ABIDING IN CHRIST
ABIDING IN CHRIST
FER It is important to understand that we are called upon to abide in Christ. It does not say abide in a company.
Rem There would not be vitality in abiding in a company.
FER No. The idea of abiding in a company comes much more easily to the mind and is more readily grasped than that of abiding in Christ. The church never had a human organisation, it had no centralisation according to man’s idea. There was the local company, and there were certain privileges which belonged to it; and if the assembly had no organisation at the beginning, certainly, when Christianity has broken down in the world, there is no good in attempting it.
Ques Was not Jerusalem recognised as a centre?
FER God did not give up Jerusalem in a moment, but it never properly belonged to the church.
Ques Did not Antioch afterwards stand as centre in contrast to Jerusalem?
FER The energy of the Spirit was there. The peculiarity in the church was that it had a centralisation which men could not understand at all, this was in the Spirit. Popery is centralised in the pope. Every system on earth has some centralisation, it has a committee or something of the kind.
Ques Was there not an attempt at that in Jerusalem?
FER Yes; and we see how it worked.
Rem The apostles who remained at Jerusalem ought to have gone out.
FER Paul came under its influence when James said to him, “Thou seest, brother, how many thousands [p. 379] of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law”.
Ques Did the tendency develop so that the power of the Spirit of God was lost?
FER I do not know how long this took.
Rem I suppose the true centre of the church is in heaven.
FER It is; but there is a centre on earth in the Spirit of God.
Ques Is there not the same tendency to centralisation now, and the only thing that preserves from it is that things should be seen spiritually?
FER Yes. Paul, in giving way to James’ advice, went the opposite way to that of the Spirit.
He failed in the thing in which James encouraged him to succeed, in appeasing the prejudices of the Jews. One would fail now if one started out to please men.
There is a danger of people having the idea of being borne along by a system — of being attached to a company. There is no company to be borne along by. In the early days of the church it was different. A great many then were carried along by the influence of the company.
Ques Is it not a great safeguard for young Christians to be held by Christian fellowship?
FER Yes; but abiding in Christ must come first; you must first be held by Christ. We are in danger of imitating Christendom, getting people converted and brought into fellowship. The true secret and power of fellowship is abiding in Christ. You must have Christ before you have Christian fellowship.
Rem There is danger of putting a supposed company in the place of Christ.
Ques What would tend to make souls abide in Christ?
FER I think the gain of it. We can understand the gain of a man abiding in the sunshine. A man [p. 380] steering a ship wants the light of the sun; if he has a compass he wants something to check his compass by. Something may go wrong with the compass, or the ship may go wrong. There is no danger of the sun being deflected.
Rem It was something of that sort in Peter’s mind when he said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life”.
FER Exactly. The brethren were exhorted to “cleave to the Lord”. If they got away from Christ, it would be very much like a man trying to steer his ship without the sun.
Ques You would not weaken the importance of going on with the saints?
FER No; that would be the effect. You do not reach Christ through the company, but the company through Christ.
Ques Would you seek to find out if a soul had attachment to Christ?
FER Yes; you would see if the bond was there. I do not speak of attachment in the sense of feeling, but of a bond, a recognition in the soul of a bond. The effect of that is abiding in Christ.
Rem You find men sticking to business because of the gain of it.
FER You abide in Christ on account of the sunshine of it. No man can know the thoughts of God towards man except in Christ. The effect of abiding in Christ is that a man abides in the light of God’s mind. “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another”. Fellowship follows.
God is in the light in Christ. Everything outside of Christ is darkness. What is in Christ is outside of sight or sense. Then it is we have fellowship with one another.
Rem We need not be afraid of Christian fellowship being disturbed if we are abiding in the light. If two [p. 381] saints came together both abiding in Christ there would be fellowship.
FER If people are abiding in Christ, in the light of the sun, it will greatly affect them. They would test everything by that; they would not read half they do. People are greatly tested by what they read. If people were abiding in Christ, they would not care for the common literature that feeds a great many minds.
