Gathering up from what has been said of both soul
“in all these things is the life of my spirit ( rooagh)”, Isa 38: 15, 16. Job says, “I will speak in the anguish of my spirit ( rooagh), I will complain in the bitterness of my soul ( nephesh)”, Job 7: 11. Job also contrasts soul and spirit; the first being that of every living thing, and the second which is alone in man, when he asks the question, “In whose hand is the soul ( nephesh) of every living thing, and the breath ( rooagh) of all mankind?”, Job 12: 10.
And as to the spirit being a separate formation of God in every man, and not a mere influence, we read of “the spirit ( rooagh) of Zerubbabel”, and “the spirit of Joshua”, and the “spirit of the remnant”, in Hag 1: 14; of the “spirit”
of Elijah (2 Kings 2: 15), of the “spirit” of Pul, and of the
“spirit” of Tilgath-pilneser (1 Chron 5: 26) as well as of the
“spirit” of Cyrus, Ezra 1: 1.
In one place only, where man is questioning about things existing “under the sun”, is ‘ rooagh’ ascribed to beasts, and then it is by one who confesses his own ignorance of what he is writing about. He, himself wise, asks the question about it, “Who knows?” and without answering, Eccles 3: 19-21.
“The beasts perish” (Ps 49), but as to man, both soul and spirit are IMMORTAL. This, found fully in the New Testament, to which I do not now refer, we find also in the Old. It is written, “God made MAN upright”, Eccles 7: 29.
Of his threefold formation we have already spoken—“spirit and soul and body”. We may now look at what is immortal in him. Job, of whom we have already heard, who spoke of all three, “spirit, soul, and body” (see Job 10: 1, 11, 12), and lived most probably long before the writing of the book of Genesis, knew himself as one who would exist after death.
In speaking of that event, and of the time when the worm should have destroyed this outward visible frame, he says,
“Yet in my flesh shall I see God”, Job 19: 26. That is, I, the 74
man Job, the complete workmanship of God, “spirit, soul, and body”, “in my flesh I shall see God”. For that which is destroyed by death (and even this, as to man, is only for a time) is merely this external shell, the tenement that contains both spirit and soul.
Daniel also may be referred to: “But go thou thy way till the end be; for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days”, Dan 12: 13.) Daniel speaks of Nebuchadnezzar’s “spirit” ( rooagh) (Dan 2: 1, 3), and of his own “spirit” ( rooagh), Dan 7: 15. This spirit, and the soul, and the body, formed the man Daniel, and this man will stand in his lot “at the end of the days”; the body may have long since turned to dust, Daniel still rests, and still awaits to stand in his lot in the end of the days, an end not yet come. The soul departs at death from its tenement. It is not affected by death. “As her soul ( nephesh) was in departing, (for she died)”, Gen 35: 18. Here too Ecclesiastes is clear as to the future of the spirit, speaking now of man, and without doubt on the matter: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit ( rooagh) shall return unto God who gave it”, Eccles 12: 1-7.)
It is by means of the body that the varied feelings and emotions of man manifest themselves. Some of these are ascribed to the spirit in scripture, some to the soul, some to both soul and spirit. Thus the spirit ( rooagh) is troubled (Gen 41: 8; Job 21: 4; Dan 2: 1), revives, or is strengthened (Gen 45: 27), is anguished (Exod 6: 9; Job 7: 11), is endowed with wisdom (Exod 28: 3; Deut 34: 9), is jealous (Num 5: 14), is sorrowful (1 Sam 1: 15; 1 Kings 21: 5), is contrite or humble (Ps 34: 18, 19; Prov 16: 19; 29: 23; Isa 57: 15; 66: 2), is broken (Ps 51: 17, 19; Prov 15: 13), is overwhelmed (Ps 142: 3, 143: 4), is faithful (Prov 11: 13), is hasty (Prov 14: 29; Eccles 7: 9), is haughty (Prov 16: 18; Eccles 7: 8), is 2 We here suggest to the reader to ponder on God’s comment, as to the truth of what his failing servant Job had said of him, in contrast to what the three friends had said, as recorded in Job 42: 8.
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wounded (Prov 18: 14), is patient (Eccles 7: 8), is grieved (Dan 7: 15; Isa 54: 6), errs, Isa 29: 24; Ezek. 13: 3. It learns too the humbling lesson that there is nothing under the sun for the “spirit” of man, but only “vanity and vexation”, Eccles 1: 14, 17; 2: 11, 17, 26; 4: 4, 16; 6: 9.
Of the soul ( nephesh) we read that it departs from the body at death (Gen 35: 18; 1 Kings 17: 21, 22), as we have seen the spirit does in Eccles 12: 7; that it blesses (Gen 27: 4, 19, 25, 31; Ps 103: 1, 2), it loves (Gen 34: 3, 8; SofS 1: 7; 3: 1-4), knows anguish (Gen 42: 21), has appetites or tastes (Lev 7: 18, 20; Num 21: 5; Deut 12: 15, 20, 21; Job 6: 7, 33: 20; Ps 78: 18), has lusts or desires (Deut 14: 26; 1 Sam 20: 4; 1 Kings 11: 37; Ps 42: 2; 84: 2), hates (2 Sam 5: 8), abhors (Lev 26: 43; Zech 11: 8), thinks (Est 4: 13), sorrows (Lev 26: 16), is vexed (2 Kings 4: 27; Job 19: 2), is bowed down (Ps 57: 6), is troubled (Ps 88: 3), faints (Ps 107: 5, 26; Jonah 2: 7), is relieved (Lam 1: 11, 16, 19), is in bitterness (Job 10: 1; Isa 38: 15), is weary (Jer 31: 25), sins (Micah 6: 7), and therefore needs atonement (Exod 30: 15, 16; Lev 17: 11; Num 15: 25), has to be afflicted while it is made (Lev 16: 29, 31), so also it needs redemption (2 Sam 4: 9; Ps 34: 22; Ps 49: 8, 15; 71: 23), salvation (Ps 35: 3), and conversion, Ps 19: 7. These lists, which are not exhaustive, may serve to illustrate what, in chief, is attached to, or emanates from, both soul and spirit.
From the fact that scripture nowhere asserts that the beasts have “spirit”, also that we have the passages quoted insisting upon the contrary, as well as from a careful comparison of these two lists, I think it is clear that the
“spirit” is the higher part in man. It ( rooagh) is also spoken of the Spirit of God. Man becomes LIKE the beasts, if he has no understanding, as David says, and it is “the inspiration ( n’shahmah) of the Almighty” (Job 32: 8) (not given to them as it was to man) that is the secret of this understanding in man. The understanding, therefore, is connected with the “spirit” in man, and not with the “soul”.
I find the word ( nephesh) “soul” used for the whole man just as it is often used now, in Gen 12: 5; 14: 21; Exod 76
1: 5; Num 15: 27, 28, and in other places, but I have not found ( rooagh) “spirit” so used for the man. How fitting, therefore, that we should find in scripture, as we do, that sin, atonement, redemption, conversion, and salvation, are all connected with it, not with “rooagh”, but with “nephesh”, the soul, for it is the man, spirit and soul and body, that has sinned, and that needs this power of God to be put forward in grace on his behalf.
and spirit in the Old Testament, it is not difficult to see that the eternal existence of man is taught in it, and was accepted long before the light of the New Testament, as to these things, shone out in all its fulness. If man is blind, he cannot see it, and then he may go so far as to deny (as some have done, and do still) that it is there. Even in his blindness he may teach that man does not exist for ever, but there it shines, God’s truth, nevertheless.
There is a solemn word in Malachi 2: 16, where we read a final exhortation to the “spirit” ( rooagh) which was led away through the “desires” (Gen 3: 6) and “affections” (1 Tim 2: 14) of the “soul”. “Therefore take heed to YOUR SPIRIT, that ye deal not treacherously”, Mal 2: 16. “Vanity and vexation of spirit”
(Eccles 2) ought to turn the man to God, ought to lead him to take heed, and to look above the sun for what he fails to find beneath it. But to deny the immortality of the soul or spirit, and the resurrection of the body, or, in a word, the eternal existence of the man whom God has formed, is thus to deal treacherously, with ourselves and with God, and leaves still all the “vanity and vexation” there. “COME UNTO ME, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you REST”, Matt 11: 28. Blessed words, my reader; words of life and light, coming from Him who “made man upright”; words sounding amid all the wearying vista of this life for every poor sinner who will “take heed”.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 8, 1881
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SPIRIT AND SOUL AND BODY IN THE LIGHT
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
(1 Thess 5: 23; Heb 4: 12, &c)
It is unnecessary for those who believe in the divine inspiration of the whole word of God3 to seek to prove from the New Testament that which we have already seen brought before us in the Old. We merely remark that examination will show to any who seek it, that Old Testament truths are all established in the New, and fully unfolded. But there are others which come before the reader of the New Testament respecting “spirit and soul and body”; for now He, on whom in Himself death had no claim, has gained the victory over death and all its power, and has brought life and incorruptibility to light through the gospel, 2 Tim 1: 10 NT. And this for man. Let us then first observe the distinct words (as in the Old) employed to distinguish
“soul and spirit” in the New Testament.
It is generally admitted, by those who have had ability to examine it, that our Lord and His apostles quoted the Scripture from a Greek version of the Old Testament, then in common use, and not from the older Hebrew. This Greek translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew was called the Septuagint. But by thus using it our Lord accredited this version, and set His seal upon it as the word of God. This is an important fact; for in this version we have before us the words then used as the equivalents in Greek to the Hebrew ‘ rooagh’ and ‘ nephesh’, words we may also expect to find distinctively employed therefore by the writers of the New Testament.
3 If the reader has any doubt as to the inspiration of the whole word of God, we would beseech him to settle it at once. It lies at the root of all godly instruction. Nothing can be stable in any soul until this question is at rest, and nothing can be more pernicious than the boasted ‘liberty of opinion’ of our day, which also dares to include within its pale and judge the blessed word of God, by which man is to be judged, See John 12: 48.
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Now in this Greek translation of the Old Testament (MSS of which still exist) we find in the passages we have already referred to; viz, Gen 1: 20, 21, 24, 30; 2: 7, speaking of the soul’s formation, the Greek word ‘ psukee’ as the equivalent to the Hebrew ‘ nephesh’. For spirit (Hebrew
‘ rooagh’) we find in Job 32: 8, where its existence is declared, as also in Zech 12: 1 and Amos 4: 13, where its origin and formation at first by God are spoken of;—in all these places, the Greek word ‘ pneuma’ is given as the equivalent for ‘ rooagh’. In this same translation also, where all three parts of which man is composed are spoken of in one chapter (Job 10) the same distinction as to the use of the words is maintained. “My soul ( psukee) is weary of my life ... I will speak in the bitterness of my soul ( psukee)”, v.
1. “Thy visitation hath preserved my spirit ( pneuma)”, v 12.
“Thou hast clothed me” (the man Job; ie both soul and spirit) “with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews”, v 11. In Eccles 12: 7, Hag 1:14, Eccles 1: 14, 17, Mal 2: 16, passages already referred to, the Septuagint has also ‘ pneuma’ for ‘ rooagh’.
In entire harmony, and using the same words for soul and spirit as the Septuagint version gives, we find all the scriptures of the New Testament. There is no confounding of them, there is no confusion. In coming to the New Testament, we are emerging from a night of shadows into the full light of day as to all that concerns man. “The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth”, 1 John 2: 8. But, apparently small thing as it is, is it not fitting that we should see in this entire harmony of both Old and New Testaments God’s care of His word? “He is the Rock. His work is perfect”, Deut 32. Thus sang Moses, and this perfection is manifested in the little (as men speak) as well as in the greatest of His works. May it give to us, as we ponder it, increased confidence in Him who, Jehovah to Israel, is to us our FATHER (John 20: 17), and while He will permit us to trace both Him and His ways (1 Cor 2: 10), while in His word He will speak to us and instruct us therein (John 6: 45), as to all that it is necessary for us to know, may the knowledge of who He is humble us. While our 79
Father, He is, nevertheless, the Alpha and the Omega, the unchangeable God. As He says, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty”, Rev 1: 8.
There is an hour when the three parts of which man
is constituted, “spirit and soul and body”, must for a time be separated. That hour is DEATH. “Man dieth, and wasteth away”, says Job (chap 14: 10), when regarding the body, and Paul in the New Testament repeats it, but follows him beyond the grave. “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment”, Heb 9: 27. Death is the penalty attached to sin. “Sin entered into the world, and death by sin”, Rom 5: 12. It is that condition of the body when seen without a tenant. The body is the man’s earthly house or tabernacle, the habitation of both spirit and soul, so that while in it he is said to be “at home in the body”. While in the body also he is said to be “clothed”, Job 10: 11 or Job 2, or Job 5: 4, 6. But he leaves the body at death. Thus we read, “Desiring rather to be absent from the body”; again,
“to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better” (Phil 1: 23); and again, “the body without the spirit ( pneuma) is dead”, James 2: 26. Here we learn that at death the spirit is not there. But we also read that the death of the body does not affect the soul. “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul” ( psukee), Matt 10: 28. At death the soul ( psukee) is “required” (Luke 12: 20), and then all that ministers merely to the body is left behind for others.
