JOHN 6 (4)
JOHN 6 (4)
FER What I see in this chapter is the Lord presenting Himself to us in three different positions: first, as come down out of heaven; secondly, as giving His flesh for the life of the world, so that you may eat the flesh of [p. 121] the Son of man, and drink His blood; and thirdly, as ascended up where He was before. The soul has to follow the course which the Lord has taken.
Ques So that if they were to be with Him when [p. 114] He had ascended up where He was before, that meant following Him into death?
FER Yes; and the Lord introduces after that, “It is the Spirit which quickens, the flesh profits nothing”. That is what immediately follows.
Ques The Spirit was to characterise things down here whilst the Lord was up there?
FER Yes. It is only the Spirit that could put you in touch with Christ up there.
Ques Is the following Him into death what you call appropriation?
FER Yes, though not for salvation, but for deliverance. I think that is the great point that comes out in the chapter. You do also get this much, “Unless ye shall have eaten the flesh of the Son of man, and drunk his blood, ye have no life in yourselves”. Verse 53 is a test. Then in the next verse you have the kind of person that has eternal life — it is a person who eats His flesh and drinks His blood, that is, one who appropriates His death (verse 54). There is a great deal of difference between the faith in His death and the appropriation of His death. There are thousands of people who are in the faith, but not the appropriation, of His death.
Ques The subject of these chapters, up to chapter 6, is deliverance, is it not?
FER Yes, quite so.
Ques That is, you begin with new birth and eternal life in chapter 3?
FER Well, the introduction of new birth, as I understand it, was really to exclude the Jew. He brings in the necessity of the new birth to put the Jew out of court; the Jew had no more title to be born again than the Gentile, that is, “whosoever”. Now if the Jew had a special place, you could not have the “whosoever” brought in, but it is, “whosoever believeth in him” — Jew or Gentile — “should not perish, but have eternal life”.
[p. 115] Then when you come to chapter 4 you get the beginning of the subjective side — of our side — the “well of water springing up into everlasting life”; that is really the beginning of eternal life in the believer. Then in chapter 5 it is the hearing of the voice of the Son of God — the full light of the love of God brought in — and in chapter 6 it is the appropriation of Christ’s death, and you cannot get on without that, because it means the deliverance of the person from the whole world-system. It is only by His death — by the appropriation of it — that you get free of the flesh and the world-system. But then again, if you are to be brought into full blessing, you must have the Priest. He alone can conduct you into it. “He that eateth me, even he shall live by me” — we want Him.
The great mistake has been in limiting the idea of the Priest to the Jewish idea of it — the idea of making intercession, and so on — and not seeing that the Priest is to conduct us into heavenly blessing.
Ques In, what way does the Priest conduct us in?
FER I think He makes us conscious of association with Himself. He has become man that we may be associated with Him, so that, as man, He may be the Centre and Head of a company.
Rem And now He has gone back to God.
FER Yes, quite so. But “it is the Spirit that quickens”. The moment you have the Son of man ascended up where He was before, you get the Spirit, and the Spirit quickens us, so that we may become conscious of association with Christ where He is. You can very well understand that no one could have the idea of His ascending up where He was before, and of their association with Him, if they did not know Him as come down. He came down that we might go up, that we might be with Him, in association with Him, in life. He really came down in order to engage our hearts. You would not care to be with Him if [p. 116] you were not attached to Him, and therefore it is that the apostle says, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha”. Where you learn the grace of Christ is in His coming down: “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor”. His death was necessary, too, for there was no way of deliverance but by death. It is impossible to find deliverance from the world-system but by death.
Ques Does it correspond with what we get in Romans 6?
FER Yes, I think so.
Ques And is deliverance the conscious apprehension of it in the soul?
FER Yes, I think so. It is the apprehension of what is the import of the death of Christ. God will not have to say to the flesh any more; He has condemned sin in the flesh, and He will not have anything more to say to it. Well, when I see that, then it works in this way, that I will not have any more to say to it either. That is what the Christian says in the power of the Spirit. He has put off the “body of the flesh in the circumcision of the Christ”.
Ques You no longer look for any good in yourself?
