THINGS OLD AND NEW
[p. 52] THINGS OLD AND NEW
What I want to bring before you is the way in which God has seen fit to present Himself to us in respect of His purpose. This is a point of moment, especially at a time when Christianity is in decay in this world. The house of God has been corrupted in the hand of man, and has become a great house. The grace of God has been neutralised to a large extent in Christendom by mixing gospel and law. But if this is recognised in the soul, the point for us is to fall back on the purpose of God, for it is impossible that God can be diverted from His purpose. Behind the testimony in the early days of Christianity, God had His purposes. In Luke 24, the Lord gives the apostles their commission: “Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem”. That was the testimony in which God saw fit to approach man. Forgiveness of sins and inheritance are the two terms of God’s testimony. But behind this testimony, God was setting to work to accomplish the counsel of His will. The name of God was blasphemed through Israel, but God will accomplish His purpose in Israel. The name of God may be blasphemed — and is largely blasphemed — through Christianity, but God will surely accomplish His purpose in Christianity. He cannot be diverted from it; and therefore, in a day of ruin like that in which our lot is cast, it is highly important, for the establishment of our souls, that we should enter into the apprehension of the purpose of God.
Now, when God speaks of His purpose, you commonly get the expression in Scripture, “in Christ Jesus”. Christ Jesus is the vessel of God’s purpose.
[p. 53] Anyone can readily see the difference in speaking of Christ as Lord and Saviour, and the presentation of Him to us as the vessel of God’s purpose — the expression and revelation of it. It is a wonderful thing that God has made His counsel known to us, His counsel in a living Man. You could not learn it simply by reading the scripture; it is made known to us in a living, glorified Man.
Every promise of God is in Christ Jesus, and He is presented to us so that our hearts may receive instruction in the counsel of God. All will see the importance of being instructed of God. If I saw what God’s purpose is concerning me, I would not desire to thwart it or to hinder it; I cannot further it; but I think it is very possible to hinder its effectuality in one’s own soul. The Galatians had begun in the Spirit, and now the apostle had to say to them, “Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?” What is the truth? The truth is the expression of God’s will. We have the letter of the truth in Scripture, but the Spirit is the Spirit of the truth. It is a most important thing for us to know the truth; the Lord said to the Jews, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”. When you get an insight into the counsel of God, and all that is contained in His will, the practical result in you is that you are brought into liberty, and then your anxiety will be not to thwart His purpose.
I hope that you will take in the thought I have referred to, namely, that when God speaks to us as to His purpose, you get the expression, “in Christ Jesus”. It occurs two or three times in this chapter. One instance of it is in verse 14: “That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ”; and again, “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus”.
Now, there are certain blessings which, as Christians, we get down here, which are incidental to our being [p. 54] on earth. For instance, we get the forgiveness of sins, and this in Christ; but the counsel of God’s will is something of a different order from that. The calling of the Christian is involved in the counsel of God’s will. What I have as a man down here, the forgiveness of sins and the inheritance, is incidental to me as in the place of responsibility here on earth. The counsel of God’s will has its own character, and if you get into the sense of it, you reach the line on which God is working, and that is very important. The effect of it will be that you will have experience of the power of God. I think that a great many Christians have but a poor sense of the power of God, because, as to their sense of things, they are not on the line on which God is working: but on the line of His counsels, you get a great sense of His power. What power of man can compare with the power of God? God is working here according to His mighty power to accomplish all the counsel of His will.
What we get in this chapter (I am only going to dwell on two points in it) is the blessing of Abraham that in Christ Jesus has come to the Gentiles, and sonship — in other words, things old and new. There are certain things in Christianity which are new, that never were revealed before; but there are also things which are taken up from the Old Testament. The Lord Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 13, after He had spoken all the parables recorded there, “Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old” (verse 52). If I speak about the blessing of Abraham, that is not new. I will tell you what is new about it, that is the way in which it has reached the Gentiles. But the blessing of Abraham was not in itself new. But when you come to the truth of sonship at the close of the chapter, that is new. Sonship never could come to light until Christ came. Paul says about [p. 55] himself in the beginning of this epistle, “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me”. That was a very new testimony indeed. It did not form part of the blessing of Abraham, or of what God had made known to him. Abraham had his blessing, and we, too, have part in that blessing; but sonship could not be known until the Son of God became Man. When the Father revealed Christ to Peter, the latter entered into it to some extent, he got at least a glimpse of it; he apprehended the Lord in a new light. He had received Him, and believed on Him as the Christ, the son of Abraham and son of David, but now in the Son of God he had the light and expression of the divine purpose, and that was a great point to come to, because on that line, as I have said, God is working. Nothing can be more confirmatory to the soul of the saint than to get experience of the power of God.