Rem They would not fulfil the desires of the flesh or the mind if they were abiding in the sunshine.
FER Then again it would have a great effect upon them in regard to their pathway. In the details of their pathway things would be exposed to them. They would not take up with things unsuitable. “Whatsoever doth make manifest is light”. All that is embraced in the will of God would be reached by us, and what is on the divine side would be taken up in our souls in connection with Christ.
Ques What about verse 10?
FER If you abide in Christ, it involves the surrender of your will, because you are guided by Christ, like a mariner adjusts his compass by the sun. Walking in darkness, a man stumbles; if you walk in the light of the sun, you see the pathway. You keep the commandments of Christ, you are swayed and controlled by Him.
Rem Fruit-bearing is impossible without sunshine.
FER Entirely. There are two things essential to fruit-bearing, sunshine and rain. Rain is the effect of sunshine, you would not get rain without sunshine. If there is not plenty of sunshine there will not be much rain. Everything is in Christ.
Ques What do you understand by keeping His commandments?
Rem It comes to the practical surrender of your own will. Abiding in Christ is the condition on which it hangs. A man who adjusts his compass acknowledges the sun as guide for [p. 382] the compass.
Ques How is that brought about?
FER In the recognition that you are not capable of yourself. The cleverest man on earth is not enough for himself. You ought to recognise that. If you take into consideration all the vicissitudes you have to pass through, no man is enough for himself. You want to be in the light of God. In abiding in Christ there is the continual maintenance of this in the soul. In this world a man can only walk in the light of the sun, and so it is spiritually, we can only walk in the light of Christ, and this not only as regards this world but as to eternity. In Ephesians 5 you get into the sunshine. “Wake up, thou that sleepest, and arise up from among the dead, and the Christ shall shine upon thee”. People would in this way overcome the world instead of being overcome by it. Christ’s commandments are the law of liberty.
Ques Is not all that is expressed in Christ become commandment to us in that way, so that we are governed by Christ?
FER I think so. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death”. To a Christian, commandment would be the direction of a life that loves Christ. Christ Himself is the commandment. The appreciation of Christ lies at the root of keeping His commandments.
Rem It is necessary to enjoy the expression of life in Him before one can express it oneself.
FER I want to enjoy Himself. If I would understand what man is in the eye of God I must learn what Christ is. It is a Man who kept His Father’s commandments and who abode in His love. It is a Man who is all that; that is the point to get hold of. He says, “This commandment have I received of my Father”, even as to laying down His life. The commandment is revealed in Him, but He is the One who fulfils it.
Rem What was expressed in Christ was what He [p. 383] was Himself; what has to be expressed in us is Christ.
FER Christ relatively to God. In Christ there was the perfect setting forth of God to man and the perfect setting forth of man to God. It is a very great thing to think of.
Ques Is not the vine and the husband (Romans 7) something of the same thought?
FER The vine has passed away now, and we have the husband. Christ is the beginning of the creation of God. I do not believe in evolution. When God began the creation He had the top in view. All creation takes its character from Christ. You must have Christ in some sense represented in every part of the creation of God. There is some trait of Christ in every part. His being the revealer of the Father is one thing, His being the beginning of the creation of God is another thought.
Ques Was it not necessary that Christ should take the place of the vine because of Israel’s failure?
FER I would not put it quite in that way, for Israel was not the true vine. Christ always was that though it did not come out till the failure was there; so as to the last Adam, I would not say that He came in consequent on the failure of man, though He came in after that failure, but the second Man was the Man of God’s purpose. I think the young especially have to learn that they are not to be borne along by a company. There is no company capable of doing it.
Ques Is it not often that the company is carried on by two or three?
FER It should not be so.
Ques What about “the angel of the church”, Revelation 2 and 3?