FER No, you do not, and God does not expect you to! You enter into the import of the death of Christ — that God will no longer have to say to the flesh, and it gives you a true estimate of it.
Ques Every believer is entitled to take that place?
FER Yes, exactly. But it must be individual, each one for himself.
Ques Is there any meaning in the appropriation of His death except in deliverance? “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood” is the maintenance of deliverance, is it not?
FER Well, it has to be maintained; but in that verse it is the character of person, the one who eats His flesh and drinks His blood, who has eternal life. It is [p. 117] the appropriation of His death, or, as the apostle puts it, “always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus”.
Ques Is there an allusion to three “eatings” in these verses?
FER Well, the connection is maintained in that way, but what really comes out is that there is reciprocity. He is in your affection, and you are in His, and after all, no person has eternal life if he does not love Christ. Look at verse 56: “Dwells in me and I in him”. The very thought of “dwells in me” is affection, and then, too, in the next verse, “As the living Father has sent me and I live on account of the Father, he also who eats me shall live also on account of me”. Christ is indispensable to us. He wanted nothing but the Father, and so in regard to the Christian, if he has Christ, he does not want anything else. People talk about eternal life, and claim to have it, but after all, many of them have very little affection for Christ, and the whole thing is contradictory.
Ques Has not verse 53 been used of the sinner coming to Christ?
FER But it is not the sinner coming at all. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are strictly continuous. They do not go back to chapter 3 at all.
I think it is immensely important to see that the manifestation of Christ was bound to solve, in some way or other, the question of eternal life. You get hints of it, you remember, in the Old Testament. There is reference to it in Psalm 133, and then, too, in Daniel. The Christ was in some way to bring in a solution of that question. You find people coming to the Lord with the question as to how they might have eternal life. But He did not bring in eternal life according to the Old Testament scriptures. It has got its solution, but it takes another form. The secret and ground of it now is the Spirit in the believer.
Rem And Christ is the model of it.
FER Yes, quite so — He is “the true God and eternal life”. But with Him there were no links to be broken, while now what we have is the mighty energy of the Spirit springing up and emancipating the believer. Then, too, we have the testimony of divine love in Christ’s death — we have that light; and now, in this chapter, we get the grace of Christ. He became a Man in order to conduct us into the scene of life where He is. He became a Man for that purpose, that we might touch Him, that He might abide in us, and we in Him. It is a very different thing from believing in Him. You believe in Him before you have affection for Him. Affection is by the Spirit.
Rem “The Son of man ascending up where he was before” shows the sphere.
FER Yes; and what a remarkable way of putting it, is it not? For He certainly was not the Son of man when He came down, but the great point is, that it is that Person who came down. The Son of man is a designation of that Person — the Person designated by the title “Son of man” goes up.
Then you get the great truth that the Spirit quickens, and what I understand that to mean is the Spirit indwelling — it is in contrast with the flesh. It is not the Spirit of God acting upon a man as when he is born again, but it is an indwelling Spirit who quickens — makes a man really alive. I think the great point in chapter 4 is emancipation; the water of life, which Christ gives, springs up to eternal life; but I think it goes even farther here. There it is emancipation from sin, but here it involves deliverance from the flesh and the world-system.
Rem This has to do with the affections of heaven, so to say.
FER Exactly; it makes you responsive to the love of God. The first breath of divine love in a person is response to the love of God — when a person can say, “I love God”.
[p. 119] Ques What is the connection between this and the Son quickening as in the previous chapter?
FER Oh, well, I think the one takes the external side, and the other the subjective. Of course, in one sense all was the work of the Son — the whole thing from beginning to end; but if you speak of the means employed in us, it is the Spirit. On the one hand, it is the Son acting in concert with the Father, but on the other, it is the Spirit who is operative within. Here in chapter 6 it is the subjective side. The Lord is really rebuking them for having taken up His words in a material way. He says, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life”. He had been talking about His flesh, and they took it up naturally — the words that He spake were spirit and life. The fleshly understanding of the words of Christ profits nothing.
Rem So that it comes to this, that only the spiritual can understand them.