Now, as to the blessing of Abraham reaching the Gentiles, I will first endeavour to tell you what the blessing of Abraham was. In fact it is stated here “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness”. In believing God, in the eye of God, Abraham disappeared. He disappeared from the position in which he was as a man in this world, under death, but, on the other hand, he was approved of God; God took account of him for another world. He believed God. But do you think that God was going to endorse anything in Abraham? Not at all. In faith he was gone; but there was the other side of it; God counted his faith to him for righteousness. That has never come into effect yet. It will do so in another scene. Christ said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad”, and in the day of Christ, God’s reckoning of Abraham will come to light. God accounted it to him for righteousness, but though he had this reckoning from [p. 56] God, yet as to himself, looked at as a man in this world, Abraham disappeared. That is, I judge, the principle underlying it, and, in fact, you could not come into blessing in any other way. Take a Jew in this world, under the curse of a broken law, and the judgment of death. The law was the ministration of death; it made matters worse, it added the curse to death. Man was already under death, and the law came and added the curse. This was a terrible position for man to be in; how was man to escape it? That man must disappear. Abraham disappears, but he reappears, according to the reckoning of God. I do not doubt but that is God’s way; it is the way in which, by faith, we pass out of the judgment of death and the curse.
But now, as to the way in which the blessing has reached the Gentiles. It is in Christ Jesus; “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith”. The Son of God became Man, He accepted the place of the curse, and entered into the judgment according to God. This was according to the will of God. He says, “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God”, and in the accomplishment of the will of God He disappears as after the flesh in death. Christ died, but He reappeared in resurrection, not after the flesh, but according to the power of God. He left death and the curse behind, and He reappeared as the communicator of the Spirit. He comes out as the Last Adam and the Second Man. Death and the curse were in our cup, but Christ took the cup; He died out of the state to which it belonged, but He reappeared in the power of God’s victory, and as a life-giving Spirit to men. Christ is marked out in John’s gospel as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”, but at the same time, He is the One who “baptises with the Holy Spirit”.
Well, the same principle is true in regard of us. God communicates to the believer the gift of the Spirit, and the Spirit is the proof that, as after the flesh, you have disappeared from under the eyes of God. It is on that ground alone that God could communicate the Spirit. “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you”. The history of the flesh, in this sense, has for God’s glory been closed up in the death of Christ in order that Christ might communicate the Spirit to men. But what I feel is that, though we have received the Spirit, it is a long time before we understand that we have disappeared as after the flesh. We have each to learn that in its own proper way, and this takes us a long time. As a matter of fact, you may be sure that you disappeared after the flesh in the eye of God before God ever communicated the Spirit to you. It was really in the death of Christ; but when it comes to the question of what is true as regards our consciousness, it is a long time before we come to that point.
When you do come to it, you are brought into Christian liberty. The Holy Spirit is the witness on God’s part to the Christian that he has disappeared after the flesh, but what is true in God’s eye is a very different thing from what is true in our eye. God has arrived at the truth from His side, but we have to arrive at it, beloved friends, from our side. I do not think that you get practically free of the flesh until you have first learned what the flesh is; in the same way, you do not get free from sin until you have learnt what sin is; but you would never learn these lessons if God had not given you the Holy Spirit. And when in the goodness of God we have learnt that, as after the flesh and as under judgment, death and the curse, we have disappeared, then we have reached the point where God began.
