PAUL'S TEACHING SUBSTANTIATED BY JOHN'S IN VIEW OF THE LORD'S COMING

PAUL’S TEACHING SUBSTANTIATED BY JOHN’S IN VIEW OF THE LORD’S COMING

It may be of service at this moment to bring under the attention of saints the place filled in Scripture by the writings of Paul and John respectively, and the relation in which the one stands to the other in regard to their inspired testimony, for it must not be forgotten that though each inspired instrument has his own distinct line, all the writings go to form one homogeneous whole.

It may be remarked at the outset that whatever place John filled as an honoured and inspired instrument of inspiration, he had no distinctive commission given to him as regards public service in the world. He occupied a place in testimony in common with Peter and the twelve, but he laid no distinctive foundation. Peter was specially commissioned to feed and shepherd the sheep and lambs of Christ. Paul had a special mission to Gentiles in the gospel, and to enlighten all as to the administration of the mystery, but John was to tarry till Christ came. Hence we find Peter building up new-born saints (Jews of the dispersion) as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, and Paul as a wise master-builder laying a foundation, but the same thing is not found in John’s epistles, which serve rather to guard saints from being turned aside from what was from the outset, that is, as to Christ.

In the gospel of John and in his epistles we find scarcely an allusion to the assembly in any aspect, though we do find there truths which are essential to it. In the Revelation the Lord shows to John in a mystical way the assemblies in Asia as an existing fact, and He makes known through John the decline and partial recovery that were to have place in the assembly as a whole; but the point of view is the assembly as ^[p. 342] in responsibility, and viewed as departed in heart from its espousal, which had been the special work of Paul. All this is shown to John, not as a fresh revelation, but as “the things which are” in view of the introduction of things that should be after these, for obviously the latter could not come in until the end of “the things that are” had been made clear. In the end of the Revelation, John is permitted to see the heavenly city, the bride, the Lamb’s wife, in its relations earthward, so to say. The aim of Paul’s ministry had been to set the saints before God in heavenly places according to the truth of the calling of the bride; while John sees her as the holy city descending from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. The assembly is then seen as the intermediary through which God will display His glory to men, and this connects itself with the general line of truth in John; but I think it must be admitted from what has been said that in no sense or aspect can the assembly be regarded as the distinctive work of John. No dispensation of it was committed to him. All he has is, “The Spirit and the bride say, Come”.

The foregoing remarks will serve to clear the ground for what follows.

It is commonly thought, and perhaps justly, that John’s writings are historically the latest of Scripture, but, while admitting this, it must be remembered that to Paul, and not to John, was given to complete the word of God, by the unfolding of the mystery. What is given to us in the writings of John develops nothing as to God’s dispensations, but serves to fill out and confirm what was already there. As to God’s dispensations there can be nothing beyond Paul, in whose writings alone we have the two great parts of Christianity, namely, the gospel of the glory and the mystery. My present object is to seek to make clear to any who may read, the relation in which John’s writings stand to Paul’s.

^[p. 343] It has been often observed that when decay and failure began to be manifest in the assembly viewed as a system set up here on earth, the apostle Paul in his epistles to Timothy and Titus falls back on the promise of life in Christ Jesus, a truth which now became prominent with him, and he speaks of himself as apostle, according to the hope of it. When the assembly, having become corrupted, could no longer safely be leant on as the pillar and base of the truth, eternal life in Christ comes specially into notice, and apart from the knowledge of it the truth of the assembly according to the thought of God cannot now be apprehended. According to Paul’s general line of teaching, eternal life tends to connect saints with the purpose of God as displayed in Christ in glory, and to separate believers thus in mind and spirit from the corruption which prevails down here, and at the present time it is, I judge, the way by which the truth of the assembly must be reached.

