“YE SHALL BE MY WITNESSES”

A. J. E. Welch

1 John 5: 6–13; 2 Corinthians 4: 5–7; Acts 1: 6–9

It may be noticed that the thought of witness arises in these scriptures. The end in mind, which is intimated to us in Acts 1, is that we be Christ’s witnesses; not merely those who speak of Him (though speaking of Him would be of great import), but those who personally are His witnesses. We may well ponder what the hosts of heaven can see as lovers of God continue here, where so much that is not of God is extant. It is not only a matter of what men around us may behold; it is a question of what heaven can see, and what we can see in one another. An occasion like this, which we can fittingly speak of as an occasion for fellowship, involves what we can see and experience in one another.

John especially records, in the verses we read in his first epistle, that God has witness borne to certain things. That is to work out in ourselves severally in the greatest assurance as to the knowledge of God Himself. There are specifically these three things, “For they that bear witness are three—the Spirit, and the water, and the blood”; great matters which faith can always have reference to, that we may be stabilised and strengthened perhaps I could add, energised—to continue in this point of witness. We could never have been fitting witnesses of Christ had He not gone into death. There can never be a fitting witness to Christ in

the order of man that was put away at the cross; that is a point which excludes unregulated so-called evangelical activity. There may be a taking up of Scripture, a reading of Scripture; but the idea of witness runs deep, and relates to the whole person, what a person is, and the company in which that person joins, with many another, in what is just one glorious point of witness—that we are witnesses of Christ.

The water and the blood were in the fullest degree needful, but they stand as witnesses to us.

Christ has died; Jesus has laid down His life; His precious blood has flowed; the blood and the water have flowed from His smitten side to meet the whole state and condition of a man that has fallen into sin, that he might fittingly be a witness to God and to Christ. A witness in the full sense in which I speak of it is not just a question of making right statements. We thank God for every right statement, for every statement which is supported in Scripture and is according to the truth; but the full thought of witness is not just in such statements; it runs deep into the soul of a person, and the company of such persons, witnesses of Christ.

The witnesses from God’s side are three—“the Spirit, and the water, and the blood”. We need the first to understand the second and the third. We need the Spirit rightly to understand the holy significance of the water and the blood. What place has the Spirit with us? The Spirit is witnessing; it is an active thought in relation to the Spirit of God in us. He is bearing witness to things, particularly to a great point which we need to be in the gain of in these closing moments—the matter of eternal life. “This is the witness, that God has given to us eternal life; and this life is in His Son”. I wonder what we really know of eternal life.

We would all know that it has been the occasion of crucial conflict, in which God wrought in His grace the victory for Himself and for the truth, when the truth of eternal life was in question. But the truth of eternal life in some sense is very often in question; not so much as to the principles governing it, and what the thing itself really is, but whether we ourselves are in the full experience and enjoyment of it. I suspect that very much more recent conflicts than those of the early 1900’s have as their inward root a loss of appreciation of what eternal life really is, in the experience and blessedness of it. But God has given us witness, to bring us back to this vital thing; if we are not moving; acting, speaking, living in the power of such a life as this, what kind of witness shall be rendered? Witness according to God is in living persons. In what manner of life do they live? The point with God is eternal life—“And this is the witness, that God has given to us eternal life”. Verse 11 points us to Christ as the One in whom that life is. We derive it of necessity from Him; He is the eternal life. That does not mean that the thought is limited to Himself; it means that we come into something which is in Himself, and it is in the Spirit that we do that. But do we, dear brethren, appreciate eternal life? In the very presence of death and the scene on which death is stamped morally, are we in life? Are we drawing upon hidden springs of life according to God, relating us to Christ up there and life in Himself?

But to come back to the earlier verses, “For they that bear witness are three—the Spirit, and the water, and the blood”. Let us refer to those three points again—the Spirit, first, gives us an understanding of the other two, the water, and the blood; the water and the blood flowed, as John himself tells us, from the side of Jesus, dead upon

the cross. These things are to move us, to affect us in our spirits, to affect us in our lives. A total provision has been made for the whole state and condition of man. John gives us this full view of the death of Jesus, a death that was necessary for the clearance of every feature of guilt—that is the blood; a death that was necessary for the putting away of the man that brought in the guilt and death—that is the water. It is witness to the entire necessity for the dying of Jesus, but the necessity alongside of this for the full bearing of His death to be understood and worked out in each one of us; the witness is there, “the Spirit, and the water, and the blood”.