The body only is that part in man which is mortal. In Heb 9: 27 it is seen to be both capable of, and liable to, death, and after that also to corruption, compare Acts 13: 36, 1
Cor 15: 42, Rom 7: 12, &c “Flesh and blood (of which the body is formed) cannot inherit the kingdom of God”. So the remark of Martha “Lord, by this time he stinketh” (John 11: 39) though spoken of the man, could only refer to the body.
Corruption she knew had begun in it, but the cry, “Lazarus, come forth!” from Him—who was both the Creator and the Life, was answered at once by the whole man, “spirit, and soul, and body”. “And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was bound 80
about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go”. We see therefore that that part of the man, the body in which he dwelt, and in which he is said to be clothed, ‘flesh and skin, bones and sinews’, this only rested in that grave at Bethany, where corruption had already begun its work.
It was there in the condition of which James speaks—
“without the spirit” ( pneuma); for the Lord had before said plainly, “Lazarus is dead”. That the sorrow attendant upon death is also because of the absence of the soul ( psukee), we learn from other scriptures. Paul said, “His life ( psukee) is in him”, as a reason why they should not be troubled about the young man whose body they took up (Acts 20: 10); but this only shows that the usual trouble and mourning at death are because the soul and spirit have left the body, compare also Acts 7: 2. And it was certainly so that day at Bethany; for they well knew that Lazarus would
“rise again” (v 24), but at present, and from them, their brother was gone.
Having thus seen that death is the dissolving of the tie that has kept together the man, “spirit and soul and body”, and having noticed that he is variously spoken of as seen sometimes connected with the one part of his being and sometimes with the other, we may now ask, What light has the Lord been pleased to give us as to the place of the spirit and soul (or the man) when they have left the body?
To this we will now turn, first remarking that, in seeking an answer, we shall have brought before us of necessity the wondrous way whereby Christianity triumphs over all the misery that sin and its consequence (death) have introduced into this world.
4 Thus he “departs from the body”; ie soul and spirit do. Again
“devout men carried Stephen to his burial”; ie the body, for he had before said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7), so that they carried only the body.
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First, then, what is death to the believer? The Lord says to the poor thief, dying by His side, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”, Luke 23: 43. These words, addressed directly to the man, did not refer to his body; for that neither remained with the Lord, nor entered paradise with Him that day. The Lord’s body was borne to Joseph’s tomb, while the mangled remains (John 19: 32) of the poor malefactor were “taken away” by other hands (v 31) to find some other, and apparently in man’s esteem, a more suited and fitting resting-place for such as he than the rich man’s sepulchre. The Lord’s body, resting there three days, saw
“no corruption” (Acts 13: 37), while the other returned to its kindred dust. But it mattered little. The veil had been lifted from that dark future that lay beyond the grave, by His own hand who came to bring “life and incorruptibility to light”, and to remove the sting from death. And what the Lord said to the thief He meant and fulfilled. The rejected and dying Saviour thus leaving the world, and the first believer who, dying, left it when the way had been opened by Him through death—these two can never more be separated. The words,
“Today shalt thou be with me” (Luke 23: 43), eternally linked together thus, declare the extent and the value of the blessed work He accomplished that day for EVERY weary child of Adam’s fallen race who will trust in Him. And this paradise was not a place that only existed for that moment (ie for the Lord ere He ascended) as some have taught. It was the place called also by the apostle Paul “the third heaven” (2 Cor 12)—an existing place then long after the death of the thief; for he says he was “caught up into paradise”. When there he had lost all consciousness of the existence of the body; for he says, “whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell”. Yet he retained the consciousness of a man; he heard words which it was not possible for him to utter. Inexpressibly blessed was it to be in such a place, and freed from every hindrance, as one quietly reading the chapter must admit.
And the blessedness of the place is also shown in the only other passage where this word “paradise” is used. The promise made to him that overcometh in the message to the 82
church at Ephesus (Rev 2: 7) is, that he “shall eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God”.
Paradise then, only named in these three places, is shown to us as a place of unspeakable, yet conscious pleasure, and rest, and delight. It is with the Lord, which in itself is enough, but it is also to be there to “hear” and to “feed”, which, though it may be figurative language, conveys to us clearly enough the conscious enjoyment of the place.
With this instant happiness of the believer after death all the Scriptures of the New Testament agree. Thus “to depart” is to be with Christ, which, he adds, is “far better”
(Phil 1: 23); and he (Paul) who says that it is “far better”
knew more of communion and fellowship with Him when on earth (v 8) than many. He knew perhaps more of it than any saint has since known. Yet it is “far better”, for he says to be “absent from the body” is to be “present with the Lord”, 2 Cor 5: 8. Peter also speaks of the putting off of the body (“my tabernacle”—2 Pet 1: 14), yet looks onward to the day when he, together with those who have fed the flock, shall receive at the appearing of the Chief Shepherd “a crown of glory that fadeth not away”, 1 Pet 5: 4. But as to the meantime, Jesus had said to him, “Whither I go thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards”, John 13: 36. And where He went, and whither Peter followed Him, we have already seen. Similar, if figurative, is the testimony of Luke 16: 22.
Having spoken of Heb 9: 27, it remains to say a word as to the future (that which is after death) for the unbeliever.
The veil is lifted here also, and we read, “but after this the judgment”. This is the awful and dark shadow that falls from the future upon the death-bed of the unbeliever, that renders it terrible. Into the world’s judgment, my Christian reader, you can never come. “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life”, John 5: 24. This is the record concerning such, though all shall appear (be made manifest) at “the judgment seat of Christ”, 2 Cor 5: 10. But though the believer cannot 83
come into judgment, there is a resurrection of “judgment”, John 5: 29. How solemn is the declaration, “he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained”, Acts 17: 31. These judged are men—“spirit, soul, and body”; for we read again, “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God ... and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works”, Rev 20: 12. For as the death of the body was the severance for a time of the tie that bound “spirit and soul and body”
together, so the destruction of death is the reformation of that tie, now no more to be severed, but to pass, one complete man, into all the horrors of the judgment and the second death—a death NOT marked by the separation of the parts, “spirit and soul and body”, but by their eternal union; for we are bidden to “fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell”, Matt 10: 28. My reader, “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years”, Rev 20: 6. To this first resurrection, and to one special class in it, “those who are alive and remain”, we will now turn ere we close this subject.
We have already seen that death is the fruit of sin, and that man in Heb 9: 27 is said to be both capable of, and liable to, death, because there he is speaking of the fruit of sin, and of those who, not having faith in Him who has once come, are not looking for Him to come the second time. But he immediately speaks of another class who are thus looking for His second coming. These may die or fall asleep, but, though capable, they are not liable to death. “We shall not all sleep”, he says. There are some who “are alive and remain” when the Lord comes (1 Thess 4), and who do not die, but are immediately changed. But what is changed?
Spirit and soul? No; Phil 3: 21 says it is the body. “There is a natural body [which we have], there is a spiritual body”
(1 Cor 15: 44), for which spirit and soul are waiting, and which Paul calls “our house which is from heaven”, 2 Cor 5: 2. This we shall have “In a moment, in the twinkling of an 84
eye, at the last trump”, 1 Cor 15: 52. When He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. “We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body” (or body of humiliation), “that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself”, Phil 3: 21. Death then has no claim upon or power over such, and there is no separation of “spirit and soul and body”. Death as to them He has met, and him who had the power of death and all its claims He has satisfied—all, and all that the holiness and righteousness of God demanded on account of sin. God was glorified too in it by Him, and it is proved by His own place now, so that “in a moment” they are to be caught away in the power of life. “That where I am there ye may be also”. They do not die, but mortality is
“swallowed up of life”, 2 Cor 5: 4. Such is our hope: to see and to be with Him who says, “Fear not ... I am He that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death”, Rev 1: 17, 18.
As Christians we have ever to remember that the soul is the seat of the affections and desires, which must be, if we desire to grow in divine things, kept under control, so that the word of God may at all times be allowed to come in
“quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul ( psukee) and spirit ( pneuma), and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”, Heb 4.
The word “sensual” in Jude 19 is ‘ psukeekoi’, and may be translated ‘soulish’; ie they were controlled by it. Similar was the desire of the man of Luke 12: 19: “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry”. This has been the language of very many since. The natural affections, also, though formed of God, are strikingly referred to in many places as possible hinderers in the path of faithful discipleship if allowed to govern us. How many have made shipwreck on this rock!
Among others thus—“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and 85
brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple”, Luke 14: 26.
Fitting in the midst of all the snares that surround us, the varied attractions for the mind and understanding, the varied desires and affections of the soul—the “what shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and” (not least, the fashions of the day) “the wherewithal shall we be clothed”, of the body—fitting, amidst all this, is the prayer of the apostle. And may it be increasingly our prayer for each other—“And I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”, 1 Thess 5: 23.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 8, 1881
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As to a Christian, his state must depend on one of two things.
1st Where the word of God controls by the Spirit.
2nd Neglect of the word.
From one of these two is produced a Christian’s state of soul. Now the first is the only right one, and in as far as I myself am in a right state I shall have unhindered communion by the Spirit with one in such a state, without knowing anything about his conduct. If I meet him even for the first time in my life this will be so. And further, if on fuller acquaintance I have his acts before me, his conduct will still commend itself to me, that is, if we are both right as to state, as I have said.
But the second is all wrong, and in as far as I myself am in a right state I shall have no fellowship with such an one, even though I have no special conduct of his before me to guide me. I have met him for the first time. His state is wrong, and there is a spiritual instinct produced by the Spirit, who knows and cannot sanction his state, and this (though I am incapable of explaining it) is communicated to me, if I myself am humble and spiritual, 1 Cor 2: 14-16. If one acts while in this second condition which I have named, we have then his conduct before us. This must of necessity be all wrong too if his state is wrong, and must therefore be separated from. But the moral separation was there long before, and known.
The state then, produces one of three things: either good conduct, bad conduct, or inactivity. Where the state is evil, the conduct must necessarily be so, and where the state is good, the conduct, being the outflow, will also be good, Matt 7: 16-18. But there is also this, which must not be overlooked, a state of inaction, wherein the word is neglected and the truth not obeyed, Gal 3: 1. A state wherein the soul, that did like the Galatians once, “run well”, is now “hindered” where the “first works” (Rev 2: 5) 87
begun in the Spirit, are no longer done, a state over which the gloom of indifference and neutrality as to the truth and Spirit are fast settling down; works of a legal kind being nevertheless flourishing and abundant. This is a terrible state. Not even to all the dreadful moral evil denounced by him to the Corinthians does the apostle address such solemn warnings and denunciations as we find addressed to those in it, see Gal 1: 6- 9; 3: 4; 4: 11, 20; 5: 1, 4, 12, &c.
To say nothing of its dreadful effect upon the soul, which is certain (1 Cor 15: 33); it is a solemn thing not to be acting in moral separation from those whose state is wrong, and it indicates what is my own condition of soul.
Nor is it necessary to await the conduct of such to guide, for there may be no specially culpable conduct, nor such as the assembly can deal in discipline with, yet a manifestly bad state, so that there is the neglect of what scripture terms
“obeying the truth” as led of the Spirit, Gal 3: 1; 5: 18. Any one divinely taught must see that there was moral separation between the Galatians and the apostle as long as they continued in this state, while there was yet no giving them up, but a seeking on his part to rouse them up to their privileges, Gal 4: 12.
May the Lord sustain in us faithfulness to each other with that moral separation from every form of evil which the word teaches, and which the Spirit leads to, and that practical separation, too, which is consistent therewith.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 15, 1881
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FORGIVENESS OF SINS AND DELIVERANCE
FROM SIN
(Romans 4, 5, 6)
God’s salvation, and the full deliverance which it brings from all the power of Satan, which, being won by the death of Christ, should be the present enjoyed portion of every Christian, is only known to him who has accepted by faith two distinct statements of the word of God concerning it; namely, that as God’s salvation surely deals with, and settles the question of my sins, so surely does it also deal with, and settle the question of, myself. “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification”, indicates the way of the settlement of the one (Rom 4: 25), that is, our sins; for the Holy Ghost now present (Acts 2) is now testifying to us (as He will testify to Israel, founded on the work of Christ, in the day of the new covenant), “their sins and iniquities will I remember no more”. But while this is true, it is His voice also saying we “are dead to sin”,
“buried with him by baptism unto death” (Rom 6: 4) (and therefore are we exhorted to reckon ourselves to be “dead indeed unto sin”); these and similar passages give us the other part of this “great” salvation; ie the end too of ourselves in that death of Christ in God’s sight. Both are to be accepted and enjoyed only by faith.
