the leper was cleansed, he was washed with water, sprinkled with blood, and anointed with oil (the figure of the Holy Ghost): the word of God applied to us in the power of the Spirit, the water -- the blood, now the blood of atonement -- and the anointing. Being quickened, born again of water by the word, must go first; and then the blood; but the Holy Ghost is there too, and the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us. Just trace that a little.
The first thing I find in the third chapter of this Gospel is, we are born of the Spirit, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit; and in that I get an immense truth that I have a nature capable of enjoying all divine things, which the flesh is not. I have often said, if you put a natural man into heaven, he would get out of it as fast as he could; there is nothing there that he likes: even an honest worldly man will own that. Then in John 4 there is another thing: Christ speaks of the gift of God which should be a well of water springing up unto everlasting life. It is not only life holy in its nature, but, in consequence of the Lord Jesus Christ having gone up, I have the whole power of life there, and I go right up into its blessed results, through the Lord Jesus Christ, who has associated my heart livingly as born of God with all the things that belong to one born of God; with that of which he that is born of God is joint-heir with Christ.
He became a man, and will be a man for ever. In one sense He will be a servant for ever. In Exodus 21 a Hebrew slave who had served seven years was to go out free; but if his master had given him a wife, and he said, I love my master, I love my wife, I love my children, I will not go out free, then his master was to bore through his ear with an awl to the door post, and the slave was to remain so for ever. Now the Lord could have had twelve legions of angels, and gone out free. But He would not, and so He is a servant and remains so for ever. In John 13, "When Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, and that he was come from God and went to God, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end"; and, "He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garment, and took a towel and girded himself; after that, he poureth water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded." He would still be a servant, could no longer (it is true) have part down here with them; but He would not give them up, and so they must have part with Him. They were clean by the word spoken, but in their path could pick up dirt. Dirty feet will not do for heaven, and the blessed Lord still does the work of a servant. I, says He, am going to wash them. Peter hesitates, and the Lord says, If I do not wash thee, thou hast no part with Me. You are clean, but you are taking up dirt on your feet in the way; and so the Lord washes them. This is His present service. And in Luke 12 He says, "Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning, and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord." "Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh, shall find watching; verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them." As if the Lord should say, "I am going to be your servant in heaven." We are going to sit down and eat things in heaven which acquire infinite value from His ministering them to us.
The next thing is a clear distinct consciousness that the work is finished. The Holy Ghost is sent down from Christ when He is glorified and God has given the positive testimony that He has accepted the work and of that to which it leads. Christ has gone into the glory, and I am going to be like Him, and thus I get the blessed assurance of the efficacy of His work when He came first. He says, "Now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him." No question about that. He came to be a man, all alone, however, amongst men, and ever accessible until He had redeemed us, and now He has taken us into association with Himself, and I know it by the Holy Ghost. By the Holy Ghost also I know that I am in Him there now, as John 14: 20. We have not yet got all the fruits, but I have the knowledge of the fruits of what He has done by the Holy Ghost. In John 14 He says, "I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am ye may be also." This was the first great point and final result in blessing.
3 Then He shews them what they should have upon earth, meanwhile. They knew where He was going and the way, for He was going to the Father, and they had seen the Father in Him. The revelation of the Father in the Son gave that which was the highest heavenly blessedness, was the full revelation of all the blessedness that is to be theirs, and revealed the way, because in coming to Christ they had found the Father. Philip says, "Shew us the Father and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." And now I know what the springs of blessedness are in heaven, because I have seen the Father in the Son. Do not believe for a moment that God has not revealed the things He has prepared for us. "God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit," and "We have received the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God."