[p. 58] Now, take the case of the Galatians. They had begun in the Spirit, the apostle takes them up on that ground. They had believed God’s testimony, and God had imparted to them the gift of the Spirit, but they had not learnt that they had disappeared from the place of men under the curse. If they had, do you think they would have put themselves afresh under the law? Who would be such a madman as that? The fact is, they had not entered into the truth. The practical working of the truth in the soul is this, that, as regards this scene, I am content to disappear; I have been buried. Our righteousness and acceptance with God belongs to another scene, another world. In this scene of sin, the true path for the Christian is to get out of sight. You were out of sight in God’s eye as after the flesh when God communicated to you the gift of the Holy Spirit.
It is a great thing for a saint to know that he is accepted by God apart from works entirely. He has accepted you in regard of a scene which will be according to His pleasure, and when God reveals that scene, His acceptance will come to light. In that day you will have glory with Christ.
I think you will see the importance of understanding this principle which has been verified in Christ, that is, of passing out of sight as under the judgment and curse, and reappearing as the recipients of the Spirit. We have disappeared as in one life, but have reappeared in another. The blessing of Abraham has come on the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
What I have been speaking about hitherto, are “things old” — the blessing of Abraham, and that side of things. The promise of blessing was first made to Abraham: “In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed”, and afterwards confirmed to the seed of Abraham in Genesis 22. The same promise was made: “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed”. This plainly contemplates that which has now been fulfilled here, namely, the blessing of Abraham reaching the Gentiles — not in Abraham, but in the Seed of Abraham, in Christ Jesus, in view of the promise of the Spirit.
But in the New Testament the truth comes to light that the seed of Abraham was the Son of God, and that brings in the things “new”. You could hardly have learnt that in the Old Testament; when we read the Old Testament in the light of the New, we see many things much more clearly. The fact is, I have sometimes thought that one might put the New Testament before the Old, for it is in the light of the New Testament that you understand the Old. The prophets did not understand the prophecies; it is we who understand them. The Old Testament scriptures were not written for the contemporaries. Christianity is the real beginning for God. I quite admit that God had taken a people provisionally, but as to the accomplishment of God’s counsels, the beginning was Christ, and the continuation of Christ is Christianity. We have come to the consummation of the ages and the starting-point is at the end of testing. God has set to work to accomplish the counsel of His will.
Now, as I said before, Christ Jesus is not only the Seed of Abraham, but the Son of God. We read in verse 24, “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children (or sons) of God, by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptised unto Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise”. Now, I think this, that the expression “in Christ Jesus” invariably refers to Christ in resurrection.
[p. 60] He is the expression, the revelation, of God’s purpose. Christ was always that, but this did not come out fully until He was severed from all connection with man after the flesh. When Christ came forth out of death by the mighty power of God, then it is that you get the full light of God’s counsel in man. I think you will see the force of this in connection with the apostle Paul. Paul probably never knew Christ after the flesh. He says, “If even we have known Christ according to flesh, yet now we know him thus no longer”. He knew Christ only in glory; Christ appeared to him from heaven, that is the first light which Paul ever got of Christ. And that is the full expression of God’s purpose in regard to the church.
Now, I dare say some would say, But does not the expression ‘children, or sons of God’, occur in the Old Testament? I know it does. Adam was in a sense son of God. ‘Son of God’ is an expression which is applied to the angels. Israel is called son of God; you will remember God’s word to Pharaoh, “Israel is my son, my firstborn”. But all these expressions are more or less vague, and you must take each one in its connection. Israel had a special place on earth in relation to God, and God owns it. So, too, the angels are called sons of God. But that does not explain to you the idea of ‘sons of God’ as brought to light in the New Testament. If you want to know what ‘sons of God’ means, as we know it in Christianity, you must learn it in Christ Jesus. You get a statement in the next chapter: “When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, come of woman, come under law”, what for? “That we might receive sonship”. God thus made known the counsel of His will. Christ came “that he might redeem those under law, that we might receive sonship”. The purpose of His coming was the accomplishment of God’s will, and in that way God presents Christ Jesus as Son of God, the pattern of what we [p. 61] are going to be. Was there anything like Christ until Christ came? A blessed Man, who could declare the Father’s name, and was in the consciousness of the Father’s love — that is what Christ was down here. There had been men of faith according to God’s heart, but in Christ is seen something totally new — which never could have been made known until the Lord came from heaven. So Jesus said, “We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen”. That was His testimony in this