Let us remember that doubts and fears, and a joy often followed by darkness and despair, form no part of God’s provision for the poor sinner who comes to Christ.
Long enough indeed has he known these, and deeply enough has he proved them, in the long and weary years of unbelief that have passed. Yet in how many cases do we find, alas, that these things are perpetuated, even looked upon as right, and too often encouraged as a proof of humility in the children of God! Some sad
misunderstanding of the word “salvation”, then, must surely exist in our own day, to produce such fruits, and 89
such Christians, and such teachers, as these. The fault is not in God, nor in the Word—this cannot be; it is alone in ourselves. We have to learn, and often through deep sorrow, what we refuse to accept from God by faith. The exercises of Romans 7 teach us this. The soul there is wholly occupied with self as alive.
When God is first dealing with the soul, I find the Holy Ghost brings home to it, through the conscience, the burden of its sins. The cry is wrung from it, as from the prodigal; ‘I have sinned’. It was thus when Peter was preaching (Acts 2) to the multitude, and three thousand were pricked in their heart; and Peter’s answering word is,
“Repent, and be baptised every one of you … for the remission of sins”, Acts 2: 38. And so again in chapter 3,
“Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out”. In the necessity for real heart work I agree with Bunyan that the soul must feel its burden, though I reject the necessity of passing long years in the Doubting Castle of Giant Despair, wherein he immures Christian for a time, even when far advanced on his journey. And what is it which introduces the soul into liberty as to its sins when feeling the weight of this burden? It is this statement, accepted by faith, that another, even Jesus Christ, has been
“delivered for our offences”; One who has also been accepted of God, proved in that He is “raised again for our justification”, Rom 4: 25. Very well, then, says the apostle in his simple argument, if this cannot be denied, and it is all of God, we are justified. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ”, Rom 5: 1.
Here then I pass at once into unclouded peace with God as to the whole question of my sins, and “rejoice in hope of the glory of God”, Rom 5: 2.
But with how many souls is this blessed condition but transient as to their realisation of it! How many we meet who look back to the time when they knew this peace, and passed for the first time into the blessed realisation of it by faith! But since that time the brightness has become dim, and the clouds have returned again, for they have not gone 90
on to accept with the same unhesitating, unqualified faith the statement of this sixth chapter; namely, that in the same work of Christ, wherein was obtained the forgiveness of my sins, I was “baptised unto His death”. “Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism unto death”, Rom 6: 4. The death and burial of me, the man, is as clearly taught, and as implicitly to be received as a matter of faith, as that Christ was delivered for my sins.
Alas, that souls should stop short of this their full and blessed deliverance, a deliverance perfect because of God, and which He delights to give as the present and enjoyed portion of the believer in Christ! You find many who know and rejoice in the forgiveness of their sins, who do not, and will not, accept the truth that they are “dead” (Col 3: 3), for it is here the cross comes in, and it, alas! weighs too heavily upon them. The forgiveness of their sins they will have; that is all privilege, all blessing; but the rejection of themselves, this involves the giving up of everything that ministers to man on the earth, and they may live as very good Christians (as the world speaks) without going quite so far as this. And this word death is a solemn word to those who accept it. It is the end of the man who was living in his sins, the end of his affections, of his desires, of his present world-life, and of all his future worldly hopes. What is left for faith is the new man alone, the man “in Christ”, a new creation, where “all things are of God”. And what does not this involve, as to the way in which that man should henceforth live upon the earth, no longer to himself, but
“unto him which died for them and rose again”, 2 Cor 5: 15?
And why is it refused, but because the occupation of the daily life of many will not bear such an examination, and they have no thought that Christianity contains such a self-5 This is of the first importance; for until this truth is received by faith, it will never be known experimentally, and souls never enter upon the blessedness of deliverance until they have learnt for themselves what the flesh is, that they are helpless, and that deliverance is found outside of themselves in Christ, according to Romans 7.—ED.
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ignoring standard as this? But is not this the Christianity of the Bible, the Christianity of these three chapters? And can you have the joy of it if you refuse it?
My brethren, have you accepted it as God’s truth that you are “dead”? Are you following no longer that course of things which once controlled and attracted you when you were alive in the world? “Having food and raiment” here, are you therewith “content” (1 Tim 6: 18)? and still content when you have not these, if it be His blessed will to deprive you of them? Like the apostle Paul, who could say, “I know how to be abased, and I know both how to abound … I am instructed, both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need” (Phil 4: 12)—“in hunger and thirst … in cold and nakedness”, 2 Cor 11: 27. A fool indeed was the world’s estimation of such a man; but is there not in him a picture of the Christianity of the Bible before you? And do we not covet to be such men? dead surely, and useless, if
“society” and man’s day be the subject; but we live in a new life—waiting for the dawning of a new day, the day of Christ, a “morning without clouds”. Do not misunderstand my meaning; a Christian may, and ought to, minister to man in his misery and in his sins; for out of his belly should flow
“rivers of living water” (John 7: 38); but as to what he can minister to me, what would he add to a dead man? or what can he add to an “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ”, Rom 8: 17? For as to the world, I am dead—“by whom (the cross of Christ) the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world”, Gal 6: 14; 4: 12.
Now God in this epistle presents to us the forgiveness of sins, and also the death of the sinner in the person of the One who satisfies God as to the question of his sins. This is Paul’s gospel (chap 1), wherein, he says, the
“righteousness of God” is revealed on the principle of faith.
God’s righteousness “upon all who believe” (chap 3) when we had none to offer Him (see chap 3), and Christ now before God instead of myself, in whom I am, according to Rom 8: 1. This is how the power and grace of God have triumphed.
“It” (the gospel) “is the power of God unto salvation to every 92
one that believeth”, Rom 1: 16. And this word salvation, thus brought out in the first chapter, is no mean measure; it is what God’s heart desires to be proclaimed to every poor sinner “for the obedience of faith”, Rom 16: 26. As it was in the synagogue of Nazareth (Luke 4) so it is now, “deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised”, Luke 4: 18. To accept it is to be “free indeed”, no longer a servant, but a son; “and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ”, Gal 4. How appropriate the exhortation of the apostle to these law-keeping Galatians: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage”, Gal 5: 1. Yet though we are not Jews, and so not under the law of Moses, how often we make laws for ourselves, not reckoning ourselves dead, not accepting the truth, and thus are landed again under a yoke of bondage, in which case the true Christian liberty is not known. How common is the thought, in respect of worldliness for example, (though the principle applies to other things), ‘I ought not to be so worldly, nor to do what the world does’. This is admitted; but it is the old man you are addressing as if alive; you have allowed yourself to ‘be’
what is inconsistent with a dead man. Had you met the enemy at the outposts with the truth, ‘I am dead’, because you have accepted it by faith, you had not been betrayed into a path and conduct you now sorrow over, a path of servitude, and not of liberty, in which you find yourselves in Rom 7, and do not know the truth of Rom 8 as your abiding portion and joy.
We have been looking then at the two parts of this
“great” salvation, deliverance from sins and deliverance from self, both of which are contained in it, and to be received by faith. There is one verse in connection with faith in this epistle, and faith both as to my sins and as to myself, which I cannot but bring before you, as bearing on this subject: “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin”, Rom 14: 23. If there is faith, it will manifest itself by works. If a soul knows that it has forgiveness of sins, and knows also as to the old man, that he was crucified, dead and buried “with Him”, will 93
it not manifest these truths in its life on earth? Let it be, then, in this connection (as it surely is) God’s solemn word to us, “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin”—sin from the bondage of which Christ died to deliver us; for “he that is dead is freed from sin”.
Let us remember, then, what Paul’s gospel contained; let us remember too the blessed deliverance it brings to all who accept it. Have you faith in God about your sins? and also about yourself? A soul is not established who has not bowed in faith to both these truths which we have had before us. But the apostle prayed for these Romans that they might be thus established, and his concluding words sound to us today as fresh as when he uttered them first:
“Now to Him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel”, Rom 16: 25. They come home to us; for we see all around that souls are not established according to this blessed gospel. Its deliverance is not accepted and acted on, and so its joy cannot be known. May we listen then to his words afresh, and may they be fulfilled in us all: “Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith; to God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen”.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 9, 1882
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When by any special assault of the enemy he
succeeds in turning aside from the right path any of God’s people, and they fall into his hand, there is a special lesson to be learnt by those who are preserved—a lesson directly for them, and from God Himself. Up to that time God has been dealing in admonition and warning with those now gone astray, who, refusing to hear any of His counsel, are finally allowed of Him to fall into the snare of the enemy, and God’s dealing with them is thereafter after another sort and manner entirely. But for those who are left, with whom the warnings and admonitions and love of His heart and hand are thenceforward occupied, it is for them to profit withal by what has passed, and what they have seen as to the enemy, and as to the points whereby their brethren have fallen, an easy prey to him.
Any deliberate course of self-will must end for any of us in the discipline of His hand. This is true for an individual as well as for the church. We cannot too often be reminded of this. He is a “jealous God” (Exod 20: 5), and
“whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”, Gal 6: 7. We are HIS, and “love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave”, SofS 8. He will share it with none; and surely we love to think of Him thus! “My beloved is mine”; and if a believer, I can say also, weak, worthless as I am, “I am His”; for He says so. The heart delights to ponder on it, and will throughout all eternity; for love is exclusive. But let us remember the cost—not now the cost to Him, the cross was the measure of that; but what is involved as to us—the cost to us. After all it is but the giving up (is it gladly?) of what Paul designates as ‘dross and dung’, Phil 3. It is the counting up in the light of eternity of all that we have and all that we are on earth, according to the direction which He gives us in Luke 14: 25-35.
Mark then, in Gen 14: 14-18, the moral of the lesson which was proposed, and which is sufficiently simple for 95
any babe in Christ to understand, though we shall see the same principle is true also in other instances. None can encounter the enemy without defeat except the trained and armed man. Abram “armed his trained servants”, and conquered the enemy. We are expected not to be overcome, but to be overcomers (Rev 2: 3), whatever the power, and malice, and subtlety of the enemy may be, in a warfare not now natural; for “we wrestle not against flesh and blood”, but against “spiritual wickedness in high places”, Eph 6: 12.
Had Abram engaged in conflict with the enemy
without having ready servants trained to bear arms, the probability is that he and they too would have been overcome. But they were both trained and also armed. The first supposes a lengthened and varied disciplinary exercise in the house, the last the suited weapons of offence and defence for the occasion. All of these Lot was deficient in.
At ease and settled here, he dreamt of no enemy, and so was taken unawares, and found defenceless. The discipline of Abram’s house, may we not say, was unknown in the house of Lot, and mark the sure result.
No, my brother in the Lord, you are never to relax; never to forget, on the one hand, your pilgrim and stranger calling, nor, on the other, the discipline of your own house in accordance with the fact that the enemy is around. The time is coming when this day-drill and the armour of defence against him, so necessary to you now, and the given resistless sword of offence, will both be laid aside; but it is not yet. You are “chosen … to be a soldier” (2 Tim 2: 4); but what is an untrained soldier, and one without armour, without arms?
I believe then the especial want of Christians in the present day is to be trained and “armed”, and more especially so in reference to our own recent trials God would bring this, I believe, before us. The training, the armour, the arms, then what are they for us? And, I ask my own heart, as I see some have been carried away by the enemy, Do I possess these? And I ask, Have you this daily discipline 96
and arms, so that you are not in danger of being also presently carried away by some other similar device of the same enemy? This is the question for us. We must see to it that we are armed. For, need I ask, was Lot? Need I say that all Christians are not? The Ephesians are exhorted to take the whole armour of God by the apostle Paul, and the saints also to arm by the apostle Peter: “Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind”, 1 Pet 4. And wherefore these exhortations, if all are already thus armed? And this brings before us the key to the whole matter? One has trodden this earth before us to whom Peter refers, and never did the enemy for a moment get an advantage over Him, or turn Him aside from a right path. We are to be armed with the same mind. What mind that was, seen so unfalteringly in Him, Philippians 2 unfolds to us. He would obey, and He would serve. He would only do the will of God, and this necessitates in all of us a continued path of going down.