I find thus the Father revealed in the Son, but there was yet more present comfort by the Holy Ghost. They ought to have known the revelation of the Father in the Son, but one thing they could not know until the Comforter was come, and "In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father and ye in me, and I in you." You shall know that you are in Me. People tell me I cannot know, that I must wait until the day of judgment; but in that case I cannot have any peace here because I do not know how it will turn out then. Am I not to have part in the day of grace? and that is now. And what it is that I have? What I really have is that Christ has put away the very sins for which otherwise I should have to be judged. And more, I know that I am in Him, and He is in me. But men say it is so presumptuous to say I am in Christ. Presumptuous! why, Christ told me I should know it; very much more presumptuous to doubt it.
"And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." And do you think God dwells in me without my finding it out? I may not be able to explain it to another: that is a question of intelligence in Scripture and even of gift; but "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." "In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." The Holy Ghost dwells in us, and there is the power to overcome temptation, wisdom from God, power to realise the presence of Christ, to live looking on the things that are not seen, joyful liberty in our path with God. Mark the practical consequence of this knowledge as to the character of our walk. I say I am in Christ; but you cannot be in Christ without Christ being in you: then do not let me see anything else in you but Christ; do not let the flesh come out. We fail, I know, but that is the right practical consequence. So what is to be looked for in the Christian is that he is to be the epistle of Christ. This is my place, and the practical measure of my walk is that I am dead and the power of the Holy Ghost within so full that nothing but Christ is seen. We are in Christ and Christ in us.
And consequently there is another thing. If I am asked to prove the love of God, I say, "Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us," but, as to enjoying it, "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost." I know the love of God, by His dwelling in me who is love: God is love, and the Holy Ghost dwells in me. Not that you cannot learn more, infinitely more. I know my Father, but there are ten thousand things in His mind that I do not know yet. For a man to say that he does not know his own father would be dreadful, though there are multitudes of things in his father's mind and character that he may not yet know. "We have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but we have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." "I am in the Father," that is Christ's own place, "and we are in Christ." This is not only the fact of acceptance but relationship, for we are sons. And the Holy Ghost gives us the consciousness of it. And what do all duties flow from? Relationship. You cannot have the holy affections and true duties of a child of God without being a child of God, and knowing that you are one. The Spirit of God "beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God," and so I enjoy the affections which belong to a child.
Now is that connected with coming before God as a Judge? It is, in virtue of Christ's work, which put away my sins; I am a child in virtue of that which has made me as white as snow. True, if I merely take a cold dead sense that I am safe, there is no affection in that. But our relationship with God and our Father is identified with our being safe. Christ's death for me is, indeed, a motive to make me feel thankful beyond all expression. But there is beyond this as present power that we are taken into an association with Christ, which is so complete, that we know -- know now -- that "when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." He would not leave us without our knowing His love perfectly in the way that He has established me in blessing; and, while I have the perception of the glory and the earnest of the inheritance, the love of God is already shed abroad in my heart; the Holy Ghost dwells in me and gives me consciousness of all that has been done for me, of all that has been given to me.
And if this is true, if I have indeed come to Christ and drunk, then out of my belly shall flow rivers of living water -- flow out, that is, to others. God first gives us to enjoy Himself: "we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ," and then there is the activity of His love reproduced in our little measure, though in the truth of its nature in us.
"You know Me?" He says. "Oh, yes," I say. How do you know it? "Because I was a poor vile sinner, and Christ came and laid down His life for me." "You know that? Then go and carry it to other people." I was a poor sinner, and am made the righteousness of God in Christ. Think what a blessed place that is! And I have that blessed place before God, "blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ," and in spirit I can now enjoy it, and that is the place I get with God: as a son, as Christ is Son; as to relationship with the Father, "my Father and your Father." And then He gives me a share in the activity of His love in carrying it out to others. "This spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet, because that Jesus was not yet glorified." Plainly this is not the Spirit as He wrought in them to make them believe, it is clear, for those who believed should receive Him; but, in virtue of the work of Christ gone into the glory, the Holy Ghost has come down and associated me with Christ in all that He has as man, and then sends me to bear witness to others of it.