We can always go back to those things, whatever eventuality may arise, however the enemy may seek in his subtlety to get hold of us. Every soul, maybe, knows in secret for himself in what singular ways the enemy seeks to get a hold of him. We use the expression ‘those besetting sins’, and we would all have an understanding with God as to what our besetting sins might be, particular things by which the enemy would seek to entrap us. But we go back to the witness. We can always go back to the witness, and as we do so God delights to bring in a stabilizing touch, because the witness stands whatever else may eventuate—“the Spirit, and the water, and the blood”. I dwell on this point, dear brethren, because of a sense of the need of all of us being stabilised in the understanding of divine things, so that we stand in divine strength in the defence of the truth and in the defence of the rights of Christ. We are to be stabilised in the appreciation of all that He has effected, that He might have His witnesses here, and have them here now.

So it is a question of something “shining forth” against the dark background of Corinthian conditions,

from which, thank God; something was emerging as Paul wrote his second letter. He speaks of this—“Because it is the God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine who has shone, in, our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”, a unique verse the very presentation of which may puzzle us; but it conveys what is peculiarly related to what I seek to say, that there is something shining forth from the saints. And what is shining forth is in no sense what may mark them after the flesh; there is no shining forth of that. Nothing will accredit Christ, nothing will accredit the blessed God, if there is something appearing which belongs to our flesh. We are apt to be marked by certain features according to flesh which are in some way characteristic of us— that is not a shining forth; it will tend to diminish and to obstruct the shining forth according to God of what He would bring out in us.

So what is to shine is “the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”, something neither time nor circumstances here can change. The glory of God has shone. The glory of God shines still. Where does it shine? In the face of Jesus Christ. We can look up into that face, that blessed face, and, save as we are on some very wrong line, we shall be affected by what we see in the face of Jesus Christ, and something will be effected in us of life character. It is a little like what we have at the end of 2 Corinthians 3, where it is a question of change, “transformed according to the same image from glory to glory”. That is, something is set forth in Jesus uniquely; the saints behold it and are affected in like character; and the Spirit is the power and the grace for that effect to appear.

Beloved brethren, to what extent are we affected

as we behold Christ? With the eye of faith we see the glory of the Man in the glory, in the place where God has set Him, the sphere in which He properly belongs—the sphere in which everything is resounding in response to Himself. As we behold Jesus there, is there not some effect in ourselves of the most positive and blessed kind? The face is the part of the organism which conveys peculiar feeling in a sensitive way. We see things in the face of a man which disclose something about that man’s inwards. As you look round on the brethren in the wonderful occasions we have in these closing moments you see something in their faces, and it is positive; it is Christ shining; and that is the divine intent! It might not always be so, mark you. It might be said simply, ‘It is so if it is so’; but the intent of the scripture is that it shall be so.

As we see things brought out in the holy feelings of Jesus, and behold His face, our inwards are to be affected. The Spirit helps us so that our inwards might be affected, and the whole being be affected. This is no time in the testimony for shallowness, as I need scarcely say, and God in His wisdom is allowing much to take place which is searching out shallowness.

The question is arising whether our inwards are reached in their depths, or whether our committals are shallow. I say that as feeling the need of it for myself. The Spirit would reach the depths; He loves to reach the depths. He loves to engage us with Christ, and to go on engaging us with Christ, repeatedly engaging us with Christ, that the depths might be reached and persons thus be secured who are trustworthy and fitting witnesses.

So Paul says here, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassingness of the power may be of God, and not from us”. How much that scripture, in a very comforting way, encompasses for

us. Why do certain things happen? Why do sorrows arise? Why are there weaknesses, sicknesses, frailties of one kind and another? “We have this treasure in earthen vessels”—it is according to God that it is so. It is glorious that something of Himself be brought out in the sense of witness in such conditions as these, the vital superiority of what God has wrought being brought out—gloriously. He works in the midst of conditions which of themselves involve so much that is hateful to Him; and yet, in the midst of all that, God has something brought out in His own work in those whom He is pleased in His sovereignty to work upon.

The choicest elements related to Christ in glory are brought into expression in the sense of shining here, for the shining is to be in us.