Remember that it is only in your going down that you can follow Him, or that God can be exalted; for the old man and the new cannot be exalted together. Only in the giving up of my will am I like Christ, nor like Him wholly even then; for He did God’s will, and both must be there if I am fully to follow Him; that is, if I am to be armed at this special moment both to recover my brother, or to be myself preserved from joining him, and sharing with him in his captivity.
What was it in our beloved brethren that turned them aside? Where did the enemy get an advantage over them?
Was it worldliness, or pride, or envy, or the ten thousand other snares he employs? These are questions difficult to answer, but questions which we must answer if we are to profit by the discipline of God’s hand at this moment; for you do not arm against a danger you are ignorant of, and remember we are not armed if these things are allowed in us, and, alas! we too may then be carried away captive by the same enemy at any moment.
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I pause, before looking at one or two passages of Scripture, to reply to a remark I have heard. It is this: ‘But was not the professing church carried away by the enemy soon after the apostles?’ I admit it. And was not Lot similarly carried away a captive to his own will, and so in the hands of the enemy (though doubtless unknown to himself) long before the occasion we have read together in chap 14? He made a deliberate choice of what was easiest to nature in chap 13. But there came a special time of trial to Lot and his house which brought it all out, and it was not the first; and so God does allow these special trials to come, when the enemy puts forth a special effort, and through one of these trials He has seen fit in His wisdom ( and for our blessing, if we take heed thereto) recently to pass us. May God enable us to profit by this moment, and may its lessons never be lost upon us!
Allow me now to show you a similar instruction from
the book of Judges. Israel is in an evil state, under the oppression of Midian and Amalek. Gideon (chap 6), by whom God would help them, must be himself, and his house also, in a moral condition suited to God, and in contrast with that of the people; that is, he must himself be trained and armed. His father and his father’s house had fallen under the enemy, and were worshippers of Baal. First he humbles himself and takes the place of being “least in his father’s house”, then erects an altar to the true God, then throws down his father’s altar of Baal, and cuts down the grove that was by it, offering sacrifice to God alone; and only after all this does God use him to overcome the host of Midian, chap 7. Others may be found in the Old Testament; but to come to the New, a similar line of truth is found in Paul’s address to the elders at Ephesus, Acts 20. About to be taken from them, when they would have no longer his counsel to guide them, his advice to them is, “Take heed unto yourselves”. They must discipline themselves, and thus be trained, and he would arm them in view of those solemn times of difficulty which he saw approaching for the church, when they would have to stand alone against the enemy; and it is thus also that he addresses Timothy, 2 Tim.
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Nothing is more touching than this tender solicitude of an aged servant of the Lord for those he is leaving behind; for it is God’s continuous care for the church and those who are His. Putting off the armour himself (“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith”
(2 Tim 4: 7)), who is there that cannot see that he is putting it, in the second epistle, upon Timothy? He says there must be self-restraint and endurance. “No man that warreth entangleth himself” (2 Tim 2: 4) (the opposite of conflict here is self-entanglement in the world). “Hold fast the form of sound words”, 2 Tim 1: 13. “Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord”, 2 Tim 1: 8. “Study to show thyself approved unto God”, chap 2: 15. “Flee also youthful lusts”, v 22. “Follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart”, 2 Tim 2: 22. “Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned”, chap 3: 14. “From such turn away”, chap 3: 5.
“Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season”, chap 4: 2. “Watch thou in all things”, v 5. These are passages that form a continual training or drill which clearly show the object of the apostle in this epistle, of which every word is (perhaps now more than at any other moment) especially valuable to us. But it is also the arming of the man of God by one who knew well the subtle power of the enemy, and the value and necessity of such armour. Nor without it can any man of God “be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works”, 2 Tim 3: 17. Of 110,000 men that marched through the wilderness “able to go to war” of the two and a half tribes (Num 26), only “about forty thousand prepared”
(armed) “for war passed over before the Lord into battle, to the plains of Jericho”, Josh 4.
In short, then, the lesson for the present moment that is pressed upon us, in view of what we have recently passed through, is very simple. The Lord Jesus has gone through this scene before us, triumphantly “spoiling” the house of the enemy, and delivering his captives out of his hand. Do you desire from this moment to start afresh, and to go through this world like CHRIST? Would you follow Him?
Then you must be like Him, and both trained and armed.
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Whatever others may do, you must crush, by the power of the Spirit, as taught in the Word, every movement of your own will that rises up in opposition to your calling as a Christian. You must suffer. You must be “trained” and
“armed” in yourself at home. Without these things you are only providing the enemy with a means and a weapon against you, which sooner or later be assured that he will use. May we then see to it that we are both “trained” and
“armed” for this moment, that the Lord may not only use us, but also continue to preserve us; to the glory and praise of His holy name. For the battle is not over yet, and to any who would boast, say, “Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off”, 1 Kings 20.
If the children of God make any alliance with the world, and thus pursue a line of conduct opposed to their true character, they must find disappointment.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 9, 1882
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‘‘He must increase, but I must decrease.”
These early words of John the baptist contain a truth to which we do well to recall our hearts in these days of self-pleasing and feverish religious activity, for there is a tendency to exalt man — to place one man against another while keeping Christ, the true One to be exalted out of our thoughts, and our poor hearts are so easily led that they readily fall into and accept it. The information that a greater than he had arisen, to whom multitudes were being attracted, produced no envy in the heart of John. Albeit that “the same baptiseth” was an error (for Jesus baptised not, but His disciples), yet His growing notoriety was all right, and like the star fading away before the rising sun, John takes his place, content to be hidden and enveloped in His rays. It was as it should be, and it is God’s “must”
which John accepted for himself, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
In olden times it was customary for the opposing parties to have a ‘battle cry’ when engaged in mortal combat with the foe. What more suited one can we have than what this short motto supplies? It stated the individual interest in the conflict, and so does this. It declares the giving up of self in all its varied and subtle forms and desires, in order that Christ alone may be exalted. Have we entered into the conflict with this motto? In everything is this our battle cry?
If so, such soldiers cannot be overcome by the enemy.
Death may lie in the path wherein we walk, and in which we “wrestle not against flesh and blood” (Eph 6: 12), but we are bidden to “Fear not them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do”, Luke 12: 4. For the Christian is told, if the worst come, that to be “absent from the body” is to be “present with the Lord” (2 Cor 5: 6 NT), and is this being overcome?
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Well had it been for the Baptist’s continued peace of mind, had he always retained upon his heart the truth contained in the words he had uttered! But the solitary gloom of a prison was an occasion which was used of the enemy to test his faith, and it does not obtain from him the utterance of the same triumphant war-cry in the presence of his enemy as it did in John 3 when the enemy was foiled, self-being abased, and Jesus exalted. We trace a measure of restlessness in the sending to Jesus two of His own disciples, and a measure of doubt in his question, “Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?”, Luke 7: 19
Do we not all know something of what this perturbed state of soul is? We know the truth, “I must decrease”, and there is a measure of acceptance of it, but we had not counted on
this way of its accomplishment; a prison was around John, and perhaps death before him, and he was disturbed? What will be the mode whereby God will make it good to us and in us, we must be content to leave wholly with Him. Without this confidence, there is a little corner in the heart on which Satan can work at any time to the distraction of the soul.
But the truth is enough for us, the working of it out, His to order. We see in the first case Satan was met at the outposts with it, and was defeated, in the other that he was admitted within, and the servant of God was distressed.
Oh, it is a solemn thing, but a real thing if we see what is involved in it, for any soul to be able to say in all simplicity and reality — since in the desire before God “He must increase, but I must decrease”. To be in the habit of saying, ‘Well, it matters not to me these circumstances wherein I suffer, so that He is exalted, and since I know that this cannot be seen in my path, but in my being abased, I am content’. If one may be allowed to utter a warning note,
‘Let us beware how we engage in the conflict without it — let us count the cost, lest we too being overcome, become in our turn but the sport and derision of the enemy’.
Allow me now, my brethren, to ask you, and we will
seek together an answer from the word of God — What are the things and what is the manner whereby He wills that 102
each of us “must decrease’’? And in order to this, I would first dwell a little on what a Christian is, and already possesses.
I assume then, and state it at once as a starting ground which none can gainsay, that all that the world has to give can add nothing to the child of God; that he is one, rich beyond all expression, and blessed beyond all compare; blessed now “with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ”, Eph 1. What indeed can you add to one who is
“Heir of God, and joint-heir with CHRIST”? Is it not true that He who was rich for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich, 2 Cor 8: 9? And rich we ARE, since, says the apostle Paul, “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s”, 1 Cor 3. Is it not true that
“as he [Christ] is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4: 17), and loved by the Father with the same love with which He loved and still loves His beloved Son, 1 John 4: 17; 17: 23, 26? ‘As Christ is’. Consider it, beloved, and say whether human language can present to you anything greater, or if earthly glory can add anything to HIM, and such are we “in this world.”
Since therefore, nothing possessed here below can add anything to the Christian, it is equally sure that nothing can make him other than what he is, or take from him what he possesses. “Chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1) is his individual position as looked at now, while to be the vessel wherein shall be displayed ‘‘the exceeding riches of his grace” all through the coming and eternal ages, is the future part of God’s purpose respecting him. Blessed is that man who in the view and face of it all, has learnt to be “therewith content” (1 Tim 6: 8); while all he requires here is (if good for him) also meted out to him in the necessary food of the body and the raiment he wears, coming in the fulness of divine grace direct from the heart of Him who “knoweth that we have need of all these things”, Matt 6: 32. How often is the manner and way of His grace 103
towards us neither dwelt upon nor enjoyed! How little the heart draws and drinks from its own well! ‘‘The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water”, with drinking from which is connected ‘‘ never hunger —never thirst’’, John 4: 13. These our spiritual blessings therefore are ours, and they know no wane and suffer no decay. It is not in these that I have to “decrease”, and increased they cannot be were you to give me anything or everything found upon earth. I would draw your attention then to what is the line of things wherein we “must decrease”, as brought before us by the Holy Ghost in the words of the apostle Paul in Philippians 3 and without which there can be no advance in the things of God. Paul is most positive in what he teaches here concerning it, as he is also in Romans 6. The whole passage (Phil 3: 1-6) is most interesting, for it was nothing but good things (religious as men speak) that the apostle boasted of, yet the whole appears to me to be condensed in the description which he gives of them in v 7,
“What things were gain to me”. Those last three words stamped them, every one; they were “gain” to him, he was increasing, not decreasing, so much the more went down in his favour and to his account. What was this, but a daily and increasing satisfaction with himself, what he was, and what he possessed? But, my brethren, if this be what we can glory in, if these will weigh in our favour or satisfy God as they appear to satisfy us, there can be no need for the atonement and death of His Son. And it was this latter that Saul of Tarsus hated and sought to stamp out the very remembrance of (with all those who boasted in it) from the earth on which he trod, for it makes nothing of man and his works. And if works will suffice, any one may work his own way to heaven, and take credit to himself in these works; but if works to obtain salvation are useless before the atonement of Christ was made known to the soul, they only foster pride if rested in after that work is accomplished. It is in all that which exalts me — me as the world’s good religious man as well as in all that exalts me as a worldly man, these are the things wherein I have to “decrease”.
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It is while living and walking about down here that we ought to be able nevertheless to say, “I die daily”, and what is a dead man but a useless man as to this world and one repulsive and obnoxious to all its schemes? And such we are in God’s account: ‘‘ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God”, Col 3: 3. And such we are to be practically. Is it comely for a Christian to be reaching after earthly honours, riches, reputation, or aught else here below, and if doing so, has he learnt the meaning of “He must increase, but I must decrease”? Is not the name of Christian (that worthy name upon you, by which ye are called) often scoffed and mocked at on these very points?
Because of the inconsistences of those who bear it? Of the whole course of the Lord Jesus it is written, He “made himself of no reputation”, Phil 2: 7.
Alas, that it should not be so with all of us. Alas, that with even some of us here tonight God’s finger is upon us, and our consciences are telling us as to this, “Thou art the man”. Yet it is only by thus taking our true places before God as to these things with a real desire for Him to deal with us, that we are profited by speaking of them together. We are in our folly sacrificing the present enjoyment of the eternal, for the passing pleasure of the temporal, for no man can enjoy both. A remarkable illustration of this is given us if we turn to Hebrews 11. There Esau comes before us, “who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright”. With the birthright went the blessing of the firstborn. But this blessing had especial reference to the future, to the Messiah who was to come, the promised seed, of which God had spoken to Abraham, in whom “all families of the earth” were to be blessed, see Gen 28: 3-15. The mess of pottage, the satisfaction of the moment, the pleasing of nature, was preferred to the whole blessed range of God’s promises by Esau; and what does scripture say of such? It calls Esau a
“profane person” — one who preferred the enjoyment of the present to the glorious realities awaiting him in the future.