But if He takes the things of Christ and shews them to me, what is the effect on me as I pass through this world? "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now"; and, "we groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of the body." What was Christ in this world? and what does He feel about this world? Could He set it to rights? He could not. If He was love, could He look with indifference at its misery? Neither was that possible. His holiness and His love must be sources of sorrow in this world, as of blessed communion above whilst He was here. Having the Spirit of Christ I may be privileged to suffer for Him, I must suffer with Him; my heart takes up the voice of the groans of creation and carries them up to God. I may not know what to ask for as a remedy: there may be none here. But being here with the spring of divine love in me, the mind of the Spirit is there, the Holy Ghost intercedes in me according to God. It shews what an astonishing place we are in, what a wonderfully blessed place God has put us into while not yet in the glory.
Again, the Holy Ghost having sealed my pardon and given me the consciousness of my relationship as a son, with all that I am walking in in spirit, I turn to see the full effect before the glory which He has revealed to me is mine in possession. The Holy Ghost cannot reveal a glory to me which He does not reveal as mine; but these glories are given us because we are sons and are joint-heirs with Christ. We are "predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren"; and, whatever the Holy Ghost has revealed of all this blessedness, He reports it to me as mine. "To the glory of God by us," it is said, and again, "which God ordained before the world to our glory." 1 Peter 1: 10-13 shews very clearly the order of the revelation of all this. The prophets of old "searched what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow, unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves" (not that they will not be there, but their actual condition is what he is speaking of) "but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." We have them not yet, but they are revealed and reported to us. Then "gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
The Holy Ghost has been sent from heaven for the purpose of this revelation. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him, but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." The apostle does not quote the passage to shew it is our position, as so often quoted, but exactly the contrary. Such was the Old Testament state, but we have received the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. I have got into the relationship of a son and I know it by the Holy Ghost. My chief joy surely is fellowship with the Father and the Son, and this hereafter in glory in the Father's house. Do we know nothing of what is there? Much, in one sense everything; it is revealed; but take yet another blessing besides God's presence. The Holy Ghost shews me another thing: there is not one of you that I shall not see perfectly like Christ in the glory. The Lord Jesus "shall come to be glorified in his saints and to be admired in all them that believe." Think of my seeing Christ admired in all of you!
What is my desire now? That you may be like Him. That desire will be satisfied perfectly, and it is an immense joy. Nothing is too great for us to expect, now that we know that the blessed Son of God has suffered for us and been made sin. And see the way that Christ gives: Not as the world giveth give I unto you. The world gives, gives away: Christ never gives away. The way He gives is to take us into the enjoyment of all that He has Himself. He wants to have us in the same blessedness with Himself. "Peace I leave unto you, my peace I give unto you." He says, "My joy fulfilled in themselves." He says, "I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me," and "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them," and "That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them"; but the way of it is, He has brought us into the joy of relationship to the Father with Himself. It is the Giver that makes the blessedness even more than the gift. Suppose my mother gives me a trifle: it is not the value of the trifle in itself, but the giver that makes the value.
And I know all now by the Holy Ghost, so that I abound in hope by the power of the Holy Ghost. There are two kinds of happiness. There is the happiness of hope that we have; and what is the other kind? Rest in perfect affection; God loves me as He loves Jesus, and I rest in that. To talk about our love to anyone is no proof of love. The deepest affection may shew itself, but is not loquacious about itself, at least when it confides in its object; nor is the declaration of our great love a proof that all love much, nor complaint of our want of affection a proof that love is wanting, though it may be often that we are thinking too much about it. If there be confidence, the heart rests in the value of the love of the one confided in, and rests in thinking of its object, which is true affection. Supposing a child told me, "I love my mother quite enough," I say, "You are an unfortunate wight; you do not love your mother a bit if you say that." But suppose a child says, If you only knew my mother, her unwearied love, her patience with me, and I often so foolish, forgetting her wishes! I made a noise when she was sick, and yet her love never falters, never wearies; I say, That child loves its mother. When I have a sense of the love that outreaches all my thoughts, and thank and bless and wonder and adore at its greatness, and in the sense of it, my heart thinking of Him -- that is love to God. But, if I look into my own heart (I do not speak of judging known failure) and measure my love, and complain of my not loving God, in such case you are under law as to it. The law required it, and necessarily and rightly: but that is law. "Herein is love, not that we loved him, but that he loved us." Hence too, when our loving Him is spoken of in 1 John 4, it is not said we ought to love Him, true as it may be, but we love Him because He first loved us.