“It is the God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine who has shone in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. The shining forth is to be noted. It has in mind that (putting it very simply) every one that sees us will see something of the shining forth. The shining forth is appreciated most, I think, in the circle of the saints, the christian circle, where the shining will be assessed at its true value, its true character; the shining forth has in mind that there is something there so distinct, so genuine, so firmly based, that all in some sense can take account of it. We were hearing of a beloved brother in the north who was tested greatly in respect of unions; but eventually he found that the men respected his view; they were prepared to work with him because they recognised that what was in that man was genuine. That is witness, witness to Christ, witness to the truth. There is a shining forth of something in such a case. We may well covet that that may be so with every one of us, that there is a shining forth of something that can fitly take its place as a witness to God, and to Christ.

So in the forty days before the Lord Jesus was taken up the disciples were concerned about things, looking on in their inquiry to the ending up ultimately, of things here. We rightly have that very closely in view; ‘but what shall characterise our pathway in the meantime? It may be an hour, it may be a day, it may be a week, it might be a year; but what shall we do in that time? The Lord turns their minds away from what is just prophetic in character to the great point of the present; and at any moment in the testimony the great point is what is brought forth in the present time. So the Lord says, “It is not yours to know times or seasons, which the Father has placed in his own authority”; this is a wonderful reference to the Father and His place in supremacy in the economy of love, the Son being in a subject relation to Him.

This is a presentation of the economy to which we belong in the sense of standing related to it, to the Father and to the Son, and to the Spirit; we are attached to it in being of the assembly, the vessel in which the choicest relations of that same economy are brought out.

There are the relations of the Father with His sons, the relations of Christ with His bride, the relations of the Spirit with the bride of Christ and with God’s sons. Do we understand our place in that great economy of love? It would bring in a great range of thought to adorn and strengthen the principle of witness, in which we have part.

So the Lord says, “but ye will receive power”. We come down now to the facts of the immediate situation, which is never out of God’s mind, and how the saints stand in the immediate situation. It is right to be expectant of the Lord’s coming; it is right that we show forth His death until He come; but the Spirit would say, ‘How are you now, in the midst of the present situation on this day?

How do you stand in relation to divine things?’. “But ye will receive power”, the Lord says, “the Holy Spirit having come upon you”. The Lord in His skill and His grace diverts a certain line of thought among the disciples to the prime point of the moment, which is the Holy Spirit. We have had much ministry about the Spirit. We have had many an injunction to give the Spirit greater place, and to seek Him personally in a more distinct and definite way. I would only seek in a word like this to add to those injunctions, that we may heed the glorious fact of the Spirit being here in the assembly, and immediately available to sustain, strengthen and maintain what is according to God. No witness will be true witness that does not know the Spirit as the power for it.

Then He says, “and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. And having said these things he was taken up”, as if He had just given them exactly the present position. Then He goes up, and leaves them in the hand of the Spirit. The proposition He makes is that they should be His witnesses. Think of what these men had seen in Jesus, what they had experienced in their times with Jesus. Let us remind ourselves that when the number of the apostles was made up to twelve, a little later than this, the necessary basis of anyone to be thus appointed was that he had been with them as Jesus went in and out amongst them, all the time from John’s baptism to His being taken up. There was to be a basis for witness in a personal, deep appreciation of Christ. The whole of what came out in that glorious Man was really essential to the witness of the twelve, and whilst we are not of the twelve we come in on the line of the testimony which the twelve set on, under the hand of God, and which the Spirit has sustained. The principle of witness remains still and we are to be His witnesses. The Lord does not expand what that will mean in detail; He does not tell them where to go; He shows that the field of the testimony is a very wide one, and He proceeds in the Acts to send out His beloved ones into it. He is not telling them here exactly what it would be, but that they were to be His witnesses.

I would like to leave that impression with us, that the point is to be His witnesses. There may be many varieties of circumstance in which we are placed in which it is to appear—but the point is we are witnesses to Christ. We are witnesses to that glorious Man up there. We are not witnesses to anything less than what God has established in the Person of Christ, as He is and where He is. So may our witness be distinct, beloved brethren, beginning as we take account of the witness that God has given us, the understanding of “the Spirit, and the water, and the blood”, and the witness to eternal life; for that life must be surging in us if the witness is to gain in power. May God help us in these things, for His name’s sake.

Address at Helston
12 July 1975