It is the contrast between faith and sight.
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My brethren, we too are blest. The blessing of the
“Firstborn from the dead” is upon us. “He lifted up his hands and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven”, Luke 24: 50, 51. But it is not earthly but heavenly, not true for sight but real to faith. Are we enjoying it —
making much of it? He is gone up. Thence He is coming again in “like manner”. “Heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ”, we are waiting for Him here, until the time comes when according to God’s eternal purpose He will “gather together in one all things in Christ”, Eph 1: 10. Seeing that we have learnt, poor dull scholars, that in all things He shall
“have the pre-eminence” (Col 1: 18) — that it is God’s must concerning Him, 1 Cor 15: 25. Are we saying and practically seeking to carry it out, “He must increase, but I must decrease”? Or are we like Esau despising the blessing, gathering to ourselves the poor passing and empty things of earth, none of which we can take with us, upon which (the flesh in us and all that ministers to it) our God hath stamped “vanity of vanities, all is vanity”. Ah, which is it with you? One thing is certain, we are each saying or practising in our ways day by day either this, “He must increase”, or this, ‘ I must increase’, and you cannot change the one word without changing the other. If you say ‘I must increase’ you must add, ‘He must decrease’, and in our souls we bear witness that this is so. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal 6: 7), is seen daily in the condition and ways of God’s people as to this very truth.
Is it then your purpose to show in your life that the words of John the baptist are your motto? May it be so, and may the Lord give His word power over our souls for His Name’s sake.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vols 15 & 16, 1881/2
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(Exod 33: 18, 19, 22; 34: 6, 7; John 20: 17, 20; 1 Cor 11: 23-26)
There are times and moments in our history when God, in His grace coming very near to us, makes us sensible of His presence and love, and when the redeemed soul tastes for a moment a sip of that eternal future that is awaiting it. In no way is this more distinctly realised on earth than in what we are privileged to be occupied with until the Lord shall come, that which was their delight in the beginning. “The disciples came together to break bread”, Acts 20: 7.
Not that we ought ever to lose the sense of His presence with us, and of what grace has done; for He is always with us; and there is the eternal, and therefore changeless, sunshine of His favour always beaming down upon us; and the clouds are not from Him. Still, He does at times allow them to come. Most of us know that there are times when it is not God in the fulness of His grace that is prominently before us, but rather the pressure of other things. It is the hour in our history when we are “perplexed, but not in despair … cast down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor 4: 8, 9); “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor 6: 10), and for a season “in heaviness through manifold temptations” (1
Pet 1: 6); for such a season God often sees there is a “needs be”, as the apostle Peter says.
But it is He that lifts up. “God, that comforteth those that are cast down” (2 Cor 7: 6), does this Himself. The manner and way He takes with us in this has been the manner of His grace to all His people from the first. He makes His goodness to pass before us, and we are bowed by the sight of it before Him. Thus was it with Moses in this chapter. He had desired (when crushed, and well-nigh in despair as to the people) to see God’s glory, and He said, “I will make all my goodness pass before thee”. And for Moses, what was it? What would God do for him that he may not be overpowered thereby? “I will put thee in a cleft of the 107
rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by”, Exod 33: 22. “And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth ... And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped”, Exod 34: 6, 8. The Lord passed by, and His goodness passed by in proclamation before His servant; and what could he say while, as sheltered there, he beheld it and heard it all? He made haste, bowed the head, and worshipped; and thus, beloved, is it always. Thus is it too with us whenever He makes us sensible of His goodness and of His presence; thus was it too with David when he went in and sat before the Lord. Words are wanting or die away in silence, the silence of worship; for he too is contemplating God, who has caused His goodness to pass before His soul.
“Who am I, O Lord God, and what is mine house, that thou hast brought me hitherto? ... What can David speak more to thee for the honour of thy servant? for thou knowest thy servant”, 1 Chron 17: 16, 18. This is all he can say. Words and expression both fail while the heart is bowed in worship and thanksgiving; for worship is not of necessity expression or language; often silence marks it. For it is as sheltered that we are called upon to contemplate “all His goodness”, not now that into which we cannot look (as was the case with Moses), but sheltered, it is “with unveiled face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord” (2 Cor 3: 18),
“we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour”, Heb 2: 9. Soon our portion will be to see Him as He is; but the Spirit causes now all His goodness oft-times to pass before us; for the Spirit is not only the unfolder, discerning
“the deep things of God”, but the Spirit of sonship too, as He also is the bond of union. “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit”, 1 Cor 6: 17. “Heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ”, Rom 8: 17.
And now what has God to say to us? It is as sheltered, and also as covered, and, beyond all, as guests invited to listen to the Holy Ghost, and partake of the unfolding of all “God’s goodness”, that we are gathered 108
together to break bread on each first day of the week. May we know how to value the privilege, and also how decorously to behave ourselves in the midst of such abounding grace as this. Here passes in review before the soul the destruction and overthrow of the enemy, and all his host in the Red Sea, while the ark stands firm in the bed of Jordan—both figures of the death of Christ. His goodness had passed before these poor slaves of Egypt and the desert rung again with a song that has not yet died away, nor ever will, but which is renewed and understood now by those who sing it in a desert (the desert of this world) as barren for us as was that which greeted Israel’s eye that day. But it is of the Lord not of the desert. “I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea”, Exod 15: 1. God is satisfied, and I (delivered) am now all that He would have me to be; for I am “accepted in the Beloved”, Eph 1: 6. “The Lord is my strength and song, and is become my salvation” (Exod 15: 2); and as to conflict in the land, the carrying out of all that His grace has purposed, we add, “The Lord shall reign for ever and ever”, v 18. The Lord Jesus, who is with us (Matt 18: 20) the One who has come out of death and judgment, says, “My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation”, Ps 22: 25. He sings in the midst of the church, the Leader of the song (Ps 22), and claims us as His brethren—“My brethren”, John 20. God now bears to us the endearing name and relationship of Father—“My Father, and your Father … my God, and your God”. He has passed (and we are with Him) into the sense of unclouded intimacy; for the work is DONE. God owns it where He has seated Christ. “Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool”, Acts 2: 34, 35.
How blessed then to be where the Lord condescends
Himself to be! “Where two or three are gathered together in my name”, Matt 18: 20. Who would, who could, be absent, if they added, “There am I”, and if there were any possibility of being present? The place whereat He causes all His goodness to pass before us, and sends us out if into a desert as a rejoicing people, with the song of praise and 109
thanksgiving in our mouths: “The LORD is my strength and song”. Like the disciples of John 20, “glad”; for they saw
“the Lord”—saw His hands and His side, and heard the blessed accents of His voice proclaiming, as the result of His death, “Peace be unto you”.
Have you done then with the world? It is our testimony. Have we passed into this blessed, this unclouded scene? It is what we declare week by week.
Would we change places or be anything other than what God has been pleased to make us in, and through Christ—
“heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ”? Would Israel on the shore of the Red Sea go back again? Would David before the Lord change his circumstances? Would Job, before whom God had in those wonderful chapters (28, 29, 40, 41) caused all His goodness to pass, do anything but bow?
“Now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself” (Job 42: 5, 6); this was, and it still is, the answer to the revelation of God’s goodness. And when the disciples have learnt, and when we have learnt, that He claims us as His “brethren”, what will the effect be upon us? What will it be, brethren, in each one of us if we are still left here? Will you live for Him, whom the world in its pride still rejects, a filled and worshipping people? May it be so while we are left here to show the Lord’s death until He come, and to wait before Him in the blessed anticipation of His speedy coming the second time, “without sin unto salvation”. “The night is far spent, the day is at hand”, Rom 13: 12.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 10, 1883
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RECOVERING THE DISORDERLY
The apostle Paul expects that every individual saint in the little assembly at Thessalonica will register a distinct disapproval of a persistent, disorderly course in one among them by his or her CONDUCT towards such an one, 2 Thess 3: 6-15.
It is for the recovery, and therefore surely for the blessing, of the person; it is an individual responsibility as to what is becoming action toward that person, which not one among them dared to ignore or refuse to pay. The offender is not yet looked upon as a “wicked person” (1 Cor 5: 13), and therefore is not put away from among them.
It is action which would have preserved Corinth from the growth of all that terrible moral evil which grew up, was allowed in one among them (1 Cor 5), but finally exposed by the same faithful apostle. Evil which, growing on and for long, bore its bitter fruit among them, and in other and further sorrows than this, see 1 Cor 1: 11; 3: 3, 4; 4: 8; 7: 6; 11: 18; 14: 26, &c Sorrows and confusion and evil in which all were more or less involved. Disorderly courses, unfaithfully dealt with or allowed among the saints, will end in wickedness and open sin at last, since “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump”, 1 Cor 5: 6.
And—mark it well, for there is no respect of persons with God—where there is not this upright action of the saints towards such a person (whoever he or she may be) there will sooner or later be demoralisation and trouble and sorrow in that or in any such assembly.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 10, 1883
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Mystery envelopes many minds as to the book of Revelation, and the interpretation (understanding) of what is recorded there. This would be greatly dispelled by our seeing God’s division of this book into three parts: 1. The things which thou hast seen.
2. The things which are.
3. The things which shall be after these.
These are God’s divisions, and not of man (see Rev 1: 19), therefore are they worthy of all attention.
If John obeyed the instructions given him in this verse, the first matter he wrote of was what he alone had seen. Having thus written, he next proceeded to write of
“the things which are”, the church, left on earth awhile to be the responsible light bearer for Christ. And lastly, we should expect to read of “the things which shall be after these”. All this, in its exact order, we do find in what the apostle writes.
The second writing ends thus: “He that hath an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches”, Rev 2: 7 &c.
Note, therefore, “the things that are” can only refer to the church on earth, and contemplates nothing save it; for whatever body of people may be taken up in grace by God after the church has passed away from the earth, they are not under consideration here, and could form, therefore, no part of the “things that are” as it existed in John’s day, for if they did they must of necessity be of the church, and part of it. We must not transfer the Laodicean overcomers of chap 3 into chap 4, where alone we first read of what shall be “after these things”.
It may be simply enquired, When did Laodicea and Laodicean overcomers cease to be a part of the things “that 112
are”, and pass into “the things that shall be hereafter”, since they formed part of the “things that are” in John’s day?
One other remark may help the simple.
The Laodicean overcomer shall “sit with me in my throne” (chap 3: 21), says the Lord. Now, who shall share that throne with Him save the church, “the bride, the Lamb’s wife”, chap 21: 9? Mark, it is not merely that they reign “with” Him, but they sit with Him “in” His own peculiar throne. If Rev 20: 4 is quoted, it is not a sufficient answer.
Reigning “with” ( meta) is not the same as “in ( en) my throne”. Those who pass through (or are martyred in) the great tribulation form no part of the church, “the things that are”, for they as yet are not.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 10, 1883
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A FEW SCRIPTURES CONNECTED
“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8: 1); for there is nothing there to condemn. He is glorified (Acts 3: 13), and there abides the blessed and changeless sunshine of God’s favour always. And in Him that changeless favour beams down upon me, 1 John 4: 17; John 17: 26. I awake in the morning, and there it is in all its fulness. He would have me work on, all through the hours of the long day, with the certainty of it. I lie down tired and weary at night, it may be, but it is still there, still true. “Accepted in the beloved”
abides, Eph 1: 6. And truly, since it has pleased God thus to show the kindness of God unto me (Titus 3: 4; 2 Sam 9: 1, 3) a poor sinner, and since all is “of him, and through him, and to him” (Rom 11: 36), I must add, “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage”, Ps 16: 6. To be now “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Rom 8: 17), and now to be able to cry, “Abba, Father” (Gal 4: 6), and so to turn to Him in everything—
what a portion!
It is best to think little of self and talk less. One thing satisfies the heart, to think much of God and His blessed grace, and to speak of it. We shall know this in heaven.
There is little in the best of us worth thinking about, and less worth speaking about. But, oh, to be ransomed, and to know it! oh, to be redeemed, and going through this world in the daily and hourly communion with our own Redeemer!
Ah! then we learn what paltry little things seek to occupy us, and fritter time away, and estimate them at their right value. Not to be occupied thus is to lose the blessed privilege which He has died to purchase for us, of bathing our souls all the day long in an ocean of love that is fathomless, but changeless and eternal.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 10, 1883
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HIS OBJECTS AND HIS INSTRUMENTS
Whatever means may be used to minister comfort to
us as we pass along, it is well always to bear in mind that God is its source; and though He takes knowledge of the sorrows of all human kind, and alleviates them as it pleases Him, yet His own people are His chief objects in this ministry, which is His continual desire and delight.