Well now, the practical effect of receiving the Holy Ghost and abiding in Him is that I am called upon to walk as Christ walked: "they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit." You cannot have a man living without an object, and whatever the object may be, it characterises him: if it is money, he is a covetous man; if it is power, he is ambitious, and so on; but if I get Christ the object of my love, I follow Him, and the Holy Ghost reveals to my heart all things that relate to Him.
You cannot have the love of Christ in your heart without loving what He loves, and this not only as to the things the heart delights in, but the persons dear to Him. We shall love all saints, even if going astray, with the patient love with which Christ loves them, if filled with His Spirit, while walking with Him in the joy of communion.
See the apostle in the opening of 1 Corinthians. When he saw them at Corinth all going wrong, he begins by saying all the good things about them he can: "enriched" by him in "all utterance" and all knowledge, coming behind in no gift, "waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ," who would confirm them, to the end that they may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God was faithful, and so on. And then he begins to blame them for everything they were doing. Men falsely suppose that the full assurance of salvation, and of final salvation, weakens the bond of duty. First, it is a base principle that only dread of damnation can keep us in the path of duty. But further, a child's duties are always there because he is always a child and never can be anything else. All duties flow from the place you are in. You can speak of duties only in the relationship from which they flow. You must be a Christian, a child of God, to be under obligation to fulfil the duties incumbent on such. And, indeed, the affections belonging to their relationship also have no place till then. The consciousness of the relationship must be there. How can a child love a father if he does not know whether he is such? "We have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father."
Scripture does not recognise as a Christian a person who does not understand that he is a child of God; he may be on the road, but he has not arrived at his Christian standing. I want no self-confidence, but I want honesty -- a divinely given recognition of the relationship in which God has set us, and of which we have the consciousness by the Spirit. In vain we pretend to such a place by merely seeing what Scripture says about it. I would rather see anxiety for holiness and God's glory in a person who had not got assurance, but who was in earnest, than confidence in one who was careless. I quite understand how many dear souls regard this as presumption; I remember when I was awfully afraid myself. But what Scripture tells me is, "we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear." Being children, we are not to be looking up to God as a judge. I am not thinking of God that way; He is one, of course, but that is not my habit of thought about Him. The very person, who is presently to sit as Judge, has hung on the cross for my sins, and put them away, before He is Judge. God would have us before Him in reverence surely, but not in terror. I come to Him as a Saviour, and I find the sins I should have had to be judged for have all been judged already; and when I come before Christ on the judgment-seat, as we shall, why, there, as the Judge, is the very One who has put them all away! How can He impute them to me? We must all appear at the judgment-seat of Christ; quite true, but remember we shall all be glorified before we go there. We shall be raised in glory if we have died, or changed into the same if yet alive, as it is written, "our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body and fashion it like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself."
One word more. How far, beloved friends, how far, knowing I am a child and that here, and in a path according to God's will, led by the Spirit of God -- how far can I at present look to be like to Christ in this world? I look to be quite like Him in the glory. There is a great deal, and among true souls too, of looking to be conformed to the image of God's Son now. Now there is utter deadly error in that, though not intentional error. They reason, from the desire of uniformity in the renewed soul, to the possibility of it by faith. But this leaves the truth of God out of sight. If I say I have no sin, I deceive myself; but Christ had no sin. Have you no sin in you? It is not said that we ought to be like Christ down here, but that we ought to walk as He walked.