FER Well, quite so. There is nothing that tends to lead people wrong more than understanding things literally and materially. If you try to understand things literally, you soon go wrong. Every illustration drawn from natural things, when used to bring spiritual things before us, can never be more than a figure. For instance, when Scripture speaks of new birth, or of the one body as a representation of the body of Christ, it only presents us, as it were, with figures, and we must not forget it.
Ques Please explain what you mean by carrying things out literally?
FER Well, for example, the attempt to make out a mystical man. It is the employment of a figure which Scripture presents to us to show us the intimacy that exists between the members of the body down here; that every member is indispensable, and that all are interdependent, but you must not employ the figure beyond that.
[p. 120] Rem And the Spirit would only give that understanding of it.
FER Yes. You take the figure up as the Spirit gives you understanding of it, but if you attempt to use it beyond that you will get into error.
Ques How does faith differ from appropriation?
FER Well, I think that a person is saved by the faith of facts. I do not think you are saved by the understanding of facts. That means that you understand the import of the facts, which is appropriation — what the divine mind was in those facts.
Ques But are they not very intimately connected?
FER Yes, but they are very different. You see, it is a believer who appropriates, while it is a hitherto unconverted man who believes.
Rem It is very important to see that it is a believer who is contemplated in this chapter.
FER Yes. It is “he that eateth”. You could not speak of an unbeliever “putting off the body of the flesh” — that is the work of a believer. When a man first believes, the death of Christ is apprehended in its value in the sight of God, but that does not argue for a moment that he enters into the import of His death. The beginning of that is baptism, I think. You see that the only place for the man that has gone is burial. You come to this, that the flesh has got to go, because it has already gone for God; but you do not expect an unbeliever to enter into that, and therefore I think you cannot be too simple in the presentation — in the gospel — of the death and resurrection of Christ. The gospel comes out in the way of a testimony, an announcement. The gospel is heralded, and where the facts are accepted — not necessarily understood — it is the salvation of the one who believes.
Ques Is not the gospel the light of God?
FER Yes, I think it is; but then God does not stop to explain to people all the import of Christ’s death, that is another thing. So you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, and enter into the true import of that death in the mind of God. Then, again, you are “risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead”, and you have come to the import of His resurrection. You get a statement of the fact of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, where you have brought before you the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, but when you come to think of being risen with Him, you apprehend that the resurrection of Christ is the introduction of a new world. All, on the one side, has gone in the death of Christ, but in His resurrection a new world comes into view, and a new world not formed out of the wreck of the old one. Then I can say that all the ties that bound me to this system are broken. How can I cling to a world that God has done with?
Ques Was this what brought in some of the difficulty here in this chapter, “This is an hard saying”?
FER Yes. A very hard saying indeed to people who are not content to see that this world is gone for God.
Rem And especially so for a Jew.
FER Yes. All his hopes and expectations were bound up with it. The Lord’s words meant the breaking of all ties which he had once recognised.
Rem Then the resurrection is really the introduction of the eternal day.
FER Yes, it is. “Through the faith of the operation of God who hath raised him from the dead”. It is a most wonderful thing to be risen with Christ, all that tied me to this world broken. Perhaps I have still to get a living in it, and still to serve the Lord for a little moment, but all the bonds are broken, and I stand a free man. That is the power of the apostle’s exhortation, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free”. Morally [p. 122] the believer is no longer in the world. The ground of deliverance is there for every Christian; the way of deliverance has been formed for every one who will take it.
Rem And there is no other way.
FER No. The fact is that, as others have said, a man carries the image of the world in his heart, and if you were to shut up a man in a dungeon, he would still have with him that image. Now you may think this is a very hard thing to say, but I do think that believers very poorly love Christ, and they have very little conception of the love of Christ. Do you think that, if they loved Him, they would care to be happy in the world from which He has been rejected?
Rem Just satisfied with the knowledge of the forgiveness of sins, and that they will go to heaven when they die. The latter part of this gospel brings out how much the Lord counted on the affection of His own.
Ques When He says, “The Spirit quickens”, does it mean that the Spirit can conduct you along that road?
FER Yes. Quickening and deliverance must go together.
Rem Deliverance has more to do with the scene where we are, and the other with the scene where Christ is.