There are three great channels He uses to thus minister comfort to His people which they ought to understand—channels which are entirely outside the comprehension of the natural mind. Nature is always occupied with its own little circle, and the trials or sorrows found therein; for these and from these it seeks deliverance, and without this deliverance it feels no comfort. But it is not so with the believer. Comfort is continually ministered to him in the circumstances of trial and sorrow in which he finds himself here, and oftentimes without their removal.
In so far therefore as I am as an individual thus occupied in ministering comfort to His people—comfort which of course I must first myself have received—I am in harmony with this desire and purpose of God respecting them. Let us see what these three channels are which He so uses—the means which God the Holy Ghost, the COMFORTER, has continually employed since the moment of His taking up His abode upon earth on the day of Pentecost until now. In order to do this I turn to Isa 40: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God”. God is here found addressing those whom He would use in this blessed service. Then we read three words which are to be spoken by them for His people’s comfort. “Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem” (footnote ‘to the heart of Jerusalem’, He cares for our affections), “and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins”. Here we have the first testimony of the Holy Ghost, the first drop in 115
the cup of comfort which He administers, the testimony from God Himself that every question is eternally and divinely settled between Himself and them; this to that nation is doubtless future, to us it is present. Every question is set at rest, and those who were once enemies are now at peace with God through the work of the Lord Jesus on the cross; of this the Holy Ghost is the witness in many places, as in Acts 2, also in Heb 10: 14-17. Here we find that, looking back at it, it is the solid ground of comfort for us now as to Israel by-and-by. The cross, the past of God’s ways, is here used for our comfort, and the Holy Ghost administers it.
Secondly, for our comfort we are instructed that the Lord’s coming is at hand. Solid comfort is this to the soul which has already so blessedly profited by all that God has wrought in the past; ie in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Here is the future laid under contribution for the present comfort and blessing of God’s people. “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God”, Isa 40: 3. This, fulfilled when the Baptist’s voice was heard in the desert, and with reference therefore to the Lord’s first coming, is still the testimony of the Holy Ghost for the comfort of His people, but now it is His testimony to the Lord’s second coming; nearly every part of the New Testament contains it, and with the especial desire of comforting the saints in varied circumstances of trial here.
In illustration we think of John 14, the chapter to which the saints have in such tried moments invariably turned—
blessed words which we have so often read, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again”. In view also of the temporary separation of believers by death—it is the same thing—“The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout ... Wherefore comfort one another with these words”, 1 Thess 4: 16, 18. Other passages might be quoted—they are numerous—where the Spirit of God uses 116
in the Word the second coming of the Lord for the present comfort of His people.
And, thirdly, and also for our comfort, we have the testimony of the Holy Ghost concerning the flesh. “The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass”, Isa 40: 6, 7. Now it is the flesh that “the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon” which troubles the child of God. Either working in himself as an individual, or working in the church of God, what a fertile source of trouble and discomfort is the flesh! And what is the remedy, the comfort found here? To ever hold it in the place of death, and under the judgment which God has here assigned to it. “The spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it”. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”, John 3: 6. And the New Testament in many, many places fully unfolds God’s judgment of it.
Believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, are YOU profiting by this ministry of the Spirit? You are confided to the care of the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, until the return of your Lord and Saviour. Are you enjoying the comfort of His ministrations to you? He testifies to the eternal settlement and blotting out of your sins in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. He testifies to the speedy second coming of the Lord, the Accomplisher of that blessed work. He testifies to you of the utter worthlessness and corruption of the flesh, the evil nature for which you are exhorted to “make no provision”. His testimony therefore as to the past, as to the present, and as to the future, is all for your comfort. And if you are comforted by the knowledge of these things as you travel along, then go and comfort others with the same comfort wherewith you yourself are comforted of God, as the blessed apostle did of old. Thus will you be found in fellowship with our God, who is not only “the Father of mercies”, but “the God of all comfort” (2 Cor 1: 3) and consolation, and who will thus use you as the minister of 117
blessing to God’s people in the power of the Holy Ghost, “the Comforter”. May many now thus be found for present blessing to His eternal praise. Amen.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 10, 1883
A MEDITATION
Made sin, Thou bear’st my sins
Thou holy One of God;
Jehovah’s sword awoke,
Thence flowed Thy precious blood.
Hail! boundless grace which sets me free,
Sin judged, my sins too borne by Thee,
That blood from judgment shieldeth me.
And I am Thine, through death
For me, where wrath impelled
Its billows all on Thee,
And ever was annulled.
Thou liv’st—I live, Thy sorrow o’er; Mine—
Thine to share for evermore,
The Father’s house, heaven’s boundless store.
Be mine THY lowly path
On earth till that blest day;
Nothing the world hath now
To give or take away.
From all its shadows vain, I flee;
Hail! Prince and Saviour, Lord, with Thee
I come to spend eternity!
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 11, 1884
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ON TRACING THE ACTINGS AND LEADINGS
OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD
It is an interesting question, and one that sets a certain other question at rest, Ought we not to distinguish between the actings of the Holy Ghost in the world generally and His actings in the midst of the separated people of God?
I see the Spirit of God testifying to God’s thoughts of such a separated company, and acting in them, in Mal 3
“They spake often one to another ... for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon HIS NAME”. Was not that of the Spirit? However far away Israel might have been as to the knowledge of the mind of God at that moment, there was no mixture among them; they had the same desire and object. There was no stranger among them; they knew each other well, this is evident, and they were in Israel just what Israel should have been as a whole among the nations; viz.,
“The people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations”, Num 23: 9. Such words described this little company, and the Spirit of God tells of God’s delight in them as His “jewels”, Mal 3: 17.
I see them again, and the Spirit of God drawing attention to them, in Luke 2. There was Anna, and Simeon, and those that “looked for redemption in Jerusalem”. There was distinct action of the Holy Ghost among them. As to Simeon the “Holy Ghost was upon him”. “It was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost” about the coming One, and again Simeon “came by the Spirit into the temple”. And Anna came in at the same moment. There was this special favour of God shown to them, that they were instructed and brought into fellowship with His mind and purposes at that moment, a moment of especial interest with Him as to this world. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.
They learnt it from Himself. It was a wondrous moment, one that stands alone in the history of this world, when God was bringing in the second Man the Lord from heaven, and the favour of learning His mind about Him was theirs, and that little company to whom they belonged, “who looked for 119
redemption in Jerusalem”. Who can overestimate the wondrous favour of being thus brought at any time into a knowledge of the present thoughts and purposes of God?
But while this was the action of the Holy Ghost towards this little separated company, the “poor of the flock”
(Zech 11: 7, 11), He was at the same time acting elsewhere, and entirely apart from them. John the baptist was to be the vessel whom the Spirit would use in another work, and John was “filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb”, Luke 1: 15. It was not the secrets of the Lord that were to be revealed to him in the same way as to the little remnant; for John had to confess, “I knew him not”. But there was to be a mighty public wave of blessing for Israel, that was to prepare the way of the coming Messiah; and this wondrous wave of blessing, which reached even the throne of the heathen king, was as much the work of the Spirit of God as was the song of praise and thanksgiving raised by old Simeon, when he held in his arms Him whom by revelation he knew as the salvation of Israel—God’s SALVATION.
There may be a similar public work of the Spirit just prior to our Lord’s second coming. But notice the effect of being thus brought into communion with the present mind of God. It is quietness, contentment, satisfaction. Simeon desired NOTHING MORE; and Anna’s work thenceforward was but to speak “of HIM” wherever a hearing ear was found in Jerusalem. But these quiet, contented, satisfied ones, the feeble few who possessed by special instruction of the Holy Ghost the present “secret of the Lord” (Ps 25: 14), are not made the instruments of the public activity of the Holy Ghost in the land; but John is, as we have observed, and it was a wondrous and stirring moment of God’s activity:
“Then went out to meet him [John] Jerusalem, and all Judæa, and all the region round about Jordan”, Matt 3: 5.
Pharisees and Sadducees, publicans and soldiers, the real and the unreal, the “generation of vipers” and those who boasted, “We have Abraham to our father” (v 9), all were moved; for God was moving among His people, and who 120
could resist Him? But what was the testimony? It was but for them to prepare for Him, whom this little company had already got; John’s testimony being the need of the confession of sins, and baptism unto repentance, and of the coming One, who was to baptise with the Holy Ghost and with fire. I have no doubt that they bowed to the testimony too, and so far went with Israel in this public movement; but they had already more, even Himself, and the deep, deep satisfaction and contentment and joy that He gave, which Simeon’s thanksgiving and Anna’s expressed; and did it diminish as He lived and walked before them day by day, God’s Christ, revealed to them as such by the Holy Ghost? When drawn to Him, there is ever this in the true heart that contemplates Him, an increased binding of bonds that can never break; and Peter’s simple testimony, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life”
(John 6: 68), will answer this question as to whether their delight in Him diminished.
I might also have drawn attention to Paul, the
“prisoner of the Lord” (Eph 3: 1). The especial depository of the mind of God as taught of the Spirit (1 Cor 2: 13) as this apostle was, he was shut up in a prison at Rome, whence we have received those wondrous epistles (the dictates of the Holy Ghost), Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Hebrews. But in the public testimony (save in the palace, I suppose) the apostle had then no share; yet it went on, and he rejoiced that it did: “notwithstanding …
Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice”, Phil 1: 18. In it too— ie in the public testimony—at that time Peter and John and others had their share; but to none of them was unfolded the secrets of the mind of God as to Paul, as Peter himself will admit (2 Pet 3: 16), and as their own writings prove. It was his wonderful solace to know that the Lord stood with him. Here again then the actings of the Holy Ghost in the world generally, and His actings to a faithful servant, have to be distinguished, and not confounded.
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In view of what has been here said, I cannot expect
any but a separated people or a separated servant to be instructed in the present mind of God, and it appears to me that it has been always so: “He made known His ways unto Moses, His acts unto the children of Israel”, Ps 103: 7. “If thou take forth the precious from the vile, then thou shalt be as my mouth”, Jer 15: 19. God is sovereign, and in a day of ruin like the present (and it is this as to the church and the truth in the hands of man) He can work, and does, by whom He will. But we must not depart from obedience and the Word. The question set at rest, as I said at the beginning (if these things are so, as to which we must “search the Scriptures”, is, Why does not the Lord use us more in His public testimony in this world? There are new movements of the Spirit of God in the world—salvation armies, gospel armies, and the like. The believer should rejoice that
“Christ is preached”, and that the Holy Ghost is working in this world in this way. But if in a day of ruin we have not both these actings of the Spirit carried on through us, then I covet, for myself and for others with whom God has been pleased to associate me, to be more distinctly of that separated and satisfied company to whom He has revealed His present mind, rather than to be the more public and apparently more used instrument who is not of that company, but who is as much USED of the Spirit in a public sphere (and one must remember it, though not in it) as the others are blessed in a private one.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 11, 1884
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THE TRUTH
Something less than the truth means something less
than Christ, for He is the truth. There is more danger therefore in frittering away the truth than in an open attack upon it.
I may have a clear knowledge of all the truth of Christianity, I may be able to expatiate with distinctness on the past and future dispensations of God’s ways; but the testing question is, Do I BENEFIT in the daily experiences of my own soul, as I pass through the varied experiences of this life, by the sense of my own personal relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Father, and to God? This experience, and the sense of this relationship (but not the mere knowledge of truth), will give real rest and comfort to the heart; for nothing can ever alter the place of favour revealed to us here.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 11, 1884
THE BELIEVER INDWELT
Every believer is indwelt by the Spirit of God, 1 Cor 6: 19. I ought to say therefore, when I rise in the morning, the Holy Spirit, dwelling in me, will reproduce in me this day the walk and ways, the temper and deportment, of Christ, if I do not hinder Him by the allowance of the flesh.
The opposition of the world, the flesh, and the devil are nothing to Him, if I am contented to be a broken vessel for Him to use.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 11, 1884
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IN GALATIANS 6: 1?
Does not the place in which this scripture is found throw great light on its meaning? I believe it does, and I would draw your attention to one or two points that strike me as to it.
It is not supposed as a right condition in a local assembly, whether composed of many or of few, that there is one class who are the “spiritual”, while the rest have not attained to that standing; and yet this is often the interpretation which is given to what is said of it. To admit that this is the meaning, and that the apostle is only allowing a common condition, well known among the saints everywhere, as well as in the several assemblies of Galatia, is most disastrous to all fellowship and communion of saints in each assembly. It introduces at once two distinct parties, where but one spirit should animate the whole, of which those who assume to be the “spiritual” are certainly the most culpable, though assuming to possess intelligence beyond the others. The apostle is correcting an evil, not providing for its continuance. Often has the writer, and perhaps the reader too, heard this reason given for not personally visiting a certain failing and erring brother, ‘Oh, I am not spiritual; that is not my work, so I brought this before brother So-and-so’, referring, by thus speaking, to the word spiritual in the passage before us.