Again, when I come to know redemption in Christ -- and only thus, for this is properly deliverance, having died and risen with Christ, not merely knowing that He has borne my sins -- then "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." The word "free" has two senses in our language: one, as when you say "that horse is free from vice," that is, he has none; and the other, as when you say, "that slave is free," which is quite a different thing, and it is in this sense I am free from the law of sin and death. I find sin is in me, though it was all condemned on the cross of Christ, but I am free from its law, and it is by the knowledge of redemption and deliverance that I get into this liberty.
Who shall deliver me! Why do you not deliver yourself? I have been trying at it, but I cannot. I do not submit to the condemnation of sin in the flesh, so as to understand that it was put to death on the cross; I do not come to that, until I find I cannot myself get the better of it. You get all this in Romans 7. It is not the true Christian state, but the one there finds first that there is no good thing in his flesh at all. And what next? Why, that it is not himself, "it is no more I." What next? Oh, I must get the better of it. Try away, I say, try away. I cannot succeed. And now you learn that there is no power in yourself to do it. "To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not." I need another, a deliverer, and I learn the power of life in Christ, of Christ Himself; but with the knowledge that I have (as regards the old man) died with Him, and that there sin in the flesh was condemned when He was a sacrifice for sin, but that it was in death, so that I am dead to it for faith. And I do not believe as I have said, that a person has ever got out of Romans 7 who has not got into it. In my case, like thousands of others, before I got forgiveness, I had found out what I was; I learned the seventh before I learned the third. But when a full gospel is preached and forgiveness known, the knowledge of self will still be by law, but the form of it is modified. The way more often is, "I hope I am not deceiving myself; I thought I was forgiven. How is it I do so-and-so? how is it I find this power of sin still here?" The flesh is never changed. The truth is they are distinct points, and treated apart; only self-knowledge is the deeper point, and so treated last. But it is law, not for condemnation, but powerless to free, though it may kill and condemn too. (Compare 2 Corinthians 3.)
After man was made, the whole history is, whatever God sets up right, the first thing man did was to spoil it. Adam eats the fruit of the tree. Noah is put in authority, and the first thing he does is to get drunk. God gives a law, and they set up a golden calf. The priests are consecrated and offer strange fire the first day, and die; and Aaron is never allowed to go in his garments of glory and beauty into the most holy place. Solomon fails in the kingdom and it is divided. Nebuchadnezzar is set at the head of the government among the Gentiles, and he sets up a great idol and punishes those that serve the true God, and Gentile authority becomes that of the beasts. It put Christ to death when He came in grace, lusts against the Spirit where He is, and, if one is called to the third heaven, would puff him up about it. And, now, it is not that there is any change in the flesh; but I am not to fancy, that, because flesh is there, I must let it act. No, I must reckon it dead, and should in practice "always bear about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body."
The Holy Ghost gives us a blessed sense of relationship with the Father; and what, accordingly, you are called upon to do is, in the power of the Holy Ghost, so to live and walk as that nothing but Christ be seen in you.
John 3
The truth connected with the Holy Ghost, together with Christ and His work, is the great safeguard against the error by which Satan is working in the present day. The enemy's craft must be met by the truth of God. In this chapter we have the work of the Spirit in quickening souls, and this is brought out, in contrast both with God's previous trial of Israel, and with man's natural power in the reception of outward evidence. From chapter 2: 24, etc., we see the need of getting hold of God's truth for our own souls. The profession of Christ may be ever so sincere, but apart from life and fruit it is worth and is nothing. The people saw He was the One who should come, the Person sent from God, and they had right thoughts about His works, and yet all that went for nothing and was worthless in the sight of God. The solemn question was, What was in man? The conviction spread amongst them that He was the Messiah, because of the miracles He did, and they were ready to have Him in their own way. Nicodemus said, "We [not I] know that thou art a teacher sent from God," etc.; but the wickedness of man's heart was not all come out. Man proved what he was in the treatment he gave the Lord Jesus, notwithstanding the undeniable evidence vouchsafed in His works that He was come from God.
