A PERFECT WORK

J. N. Grace

John 19: 30; Revelation 22: 17; 2 Timothy 4: 6, 7

I wish from these three simple passages of Scripture to convey a word of comfort to all of us in this room; but I also want to convey a word to every lover of Christ, to strengthen their faith at a time when the faith is being given up, because we are in the presence of the body of one who is now with the Lord, but who has finished her course, as Paul did.

We sang in our hymn about a perfect work. Thank God, there is one Man who has done a perfect, complete work in this world where men have failed, where you and I have failed, and where every institution of God has been broken in upon by the devil, where there are broken promises, broken homes, and broken hearts. There is one Man who has been in this world and completed a perfect work which stands in relation to the whole of humanity. The whole question of the intrusion of sin and its effect has been met by one perfect work, thank God!—and not only sin as it affects humanity, but as it affects the glory of God, because the blood of His cross is the means by which everything in heaven and on earth will be reconciled to God.

What Christ has done is not only for our blessing and salvation, but for the glory of God. So that Jesus, ere He died, said, “It is finished”. As to the work that had been given Him to do by His Father He could say, “I have completed the work which thou gavest me that I should do it” (John 17: 4); every item finished, and no man or any other created being can add to or take away from the finished work of Jesus.

If there is any one in this room into whose heart the devil would instil some doubt as to the Person or work of Christ, let me point you to a Man in glory whose work has been finished.

He has been rejected by this world and has been accepted by the Father. There has been a demonstration of this in Christ’s going to the Father, and of the millions of men that have died there is one Man whose grave is empty, and He has gone into conditions of finality, final conditions of glory. Even His body, we are told, is a body of glory. So every lover of Christ should understand that is a sure thing, and that you and I, as believers, will be there presently too on the basis of the finished work of Jesus, that neither you nor any other man had anything to do with. It was finished by Christ alone upon the cross. Oh, put your faith, and strengthen your faith, in the work of Christ!

When He went on high the first thing He did was to pour out the Holy Spirit, which means that there is now here, despite this present world of lawlessness, another divine Person, whose title is the Comforter, a wonderful title to lay hold of in faith. I want to strengthen your faith in Christ and His work; I want to strengthen your faith in the Holy Spirit and what He is doing because, being a divine Person, being God, His work will be as complete as the work of Christ. That is why I read that passage at the end of the Bible, “The Spirit and the bride say, Come”. What He is doing is taking men and blessing them in the power of the glad tidings, because He was sent from heaven in view of the preaching of the glad tidings; but more than that, persons who are taken up in the glad tidings He is forming after Christ and fitting them into a vessel which is spoken of in Scripture as His body and His bride. Where I read at the end of Revelation the work is completed, and it will be as perfect and complete as the work of Christ—a wonderful thing that. Now what I am saying is early brought before us by the Spirit of God in type in Genesis. If you read Genesis 22 and Genesis 24, one speaks typically of the perfect, finished work of Christ, and the other speaks of the perfect, finished work of the Spirit in bringing Rebecca to Isaac.

Now I come to the third scripture, and that speaks of what the Spirit is doing in individuals today. He is here; the Spirit of God is here, not in cathedrals, not in this hall, but in the hearts of the lovers of Christ; that is where He is indwelling. If you are a lover of Christ, if you have obeyed the gospel, and received the Spirit, have faith that the work of the Spirit will be completed in you. It has been completed in our sister; that is why the Lord came for her. As our brother remarked in his prayer, she is asleep through Jesus. That means it is the instrumentality of One who loved her that has put her to sleep, because the work of the Spirit has been completed. We are “the living, who remain” (1 Thessalonians 4: 15), and if we remain until the coming of the Lord the final touch of the Spirit with us will be the change of our bodies. Wonderful thing! According to the scripture in Romans 8: 11 our bodies will be quickened “on account of his Spirit which dwells in you”. How assuring that is as to the work of the Spirit.

Paul was a man whose eye was on Christ, who made room and scope for the Spirit in his life, and he did not die in weakness, he finished his course. It was not that his time ebbed out in that sense; he says, “the time of my release is come. I have combated the good combat”.

There is only one good combat, and Paul says, ‘I am in that’. He says, “I have kept the faith”, and he finished his course (Acts 20: 24). He finished it—a wonderful thing to think of, that a man could say that, a man who had been the most inveterate enemy of Christ, a persecutor of the assembly, and yet at the end of his course there is no weakness. His sins, his failures, they were all gone in the perfect work of Christ, and the Spirit was now completing His work, and Paul had so given scope to the Spirit that he could say, “I have finished the race”.

Now that raises the question as to how we are going to finish. How are we going to finish our course? Because you do not know, it might be today, it might be tomorrow, but our course will be finished. Let us finish our course with committal to Christ and to the Spirit. Look then, every lover of Christ, listen! There is no change in Christ, not one bit of change in Jesus. He remains “the same, yesterday, and today, and to the ages to come”, Hebrews 13: 8.

There is no change in the Spirit of God, He remains, and His work in the assembly will be carried through to completion for the heart of Christ. The change is in you and me. There is no change in the gospel. The gospel, when it came from Christ in glory, as given to us by Paul, was designed for the conditions in which you and I are in 1982. Whatever the difficulties of your life, the failures of your life, and everything connected with the problems of the world, the gospel has not had to be changed one iota; it stands; it cannot be added to nor taken from, it is the work of God. You are to have faith in the glad tidings; the Lord says that—“Believe in the glad tidings”, Mark 1: 15. If you give way to Christ, your last days will be the best you have ever enjoyed on earth, as with our sister. She has had her ups and downs, she has had her suffering, but our sister would have wanted us to eulogise Christ, and the perfect work of the Spirit.

Now, what about the change with you? You say, I am disturbed about the condition of things in the world, and all the division in the churches. But, friend, look away from yourself. You say, I am not equal to anything. Look away from it all to Christ. Get your eye on Christ. That is what Scripture says—“We all, looking on the glory of the Lord ... are transformed ... by the Lord the Spirit”, 2 Corinthians 3: 18. All you have to do is to keep your eye on Christ, and the Spirit will do the changing. Is that not good? God is not expecting anything of you. All He is expecting from you is to come under the authority and the influence of Christ’s love and keep your eye on Him. People you have trusted have let you down; things that you have trusted have let you down; get your eye on Christ and you will find you will begin to change, and the final change in relation to that will be that you will be conformed to Christ, even to His body of glory.

Well, may your faith be strengthened. Whoever you are, come under the influence of the love of Christ. The end is assured, but why wait for the end when the whole of what is available is in the assembly, in the presence and power of the Spirit, and can be worked out now? Our sister found her way back into the testimony in a very full way in 1978. I have known her since then in a fuller way. She had proved that everything connected with the privileges and joys of assembly life can be enjoyed now because of the presence here of the Spirit of God.

To say anything else would detract from the glory of the Holy Spirit. It can be worked out in the twos and threes that the Lord refers to in His word in Matthew 18, looking right down to where we are in 1982.

So take courage, dear believer, take courage, because the work of Christ is complete and perfect, and has taken account of the whole of mankind from the beginning of man’s history right to the end. It is all accounted for in the death of Christ. Whether men get the gain of it is another matter, but He “gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2: 6), and that just means all, so it is available for you; the perfect work of Jesus stands available for you, and the presence and perfect operations of the Spirit, dear friend, are right here, available for you to experience in your own heart. If the Spirit has come into your heart and indwells you, learn to make room for the Spirit and have faith in Him, and keep looking on the glory of the Lord, and you will find the change will come about in your life, and your last days, like our sister’s, will be your brightest and your best. Amen.