Now any one carefully reading the epistle will observe that what is condemned in it is a hard, legal spirit. It is clear that the law exacts and expects from a man, and is the opposite of the Spirit of grace, which brings all to him, and which is to operate now in all our dealings with each other.
The assemblies of Galatia here addressed were
nurturing such a legal spirit. It is not of the Spirit of God, and it is by the apostle totally condemned. To do so is to fall from grace. It tends to exclude from our minds that ministry of love which should and would flow forth amongst 124
us spontaneously. For love acts (when it is divine) quite irrespective of any deserving in its objects.
The spiritual are those who are controlled and guided by the Spirit of God, and they are in contrast to others who are legal in this epistle. But anything save grace and the Spirit’s control is wrong. It is very important to weigh well how strongly the apostle speaks. He says, “I stand in doubt of you”, Gal 4: 20. The very Christianity of those who foster this legal spirit in their assemblies was almost questioned by him, so entirely is it apart from the leading of the Spirit of God. In the beginning he calls it another gospel, which is not another, and in this last chapter he shows that it tends to shut out all the manifestations of love to an erring brother. It fosters religious pride, Gal 6: 12, 13. Legality says, ‘When he has done something to merit my confidence, then I will restore him to the place he once held in my esteem and affections’. Spirituality says, ‘When he is down is not the time to expect him to do much (save show a willingness to be helped). I will go to him in meekness to do something for him, for I consider myself in him, and that I am exposed to a similar temptation as long as I am in the body’. How different!
But a word more as to “overtaken”. It means either
that I overtake him, or that the fault overtakes him, for we are all running along in our Christian course. In either case he has stopped in his race heavenward. Legality still recognises the flesh, and the flesh stops a man in his race.
I should not have overtaken him, and the fault would not have overtaken him, had he continued running. But here he is helpless. Am I to pass him by in my distress? Like the legal spirit of the Levite and the priest, am I to take the other side? Nay; rather let me imitate the good Samaritan, so-called, who “went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine”, Luke 10: 34. Our blessed Lord Himself is before us here, who turns to each of us individually with His own beautiful homely comment on the whole story: “Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” (v 36) and 125
adds that marvellous exhortation, so short, yet so full and pointed, “Go, and do thou likewise”, v 37. Such is the leading of the Spirit in opposition to legality.
The Christianity of those may well be doubted who take the ground of not being “spiritual”, and who act among their brethren in another spirit—on the ground of law and not of grace. They admit that they are legal; ie still in bondage themselves. The Corinthians were not legal, but
“carnal”. Hence we have a man in one of four conditions now. Either he is natural, dead in trespasses and sins; or he is carnal, allowing the flesh; or he is legal, as the Galatians were, still in bondage, and not in the liberty of the Son; or he is spiritual, under the control of the blessed Spirit of God6, and if so, in all the joy of conscious sonship, as a child with the Father. This last is the only proper Christian condition, and Paul insists on it, and therefore no allowance is made for a class in any assembly who take the ground of not being “spiritual”. Nothing can be more solemn than the strong way in which the apostle speaks to them in this epistle. However much there may be of the appearance of humility in one who says I am not “spiritual”, yet not to be led of the Spirit is a denial of Christ, and is the overthrow of Christianity.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 11, 1884
6 Spiritual is put in contrast with natural in 1 Cor 2, and with legal in Gal 6: 1.
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MY PLACE
No question of worthiness can be associated with the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, nor with Him personally in respect of the place He now occupies.
So also no thought of any judicial clearance before perfect holiness can come before the mind with respect to the Lord Jesus Himself; and no thought of His responsibility as obnoxious to God’s government.
These things do have their place when man is considered, but not else. The eternal Son of the Father, by whom also “He made the world”, in Him was found before the world was, as ever since, God’s perfect rest, complacency, delight.
If these questions are rightly raised as to my place, how are they met? The answer is, In Him, if a believer, I stand. In Him, in all the favour of His OWN acceptance, as to which not a thought of worthiness can for one moment be entertained. As His worthiness now and always is far beyond any mere judicial clearance—for He is, as always, the delight of the Father—so also am I, as in Him. Can we measure or explain this affection? It is past our powers of explanation, and outside all merely human comprehension.
Reason must flounder here. Yet—who will deny it?—“As he is, so are we in this world”, 1 John 4: 17.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 11, 1884
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The Christian is seen by James in trying
circumstances, the common lot of faith in this world. The desired effect to be produced by God’s thus dealing with him is “patience”. But it is to be patience in continuance and not else can it be said to have its “perfect work” in him. Here Job failed; I learn patience by having my own will broken, and to this end the trials are allowed. I learn the wondrous fact that God is for me (in them) in order that I should, my own will broken, be content with and do His will.
But while patience must be thus learnt because it is according to God, and we have to act on earth for HIM, and patience is simply waiting on His will: yet it does not suppose indifference or inactivity. When it is a question of His will for me in everything, I know that His way must be right. Hence I learn patience or a ceasing from my own will.
And then comes in another thing. I need wisdom in my daily path (for I must avoid sloth), so that in all I do I may be wise, that is, just doing as He would have me do in the circumstances of my daily life. “If any man of you lack wisdom let him ask of God”. It supposes patience first as a thing already learnt, and subjection to His will, to what He is doing; and then needing instruction, I ask what am I to do? Here comes in the need of wisdom, given to me liberally, if I ask with no will of my own in exercise. If I have my own will in exercise - that is active, I am a double-minded man:
“Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord”.
Finally, as to “patience” and “wisdom”, to be so much desired by and for us all as Christians, I would add that I believe that no ‘ impatient’ man will ever be found to be a
‘ wise’ man, either in his own things or in the church. These things must not be taken out of their divine order. But, on the other hand, there is every hope and every prospect that a “patient” Christian man, however humble (and the more humble the more happy), will be found some day, at some 128
trying moment perhaps, to have become to the surprise of some, a “wise” man; for this is divine order—first “patience”, then “wisdom”.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 18, 1884
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1. FAITH
We must remember that it begins with God, and always he who is walking really in a path of faith brings GOD in, and this is the difference between it and unbelief; unbelief always leaves Him out. Again, faith is the individual soul alone with God, and any intervention of a third party destroys it. Any acting from secondary motives is not faith. It must be God and His word alone before the soul for the act to be an act of faith.
Faith grows. This can be learnt in the history of the children of God, and as detailed in Heb 11. To bring God into everything is the privilege now of His children. There is nothing too small in our daily path for Him to notice who has numbered even the hairs of our head. It is this bringing God into all our matters that produces the walk, the life of faith, and which is the subject of the chapter I have referred to.
And it is just this bringing God into our matters that reveals to us the true character of them; for “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all”. Thus this, by becoming the continual habit of the soul, becomes at once a preserving power for it in the midst of all the darkness and unbelief of our natural hearts.
The principle for the Christian now is found in the words, “He endured, as seeing Him who is invisible”, Heb 11: 27. We must see God in everything.
In the examples of Heb 11 we see they began with God. This is faith, and this characterises each one after. In Abel’s act God’s claim is admitted, and in the sacrifice Abel confesses that he merited death as the sinner. He comes in the provided way, and is accepted, “God testifying of his gifts”, Heb 11: 4. So GOD is before Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and Moses, and the others. This settled everything for each in his day.
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It is important just simply to grasp what real faith is, that it begins with God, and continues to have to do with God, and that it is intensely individual. We are glad and thankful to find others in the path of faith with us; but this having always to do with God now individually (which was true of us at first) is the power to sustain us still going on in the path if others fail us, and still produces the works seen in a life of faith. When a trial comes, if there has not been this individual intercourse with God, it is often found that we have been merely imitators of others. We then, like Ephraim, “being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle”, Ps 78. But if we have been in the habit of bringing God in, we shall turn to Him in the day of battle, and turning to Him is not turning our back to the enemy. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith”, 1 John 5: 4.
2. “THERE AM I IN THE MIDST”
Is there in us an adequate sense of the wonderful grace and favour conferred upon us in being allowed to gather together with the Lord’s people on earth? Can there be any thing higher than to be thus with Him, and in communion with His own heart as to His people? Think of it. Who is He there in the midst? It is a wonderful place, and but poorly we value it, so little do we know of what its reality is. Faith sees Him there.
And then not only to be privileged to gather together thus, but think of the further favour of being of any use there; of being used by Him who loves His people with a perfect love, and whose whole heart goes out for them in their weakness, and in this day of their sorrow and rejection (a day of rejection once gone through before by Himself). It 7 We only really help others when we bring them to have to do with God and His word for themselves. If they act merely on advice, from however godly a brother, they will at last break down; it is not faith.
I must be careful that I do not lead saints to act merely on my advice, or they are acting on my faith.
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is a heart beating in harmony with His own for them that He can take up to make any of us helpful to them. This is what we want to cultivate. We want to know His thoughts at that very moment for His gathered saints. Without this all is barrenness, all activity painful; with it, even the silent prayer of the simple one—oft incapable of being framed into language—calls down His own blessing upon those who in their weakness are cast upon Him.
It is not more activity we want, as gathered to His name; it is more communion. HE is there; the people are His people. I have to remember that He wills the blessing of His people, and to say, ‘Who am I, to be in this place?’
3. SELF-OCCUPATION AND SELF-JUDGMENT
Many confound self-occupation with self-judgment; and, seeing self-judgment to be right (when we fail), are found asking themselves where the one ends, and where the other begins. And self-occupation they question. A word or two on these may help, if the Lord permit.
Self-occupation is the bane of the soul. Man makes
himself the centre, and himself the chief object upon earth.
This is self-occupation. It lands him in that place “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched”, Mark 9: 44. To all self-occupation is death.
Self judgment is the work of the Spirit of God. It is not His proper, but it is often, from our want of watchfulness, His necessary work. There is no way of return to the joy of communion without it. Self-judgment, though right in its place, is not communion; on the contrary, it is the confession that communion is lost. But it is the only way back; it is medicine, but not food.
For me to live daily with self ignored is the highest Christian condition. Here the Spirit of God is free to carry on His proper work in my soul, to take Christ and put Him before me as my food. Here the soul is free to be occupied by and for Christ alone. It says, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain”. It is the only right state for food. And 132
food is the soul’s appropriation of Christ, and feeding upon Him as ministered by the Spirit. He alone is the bread of life that came down from heaven; as John 6: 56 says, “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him”. It is not the having done so once by faith. That is in verse 51, and is of first importance. Food is the daily need of the man, and it is here his daily habit to feed. But how important to see that self-occupation is not food, and that self-judgment is not food; for how can I live or grow without food?
What then is self-occupation? It is a human being, a worm of the earth in God’s sight, a particle of dust, forgetting or ignoring the fact of GOD and ETERNITY; one who says, “Let us eat and drink: for tomorrow we die”, and to whom God says, “Thou fool!” (1 Cor 15; Luke 12: 20.) What is self-judgment? It is looking at yourself (note it well), not in contrast with other saints, but in contrast with Christ, the perfect, heavenly Man.
And what is self-ignored? It is the forgetting that there is a self, through pre-occupation with the perfect One, with Christ alone. This will be our eternal occupation in heaven, when there will be no “self” to mar our vision, or to call for judgment. But it begins on earth—begins, though harassed on every hand, in a poor earthen vessel, “that the excellency of the power” may be seen to be “of God, and not of us”, 2 Cor 4.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 12, 1885
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“NOT WITH THEM WHEN JESUS CAME”
It is an important thing to be in the place where the Lord can come, and where consequently blessing can be counted on. It is not mere locality now, but to be morally in the place; for there is no place of blessing for the soul apart from this. I need not say that those who are morally in this place will be found locally together on all possible occasions; but it is instructive to see that the first is the all-important matter. It reminds us of Abraham’s servant, Gen 24: 27.
Obedience placed him in the way, and then he says, “I being in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master’s brethren”. He was in the way—the path of obedience—and the Lord could come into it too and lead him on therein; for no other path than this can He sanction by His presence. I propose to draw your attention to the words “not with them”
in this connection.
Joy is dependent on the soul being at peace. It cannot exist without peace. No peace, no joy; but if there is joy there must be peace. Why is there not more joy in our souls? The “music and dancing” of the Father’s house, the joy already begun, why has it not its continuous echo there?
Alas! we must confess that it is sadly lacking oftentimes. Is it because we know so little of the wondrous peace He has made, the wondrous results that accrue to us from His victory—a victory over every foe? And where shall we learn what those results are? We must get into HIS presence to learn them. He only who has won it can unfold to us what He has won.