There are none so hostile to truth as those who know, but will not have it. The spies who had been up and seen the land were those active in speaking against it. You cannot go the way of the cross without having its trial and difficulty, as well as its infinite gain. The cross is not pleasant, of course, and it never was intended to be pleasant. Directly I see that Christ has a right and claim on my conscience, my nature rises to resist His power; I see He ought to have the first place, and that other things should give way. This I do not like. The cross must be contrary to our nature.
The Lord now meets Nicodemus with the declaration that he must be born again, or rather anew (which is a stronger word than "again," or "from above"). It is the same expression in the original as "from the very first," in Luke 1: 3. You may find lovely qualities in human nature; but nature never loves Christ, where the cross and the glory come together. The new birth is a thing totally new. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." Christianity does not alter it at all. Man is in love with creation, and neither loves God nor believes His love. The creation is ruined, spoiled -- not willingly, as man is, but still it is fallen. Man's will is gone away from God. His intellect may be all very well in its way; his disposition may be amiable, but you never find one who naturally seeks after God. Nay, you generally find the most amiable person the last to turn to God. Man must be born entirely anew; he must come into heaven with a nature altogether distinct from that which he has got. Man will use his good qualities as well as his bad, just as an animal but with more intelligence. The eye must be opened. It is a new ground and way of perception, by which we can even see the kingdom of God.
There was neither holiness nor righteousness before the fall. The original state was something distinct from both. Adam was innocent, but not properly righteous or holy. To apply innocence to God, or to the Lord Jesus, would be absurd. God is holy; seeing what is bad, and abhorring it, which holiness, negatively at least, consists in. A righteous man judges what is contrary to justice, and hates it. An innocent man did not know things in themselves good and evil, though, of course, he knew that it was his duty to obey God. Adam's sin was in trying to be like God; our goodness is in desiring to be like Him. Ought we not to seek to be like God -- to imitate Him, as Paul exhorts? We are called by glory and virtue, and are seeking to remind our souls that God's counsel is that we shall be conformed to the image of God's Son. This one thing we should do, "forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before." Adam knew nothing of this; his whole moral nature was entirely different. In sinning man got his conscience, and was ruined in getting it, because it was a bad one. Consequently he was afraid of the God he wished to be like. He lost innocence, and we never regain it, but we are renewed after the second Adam. We are, after the image of God, created in righteousness and true holiness, made partakers of the divine nature, and brought to judge of sin as God judges it, and to love holiness as He loves it.
It is after God we are created again; Ephesians 4: 24. Not only have we, as men, the knowledge of good and evil, which made the man afraid of God, and hide himself, but now in being born again it is another thing. We have life in our souls in a divine way.
We have the holy moral nature that God has, and in this nature there is a positive delight in the righteousness of God, which does not condemn it, because it is the same. This new nature feeds upon, and delights in, what is of God, and is satisfied with the object before us, even Christ Himself. God has chosen us in Him that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love -- He has us before Him in this the image of His own nature. In Christ we have all that God delights in brought out and displayed in the man. He is the perfect and blessed display of all God is, and He is the expression before God of what He has made us to God. We have the image of God in the man, and, more than this, we have what man is for God.
This quickening of the Spirit has a double character; it is death in both. We are dead, and are to reckon ourselves "dead indeed unto sin," etc. This is liberty. But there is death practically, or putting to death, and that is what we do not like, for this is the cross. We like the liberty, but not the mortifying, or putting to death, our members on earth.