world. When Christ rose again from the dead, a great many things were altered, but His relation to the Father was not altered. Christ was cut off and had nothing, but this could not affect His relation to the Father. He sends, in John 20, the message by Mary to the disciples: “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God”. There was a new platform, and that was association with God’s Son: He calls them His brethren in sending that wonderful message. He was the pattern of their place; if they would know what they were in the eye of God, they could learn it alone in Christ risen again from the dead. God “has predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he should be the firstborn among many brethren”. Now, what the apostle says to the Galatians is this: “Ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”. There are a great many things that many Christians do not understand. They do not apprehend how they have disappeared from the eye of God in the cross of Christ; but I can say to the youngest or the most advanced Christian, you are the object of God’s counsel, God has His own purpose about you, and that is sonship, and sonship is His gift. You could not become a son of God in any other way except by His gift. “Ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”, that is, that in Christ Jesus, God has revealed the counsel of His will in regard to us, and that is sonship. Now, mark the greatness of it;
[p. 62] see what the apostle says here, speaking of it: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus”. All is on resurrection ground. It is only on that ground that these distinctions after the flesh can be escaped from. Sonship is on resurrection ground, and why? Because Christ is on resurrection ground. He was, as here, the corn of wheat that would have abode alone, but in resurrection there is a new platform on which He is not ashamed to call the saints His brethren. It is on that line that God is working, bringing many sons to glory. You may testify to people in this world what great things God has done for you, and has had mercy on you, but you will have but little real power in this world in God’s testimony, except as you are in the light of God’s calling. The lack of this is the cause of the great weakness that marks our testimony.
Now, I want to say a word to indicate to you how God is forming you according to His purpose. God puts you first into the relationship, and then gives you the Spirit of it. If you have not got the qualification for the relationship, you are not fit for it. It is the sovereign will of God that puts you in the place, but not only does He put you in that place, but He proceeds to form you for the place. And the beginning of this is, “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us”, Romans 5: 5. Sonship conveys nothing if it does not mean that I am in the love of God, that is by the Holy Spirit. If you get the sense of the love of God, you will respond to that love, but you can only enter into it as you are taught of God. Do not suppose that you are taught by me; no teaching will really stand except that which is of the anointing, which is of God. The scripture says, “They shall be all taught of God”. Christians are divinely taught. You may be helped by the words of one or another, but nevertheless, it is [p. 63] that which is of the anointing that stands, and the effect of that teaching is that you are assured that God loves you, and you then answer to that love.
Now, that is the value of sonship. Eternal relations are established between God and the Christian, the principle and character of which is, that I am the object of His love, and that I love God; and more than that, I am of a company of which God’s own Son is the blessed and eternal Head and Centre. He has taken that place; “I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee”, Hebrews 2: 12. He leads the praises of the assembly. All praise will be led by Christ; it is most wonderful how this opens out in the Psalms: “In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee”, and then, “My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation”, and “I will sing unto thee among the nations”. My conviction is this, that in the millennium all praise will be led by Christ. I cannot tell the manner of it, but I believe it will be. Every circle will be conscious that Christ praises there, whether it be the great congregation, or the nations. Christ is the centre, because He not only reveals God, but sustains all. The light of God has come to us in Christ, but He has taken the priestly place on man’s side. We see Him taking up everything on man’s behalf, so that He becomes the leader in every circle.
Now, our calling is sonship. You get this truth substantiated in the beginning of the epistle to the Ephesians. God has predestinated us to sonship to Himself. I would like Christians to be in the blessed reality of God’s calling, as to their consciousness of things, and on the line on which the power of God operates. This may not be a mighty display, it is a mighty power. The great power of God is exercised in leading saints into the consciousness of God’s love, and in giving them to respond to that love. God may put forth His power in many ways, but that is the line [p. 64] on which the power of God is operating at this time, to make His love a great reality to the hearts of Christians, so that they may be a worshipping company. “I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them”, John 17: 26.
Now, I trust you will keep together the things old and new; the blessing of Abraham, and God’s call into the place of sonship. Do not put things off to the future. God puts us into the relationship now, and not only that, but He forms us by His divine power, according to the relationship in which He has been pleased to put us.
May He give us to understand something of the greatness of association with Christ!