It does not mean that the truth of the assembly is in any way put in the shade, but that eternal life is the road by which the truth of the assembly must be learned. It was simple in the early days for the saved ones to be added to the assembly, and they were thus practically sheltered from the untoward generation around; but when the assembly has been leavened by evil, and become a place of shelter for every evil thing, the way of return to the truth must of necessity be difficult. To keep Christ’s word, and not deny His name, and to know that He has loved the assembly, demands personal acquaintance with Himself. In other words, the knowledge of 2 Corinthians must in souls precede that of 1 Corinthians. I refer, of course, to spiritual apprehension — Christ written in the heart, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, is needed now to emancipate a soul from the corruptions of Christendom, so that it may enter spiritually into the truth of the assembly. Many may be brought ^[p. 344] ostensibly on to what is termed church ground who have no spiritual apprehension whatever of the assembly, for the reason that they know little or nothing of life in Christ, which places them morally outside the whole course of things here. In the true power of it as seen in Paul, we know no one after the flesh.

I have before referred to the fact that Paul carries the thought of eternal life on to conformity to Christ in glory, but there is certainly no intention by this to relegate the truth of it to the future. His ministry was of the new covenant, and had special reference to Christ being written in the heart; and by looking at the glory of the Lord we are changed into the same image from glory to glory. He would have saints sow to the Spirit, that of the Spirit they might reap eternal life, and desires Timothy to lay hold on eternal life to which he was called. Now it is here that, as appears to me, the writings of John are of the greatest moment to us. He comes in in a way in which neither Paul, nor Luke, the companion of Paul, could. He bears witness of Christ as having been with Him from the outset. From him we learn how the question of eternal life had its solution in what had been manifested in Christ here on the earth, unknown of the world and refused by His own.

The first great feature of John’s testimony as to Christ is the declaration of the Father, that is, God revealed toward the world as love, and as now having in the Son, as man, an adequate and sufficient object for the satisfaction of His love. Then we have the great work effected by Christ in removing from before God, by the cross, all that was contrary to God and that compromised His glory in order that those given to Christ by the Father might be set in His own place as objects here of the Father’s love, and receive from the Son the water which He gives to be in them a well of water springing up to eternal life, thus connecting ^[p. 345] them livingly with Himself. This was actually accomplished in John 20, and we have the solution of the question of eternal life in the midst of a world that remained unchanged, and which by the Spirit’s presence was convicted of sin. What I have brought forward as to John is parallel to the truth in Romans 8. But there was yet another point in John’s testimony as to Christ. The Lord in leaving the world spoke of sending another Comforter from the Father, who besides bringing to the remembrance of the disciples all things that Jesus had said to them, would testify of Christ in glory. Hence in John’s first epistle we find that after bearing witness of what they (the apostles) had heard and seen, John has in chapter 5 to bring in the Spirit as witness to Christ as last Adam (come by water and blood) in glory, and this corresponds to 2 Corinthians 3. But further, in John 16, we find the Spirit would glorify Christ, would take of His things and show them to His own, and all that the Father had were His. Now this carries us out into a range of things not further developed in John’s writings, things which eye has not seen nor ear heard, which have not entered into man’s heart to conceive, things which God has prepared for them that love Him, but which God has now revealed by His Spirit. For these I think we must go to Paul, to whom it was given, by the revelation of the mystery, to complete the word of God. And I think we gain an idea of these things, in what may be described as the climax of the revelation to Paul, in Ephesians 3, for the comprehension of which we need to be strengthened according to the riches of God’s glory with all might by His Spirit in the inner man that the Christ may dwell by faith in our hearts. It is sad indeed to reflect that it is in Ephesus the point of declension is noted to John.

What has been said may in a measure serve to show the interconnection of the Scriptures, and the impossibility of our gaining any full and adequate idea of all ^[p. 346] the counsel of God without the help of John; while at the same time Paul’s testimony remains as the work of the wise architect. Not that I would in any way cloud the peculiarly lovely and blessed character and the intrinsic value of John’s writings in themselves; but it is very necessary that the various parts of the divine revelation should have their due place in our souls, and be formed there into what they are, as one homogeneous, harmonious whole.