The sentence of death that God has passed on flesh and sin is an unchangeable sentence, and it is a positive blessing to have done with the flesh, for it is a condemned thing. The sentence was executed upon Christ, the new man, that we might live after the power of that new Man -- Christ. There is an important point as to this, which is often confounded and mistaken. We must live that we may die -- not die that we may live, as is often represented. Men talk of death before they have life, but they are wrong. Death, morally, is the consequence of having life. And this is just the difference between a monk -- not using the word offensively -- and a Christian. As a monk I mortify myself in order that I may live, instead of first having life, as a Christian, from God, that I may die. "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter," etc. (verse 5). "Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth." God has begotten us by the word. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." "He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true." "The word giveth light and understanding to the simple," and the effect of the light's coming in by the word is to bring the judgment of everything in man, as it brings delight in that which is of God.
"That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." There is the communication of a new nature in believing; and, when born of God, the truth sanctifies and cleanses. There is "the washing of water by the word"; but this cannot be till after we are born of the Spirit by the word. There would be no sense in saying, that which is born of water is water; but that which is born of the Spirit is of the spiritual nature of God, not of man's nature.
"The living water" made the woman at the well, to whom Jesus spake, hate herself. It detects what is in man. Hence Christ could say to His disciples, "Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken to you." In the new and holy nature, in which I am created of God in Christ, I can now take up everything that I delight in, and I can judge everything contrary to it. Thus the word has a cleansing power. Baptism may be the expression and figure of it here, as the Lord's supper embodies the truth of John 6 ("whoso eateth my flesh," etc.) -- though I do not say that the Lord referred to either institution, but to the reality of which each is the sign. The substance of the thing is not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who came by water -- not by water only, but by water and blood. It will not do to look at ourselves with approbation. See what is said of the king of Tyre. (Ezekiel 28). We must not look at self, nor take pleasure in it. We want an object outside ourselves -- even the renewed man does. The moment there is the communication of the divine nature, there must be delight in Christ Himself.
This is brought out in this double way in John 5 and 6. In chapter 5 there are dead sinners quickened, or raised. This speaks of God communicating the divine nature. I do not speak of faith now, but it is God's own power that is spoken of -- God quickening. In chapter 6 we get faith still more fully insisted on: and here is the object of my faith presented. This is perfection -- to be so occupied with Christ, as to be forgetful of self. While told to reckon ourselves dead, we are looked on as dead already in Christ. How is this? Christ is looked on as coming down into the place of death, that there, where I was without stirring, Christ might be and rise up out of it for my deliverance. Because of what He suffered on the cross, as manifested in the power of His resurrection, "old things have passed away, and all things have become new." God will have none of the old thing now. It is defiled and corrupted and good for nothing.
"All things have become new," not renewed. "In him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." He is the eternal life that was with the Father and is manifested unto us. This is not the man that fell out of paradise! How then can God and man be connected? "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." There was the inseparable barrier of man's will on one side, and the power of death on the other. Therefore he says, "I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" But "if it die (the corn of wheat), it bringeth forth much fruit." "The exceeding greatness of his power," etc. (Ephesians 1: 19), is in resurrection. Then, passing over the allusion to the church, in the next chapter we read, "You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins," etc. In connection with, and the basis of, it all is Christ, who is dead and risen, with whom we are quickened together. The second Adam has not His place as Head of the family, except by death first. Why? Because redemption could not have been wrought. Nor would it have been, as now, a question of God's righteousness. These being accomplished, He is entirely and in everything fitted to be the head of the new creation. This new link is wrought by the word. The living word, by the Spirit, is the power, and resurrection-life with Christ is the standing into which we are brought.
Christ, we may observe, speaks to Nicodemus about the things that he, as a Jew, ought to have understood. (Compare Ezekiel 36.) He says, "If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" God's earthly things were not evil or fleshly things, but the promised earthly portion which the Jews were to look for. In the latter day they must be sprinkled with water, and have a new heart from the Spirit, before they can inherit. This Nicodemus should have known. Then there are the heavenly things, which are better. "The wind bloweth where it listeth," etc. There is the sovereign acting of His grace. He will take any poor sinners of the Gentiles, as well as the Jews, and bring them into the blessing He has to give. "God so loved the world." This goes beyond the Jews. It is not here that God so loved Israel.