In Exodus 15 is the song of victory. Sheltered from judgment, Egypt left behind with its slavery for ever, God is with and for His people. Moses there is a type of our blessed Lord. It is His song. “Then sang Moses”. And the children whom grace had delivered joined in the song. This was a beautiful type of what was fulfilled later. “I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee”, Ps 22: 22; John 20: 17. But the song was 134
founded on peace, for it had been a question as to the enemy. The enemies were and are all gone. The battle was the Lord’s. The sea is a figure of His death, wherein He destroyed them all. “Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously”, Exod 15: 21. The question, the struggle, was not between the people and the enemy, but between the Lord and the enemy; and because it was so there is not an enemy left.
But there is many a tried soul who says, ‘Well, I wish I could feel that; I have within this wretched principle sin, and is not that an enemy still left?’ This is a real difficulty to many. It proceeds from unbelief. We must get into His company, or, real as the victory is, there will be no experience in our souls of it, and no joy. I must listen to Him; HE is singing the song of triumph, HE has vanquished every foe. Since He proclaims peace, it must be so, despite my feelings; for it is the Lamb of God who “bare our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Pet 2: 24), and who “taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1: 29), who speaks, and because I do not feel that sin in me is gone (for we see not yet all things put under Him) am I to deny that His words are true? Or further, Am I surprised that I do not enjoy what I do not believe?
“Peace be unto you”. These words were and are His
own words of salutation. If there is an enemy left how can he speak thus? And “he showed unto them his hands and his side”. These bore the manifest tokens of the conflict, blessed proofs of the depth of His love, and the cost to Himself of the “peace” He proclaimed. But joy was founded on it, for those who had sorrowed were now to be made glad.
Our tears are no mere matters of indifference to Him. He who had watched the sorrow gave the joy, and hence we read, “Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord”.
That word peace had struck the chord of joy, and its echoes rang and rang again in their hearts. Is it so with us? The melody of the “new song” had begun, and its tones are now to sound onward for evermore. Blessed song of unmeasured, untold joy; and blessed those who can already 135
thus rejoice. And its source, my brethren, was it that they had done anything? They had loved Him, then forsaken Him, and now in sorrow had closed the doors in fear. No, they had done nothing save this. What have we done? It was because He had done something that such a marvellous change was to be theirs, and can be ours; and the value of what He had done is as eternal as the life of Him who did it. In the value of all that He has done we stand.
But the joy of this new day, thus begun for all His own, is not shared in by them all. Where was Thomas at this wondrous moment? Had he wandered away again into worldly associations? Was he allowing unjudged affections to cause him, like Lot’s wife, to look back, if only once more?
What kept him away? I cannot say. Scripture does not say.
I only know he was not with them. “NOT WITH THEM WHEN
JESUS CAME”, John 20: 24. Oh, the inestimable loss! One of the little despised and sorrowing company, yet not there.
One for whom He died to bring so near to all the affections of His heart, yet far away. Not there to learn all the results of this wondrous victory. Not there, to be made glad by the only One who cared for them. Can you picture an Israelite’s joy left behind in Egypt on the day of Israel’s deliverance?
or can you picture an Israelite linked up with an Egyptian realising that all his enemies were gone?
And for one week at least Thomas knew not what the
other disciples knew. He had not heard that word, “PEACE
be unto you”, nor would he believe those who had.
Consequently he had not that blessed joy that filled their souls, though he as much as they was one for whom Jesus died. “Not with them” the gloomy clouds of unbelief and doubt reigned supreme in his soul, and hid all the brightness of the RISEN SUN; though shining in all its beauty and majesty, he saw it not. The resurrection morning indeed had already begun on the other side of the night of death, but it shed no beams of its light and glory on the path of Thomas. True the Lord had gone down into death and judgment for him, but for him also all was yet 136
shrouded in darkness and fear and doubt. Worthy children these of unbelief and worldly associations.
I have asked myself, my reader, if the experience of Thomas stands alone in the history of God’s children. I have, I trust, profited by the answer, and I would now suggest to you also to ask yourself, in the fear of God, the same question. For He who has gone into death for us has conquered death and him who held its power, and we are free—free as the winds are free which roam over and take up all the fragrance of the new land of sunshine, and of summer, and of flowers; for this land is now ours, Deut 8: 7-9; 11: 10-12. The Spirit is often in Scripture compared to the wind, and we read that the “Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God”. Yes, we are free for ever, and the authority for saying so is His own blessed word to us.
If we are in the company of the Lord—with Him and
with His—we are with Him as He is, and He IS the mighty Conqueror, with the marks of His victory fresh upon Him.
Death did not and could not hold Him. The soldiers of earth’s mightiest empire, led on by Satan himself, may keep watch and ward, but they keep their watch in vain. Fear and trembling may be found within, where the doors were shut “for fear of the Jews”; but, poor timid ones, you will not shut Him out. All must bow before the Almighty One, all must admit His claims. Oh, the blessed grace and triumph of being His, HIS OWN—sought out to be made glad in that hour of His own triumph; claimed then by Him as “my brethren”! No wonder that joy filled their hearts in His company as He unfolded it all to them. Is He the same Jesus still?
“But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was
not with them when Jesus came”. Few words these, but words full of meaning. And as then so now, for we repeat in our own experience those who have gone before us. The Spirit ever ministers to us of His things and from Himself, if not hindered by us. To dwell in the sunshine of a new day, a day that knows no night, is ours now. It is His purpose to dispel for us all those dreary earthly depressions and 137
anxieties that rightly belong only to those who are not His.
Such an atmosphere is not the atmosphere His children should breathe. We have not been brought from the want and shame of the far country into all the plenty and rest of the Father’s house to have to pass through such experiences as these. They are the fruit of unbelief. No; such experiences are never His desire for His children. His joy as the Father fills all the house with joy, and are we, its objects, to be the only ones not sharing in it? He says,
“Rejoice with me”; “for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found”, Luke 15.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 12, 1885
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“ON HIS HEAD WERE MANY CROWNS”.
There in heaven, for now eighteen hundred years and
more, it is blessed to think of the Lord as finding His own delight and joy in caring for that church whom He has so loved and purchased, Eph 5: 26, 27. And here, travelling along the sands of the desert, often stumbling and sometimes weary, how blessed to think of the Holy Ghost never weary of directing her eye to Him, the One there for her in all the exercises of the way! And think, this has all continued now for more than eighteen centuries, and many a pilgrim has proved it all, and been cheered along his path by knowing it; yet there it is in all its truth for you and for me this day, Christ’s present love and care, and the Holy Ghost’s present ministry, cheering your heart by bringing Him before you. Is the Lord weary of what has been His occupation for eighteen hundred years? or is the Holy Ghost weary of directing the eye upward to Christ? Oh, to rise now above the gloom that has all along been deepening, and to see that blessed One there, and still to be able to say as part of His bride, ‘He is waiting for me!’
And now in this passage which we have read He is coming forth from that place and service of eighteen hundred years, coming forth to reign on the earth with His bride. HE has prepared her for Himself, and His wife “hath made herself ready”. And what is the language before us here? How the Holy Ghost delights, as freshly as if for the first time, in drawing our attention to Him. “On HIS HEAD
were many crowns”. He who first directed her eye to Him as caring for her all along while she trod the desert, now also draws her attention afresh to Him in the day of His glory! How your heart and mine, thus called upon, delight to respond that all this is as it should be. How personal is all this to the soul; and how true it is that true affection is always personal! He wants me to be engaged with Him, and He wants my heart to be now just simply His own, to fill it by and from Himself.
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“On His head were many crowns”. Will you not respond, ‘Lord, thou art worthy of them all’?
But what do you see in those “many crowns”? To me
they have a voice which speaks to my heart. If I see a Christian, I see one stumbling along in the desert, desiring, if ever so feebly, that Christ may be seen in his walk and ways here below. Because the Holy Ghost dwells in him there must be this desire, more or less, according as we give that blessed Spirit His place, and for which He is here; namely, to be the guiding star of our earthly life. And what does He bring out in you? Lowliness? patience? meekness?
long-suffering? temperance? goodness? Yes, there are all these toward others, and there is what is more for your own personal enjoyment too—“Love, joy, peace”, Gal 5: 22, 23.
Has He brought these things out of us toward others, and to us for our own enjoyment, in any little measure today?
Alas! how we all fail in this, the “lowliness”. How have they seen it in me today? The “patience”, the “meekness”, the
“long-suffering”, the “temperance”, the “goodness”—all perfectly displayed in HIM as He once trod the path in which I am called now for a little while, only “a little while”, to tread, Heb 10: 37.
Blessed Lord, the only perfect display of the perfection of a man, dependent on God, was seen in Thee, and this is what reaches the heart and touches our affections. On Thy head alone can we place the crown as to each of these, “lowliness”, “patience”, “meekness”,
“longsuffering”, “temperance”, “goodness”. Has many a poor saint in his trials displayed some measure of these?
Yes; and yet Thou excellest them all. And coming forth in that day of glory, how will our hearts delight to see Him wearing these many crowns, His desert as man, besides all those that are His by title as the gift of the Father! For “He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end”, Luke 1: 33.
Crowns befitting Him as “King of kings, and Lord of
lords” (Rev 19: 16) will then alone be His, and I shall be called on to behold Him arrayed in them all on that day.
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But when I think of Him as the lowly Man, walking down here in the midst of all the trials and difficulties that marked His path (and now mine), and see the perfect display of all the graces that surrounded that path, I am humbled at how little they are seen in me, one who has professed to have set out to follow Him in the same path! But we can gaze at one perfect model, poor as we are, and think of His meekness, lowliness, patience, temperance, long-suffering, and His goodness when on earth, and thus we shall become less selfish and more like Him, of whom the Holy Ghost delights to say, “On His head were many crowns”. Think of that day you who suffer in this.
May our hearts be more and more set, in the midst of whatever path we may be in—blessed it always is (Ps 16: 6), painful it may be—to desire to provoke in one another the display of these things that characterised our blessed Lord as He walked here among men.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 12, 1885
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THE SPIRIT OF GOD AND THE THEORIES OF
THE MIND
There is a very common but a very great and subtle
evil found among us, and it may exist in those of whose Christianity there is not the least doubt, and whose whole faith and hope are in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is this, the human mind in those who have gone on long in the ways of the Lord, as well as in the one who has only lately been converted, is quite capable of boldly entering upon, and of even seeking to expound, divine things. It is written, “The flesh profiteth nothing”, John 6: 63. It is the Spirit of God alone that can teach; for I am as a Christian brought into that new sphere where He is all. They that worship the Father “must worship him in spirit and in truth”, John 4: 24. The display of anything else is the display of the mind of man; for the Spirit cannot, and does not, go beyond what is written. I must remember two things if I desire to be led on into further truth. One is, that there must be seen in me the present faithfulness according to the truth that God has already unfolded to me. Without this there can be nothing further communicated to me, nor any advance. If I assume to see something beyond others when I am unfaithful to what is already their known portion as well as my own, it is only a delusion of the flesh seeking by these, or by any means, to exalt itself.
How often the mind (even in those who desire to curb it) is found to wander off and form theories as to the things of God. The Word is then turned to to find scriptural support for these things which, proceeding from the old man, should have been at once rejected.
The second thing, if I desire to advance in the truth, is one which I must carefully guard. It is that no power of my mind, no amount of reasoning, can instruct me in the most simple of divine things. These the Holy Spirit alone can explain and teach me, if there is in me the first thing found; namely, that I am acting in faithfulness on all that He has already brought before me.
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How can I discern what is of the mind merely, and what is of the Spirit? The working of the human mind in me as a Christian is seen when I get hold of any theory, and then turn to the word of God to try to establish myself in it.
It is the reverse way exactly to this when God is teaching me. Then the Word comes first, not the theory. The theory may be presented in a very subtle manner to me (indeed this is generally the case). It is called a ‘beautiful thought’, for example, by some unestablished one, and we forget its origin. All this is to blind us, as well as to puff us up. Then the fruit comes. Blinded ourselves, we set to work to teach and enlighten others upon the subject, and thence we trace all the sects and systems of men. Here they all originated.
I must come to the word of God to learn what is there, not to add anything by some greater clearness of vision which I have than those had who were used of God to write it. That holy men of God have spoken and written the Word, and used better words than human, even words which “the Holy Ghost teacheth” (1 Cor 2: 13), ought to rebuke the vain assumption that theories or words of mine can have place here. The Spirit is leading me, I judge, when in simplicity and dependence I read and meditate on the word of God, and see what is unfolded to me therein, and thus I am led forward; but the Word comes first, not the theory. When this is so I have not to frame a theory. All who are in subjection to the Word (and to the Spirit, the teacher) are satisfied with it, and the t’theory’ forms a sect.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 12, 1885
143