FER The angel of the church is mentioned when the church was there. The difficulty now is to find the church. I am afraid of the tendency to look to a company. People have to look to it that they are individually abiding in Christ if they are to be a help [p. 384] to themselves or to anybody else, and abiding in Christ involves the surrender of our own wills. Those abiding in Christ are abiding in the sunshine and they get light on all their ways. The danger is that in coming into a company we may think we have everything, and do not think of abiding in Christ. The effect of not abiding in Christ is that you order things, the details of your life, according to man; you dress and furnish your house according to the world; but if you abide in the light everything is affected by the light. If you abide in Christ, you seek to order things morally. You might have a house in most perfect order, and yet morally in the greatest disorder, each one there asserting his own will. Where you live is not the point: the great thing is to be jealous against moral disorder. Outward order is order according to man. The Lord did not care about outward order and proprieties when He was down here. What affected Him was the moral disorder that existed. The Jews were fastidious about outward order. Being under the influence of Christ produces simplicity.
The fact is you get the light of God in Christ. You have the mind of God brought out as to everything. What can be greater than being in the light of Christ! Christ is the measure and expression of God’s mind with regard to man. I cannot learn it in myself or in any other Christian, but in Christ. The more I appreciate Christ the more I enter into the mind of God towards man. My apprehension of His mind does not alter it, but I enter into it more. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. We want our loins girt about with truth. That would work as to what a man is in the inward parts.
Ques Has not this side been much lost sight of?
FER It has been taken up as being our place in Christ.
Now as to fruit — there is produced in us that which is morally agreeable to God. Fruit comes out very [p. 385] much in our relations one with another. Brethrenism is not fruit. We want to get rid of that, of all that is the effect of our particular associations — the self-complacency, assumption, phraseology, and that kind of thing.
Rem It would have a wonderful effect on the young if they saw us in the sunshine.
FER Fruit comes out in our relation one to another — love, joy, peace, all that is comely. It is never artificial. Fruit is God-ward; it is not service. Service may be fruit, but that is not the idea of fruit.
Ques Is it not the continuation of Christ here?
FER Yes. Fruit reproduces itself. Christianity was meant to be maintained by fruit. Fruit being abundant in the circle, the circle would be maintained. God would not allow the circle to pass away if there were fruit.
Fruit came out in the Philippians in sending a gift to Paul. A meeting dies out because there ceases to be fruit, like the churches in Asia. The Spirit was given to attach you to Christ, and now your responsibility is to abide in Christ. It is natural to the Spirit to keep you, but you have to abide.
Ques Is there any distinction between abiding in Christ and walking in the Spirit?
FER One is the consequence of the other. Fruit is the same in either case.
Ques Why is it connected with prayer? “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you”.
FER Getting your petitions is the divinely given evidence that you are in life, as in 1 John 3, “Whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight”. You are in the circle of love, and you get the proof of it in that God gives you your petitions. The beginning is to abide in Christ; if we are not abiding in Christ, where are we? Abiding in man.
“[p. 386] The darkness is passing, and the true light now shineth”, and the next thing is abiding in the light. It is wonderful how all comes back to abiding in Christ. It is often said a meeting is poor because there is so little ministry. There is sometimes an effort to pour a great deal of ministry on a meeting where there is no sunshine. Ministry will never make up for sunshine. Ministry comes rightly enough when there is plenty of sunshine. You may be sure you will never correct things by ministry. We need a great deal of exercise in the state of things in which we are. Unless things are to go to the bad entirely, we want a great deal of exercise individually with regard to the point of abiding in Christ. It is all very well to go on conforming ourselves to a standard of what is expected amongst brethren, but that is not abiding in Christ. It is a great comfort that Christ is unaltered; He is as available as ever, the sunshine is there. You can touch Christ, and Christ touches you, and He is the perfect expression of God’s mind. The sun will not fail us. Paul in prison is what I call a man.
Rem It is in continuance that the test comes, and that means dependence.
FER Discipline comes in to help us.
Rem There is a verse in the Psalms which says, “Which holdeth our soul in life”.
FER The one great point for us is the appreciation of Christ. If we appreciate Christ, we turn away from man.