For all alike, Christ was needed. For the best, the Son of man must be lifted up, and for the worst God would give His only-begotten Son. Under promises, law, or nature, death must come in, if man is to be saved. In nothing can they be taken up in their own title.
What are we brought into by that which Christ has done? He says, "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen." Here was the double revelation of God. Christ is speaking as a divine Person, and as one who has seen divine glory. "No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." He knew, and saw, as One familiar and at ease with the Father and the Holy Ghost, with the glory of the Godhead. He was Himself in the unity of the divine essence. And though we were not only men outside it all but fallen men, yet now, as born of God, what are we not brought into! We have resurrection-life in Him; we are one spirit with the Lord. It is not the poor thing of the mere renewal of good qualities; but it is Christ, the Son, Himself making us partakers of His own things.
This chapter tells us of One who has come down from heaven, who speaks that He knows, and testifies that He has seen; who knows God fully, and who knows what is in man; and He tells us what God requires, and what God gives. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. He, the Son of God, came the Light into this world, but men loved, and still love, darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. He was born into this world in grace for you. He has not left us in anywise in the dark about it, but has brought perfect light to our hearts and consciences, which testifies what is of heaven, what is from heaven, and what is needed for any connection with heaven, and in order to be there. So that when I come to heaven, there is nothing in its moral nature that is not brought to my heart and conscience now. You will not get a more blessed thing in heaven than Christ on earth!
Nicodemus had a mere human conviction of Christ; he knew that He was a teacher come from God. When they saw His miracles, many believed on Him. How many Christians are like that now! giving a mere human assent to who He is. It is not insincerity or dishonesty, but they do not know Him. There is no want created in the heart. The Son of God is here: is that enough for you? You do not care to know what He is here for, or whether you have any part with Him! You do not trouble yourselves farther, or care to listen to one word He says; not an anxiety as to what He has said concerning you, or interest as to one thought or feeling He might have. Could you be quiet if you thought you were lost? You could not. You are lost! and there is no greater proof of the utter ruin of man than that Christ does not attract his heart, speaking and testifying of divine things. Any bit of news will occupy you -- a bit of family interest -- a newspaper -- a thing passing in the street; and here is news from heaven, news from God, and you do not care! -- nor for all the love in His coming down from heaven to tell it to you!
You are indifferent to all that God can do, and you tell me that it is not crime; but is it no testimony of the state of your soul? That Christ has no beauty that you should desire Him, and yet you are "hoping" to go to heaven! And what is there in heaven for you? Do you expect to be happy if there this Christ, who is the very centre of heaven's delight, has no attraction for your heart? Impossible! It is quite clear that, if I am to be happy in heaven, it is with God. What pleasure have you in God? Is there one thing in your heart now that would make you happy in heaven, one single affection in your heart that finds its pleasure and company in those who fill heaven? Oh, may it come home to your soul -- the conviction I am all wrong, the tree bad, and as I am I can never be better. Here the Lord, speaking what He knows, says, Ye must be born again. This was what God required.THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB
CHRIST A SWEET SAVOUR TO GOD FOR US
HOW SHOULD MAN BE JUST WITH GOD?
JESUS DEPENDENT
JESUS CHRIST THE RIGHTEOUS
JEHOVAH MY SHEPHERD
THE SOUL IN ADVERSITY CONSIDERED
GOD'S HOUSE AND THE WAY
EMMANUEL
"COME UNTO ME"
JESUS THE SUFFERER
CHRIST DEALING WITH CONSCIENCE AND HEART
THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST
THE ROBBER SAVED
THE WORD MADE FLESH
THE PRESENCE OF THE HOLY GHOST ON EARTH CONSEQUENT ON CHRIST'S EXALTATION TO THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD
BORN AGAIN
NOTES OF AN ADDRESS ON JOHN 3
IS IT NOT TRUE THAT YOU MUST HAVE A NEW NATURE?