FER Yes. Every element in this scene is totally unsuitable to Christ: man, man’s will, Satan’s power, sin, ambition, no matter what it is. It follows that if you are going to live with Christ, you must be delivered from this scene. “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal”.
As to the thought in verse 67, “Will ye also go away?” we have had the experience of people leaving us, as you know, but the Lord had just the same. Only think what it must have been to the Lord to have [p. 123] that experience, conscious of what He Himself was!
Ques And they were disciples?
FER Yes, up to a certain point. You see, it is not that people do not walk with us, but they leave the light. It may be that we offend them; and in the case before us, flesh was not attracted — the only people who were attracted were those in whom God wrought.
Rem Only those in whom there was something of the divine nature.
Rem These were the sorrows of love with the Lord.
FER Yes; and I am sure one grieves over those who walk not with us. It is a matter of real grief and trouble, but what must it have been to Him!
Then He tests the twelve — “Will ye also go away?” And then you have Peter’s answer, “Thou hast the words of eternal life”. They had that sense of Christ, whatever else was lacking. Now I have, in some measure, that sense of the company. They may not all be quite right, perhaps, but still it is Christ’s company.
Rem And what holds you really is Christ.
FER Yes. I do not think the point is that every one is quite to your mind. If it is Christ, and Christ’s company, how can you turn away? Looking back on the last twenty or thirty years, what have we been doing? I think I should be prepared as much as any, and perhaps more, to allow all the weakness and failure of the company, as well as in myself — but apart from that, where am I to go? The company that I care to be with, and where I am, thank God, is where the light of God is, in spite of infirmity, where there is light upon the truth. I could not say, dogmatically, that the Lord is with them, but what I judge is that the Lord is where the truth is, and it is my conviction that the Lord is with us. The Lord is where the truth is, and that is the company for me. Do you [p. 124] mean to say that the disciples were very different from ourselves? I am sure that the Lord had a very great deal to bear with them, in their dullness, and hardness, and incapacity, and so on. But if there had been no response to His solicitude for them, the Lord would not have continued to give them light. My firm conviction is that the Lord never cares to go on with indifferent people. It was when Moses “turned aside to see” that he got light, that is, he responded to God’s approach, and got light.
Rem If you turn away from the light, then it is a case of “how great is the darkness”.
Ques And does not the principle that “he that hath, to him shall be given” hold good?
FER Yes, I think it does. If people remain in their apprehension of things where they were twenty or thirty years ago, what I should say is that they have overlooked the moving of the tent of testimony — it is continually shifting. It is not that the word of God is altered — the truth is unalterable — but what I want to see is the way in which the truth is adaptable to the circumstances in which I am at the present moment, and not twenty years ago. I do not believe the children of Israel waited twenty years in any one place, they were continually on the move with the tent of the testimony, and if they had not done so they would have been starved.
Rem And we starve if we do not go on with the tent.
FER Yes, we do; we should not get the manna. We have not got any rules as to how to get on without God, and it would be a poor thing if we had.
It is a most wonderful thing to be in the company of the Lord, as we see in Peter’s words, “Thou hast the words of eternal life”. But it is a most terrible thing, too — everything comes to light. He was light, and it brought all the goodness of God in, while at the same time it exposed everything that was not of God. “One of you is a devil”, is what He said of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. The Lord does not try to hold things together in any kind of natural way. He held those whom the Father had given to Him, but He does not get followers together in any human way — in fact, He exposed them, “One of you is a devil”. I think it was in divine wisdom that Judas was chosen. Under the very best influences, it was shown what the heart of man could be: that a man three and a half years in the company of the Lord could be a traitor. There was a traitorous heart there, though probably Judas did not intend all that time being a traitor.
As regard Peter, he had, with all his faults, real affection and attachment of heart to Christ. It was his affection that led him into danger; there was real affection mixed with self-confidence, Peter had to learn to analyse things; he was really attached to Christ, but he was in a position to which he was not equal. I think the prayer which the Lord taught His disciples was, after all, very suitable, “Lead us not into temptation”. If you are placed in circumstances of temptation, then you may pray to be kept, and you may be kept from it. We may ask not to be put into circumstances for which we are not equal.