HOW THE TRUTH OF THE ASSEMBLY APPEARED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF GOD'S WAYS (1)
HOW THE TRUTH OF THE ASSEMBLY APPEARED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF GOD’S WAYS (1)
JT It occurred to me that the circumstances connected with Saul’s conversion help to show the bearing of the assembly’s position in the ways of God. Inasmuch as the record is by Luke, a comparison between it and his gospel helps to show the assembly’s position. Luke’s gospel is Christ on earth; and the record in the Acts is rather Christ in heaven. Taking them together, we have a history of the development of God’s ways in Christ from “the outset”.
Ques What do you mean by the development of God’s ways?
JT Well, there is Christ’s body here; that is what is disclosed in the Lord’s word to Saul, “Why persecutest thou me”. Now, by comparing that with the end of the gospel, we may see the difference at once; because at the end of the gospel He is parted from them. His being parted from them does not convey the idea of His body.
Ques As if He were gone from the earth, and they left here; whereas in chapter 9, as you were saying, it is “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me”. His body was here.
JT Yes; and there is no such thing as being parted from “Me”.
Ques I suppose the earlier chapters in the Acts, would not give you that, although the Holy Spirit had come [p. 451] down?
JT Up to chapter 7, He is in heaven, and they on earth; they do not see Him; indeed in chapter 1 there is “a cloud”. “A cloud received him out of their sight”. That is a very suggestive fact, showing that the cloud period still remained, and that continued up to chapter 7.
Rem You mean until the martyrdom of Stephen.
JT Stephen is the first to look into heaven. I believe that the Lord would exercise our hearts about the heavenly position, and the line that goes with it.
Ques I suppose in the beginning of Acts, God was waiting upon Israel?
JT Yes; we find in chapter 3, that the people are still held to be in relationship with God; they were the “children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers”. But even if Jesus had gone into heaven, He had simply gone in there provisionally. Peter says, “whom the heavens must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began”. But if they had repented God would send Jesus Christ to them. That is to say, He is simply received into heaven pending their repentance; and whilst that condition of things existed there could not be the assembly properly.
Rem Pending, really, the setting up of the kingdom.
JT Quite so. I do not know if that is quite clear to all here; it is very simple to me, and doubtless to many of us; but it would be a great thing to see the difference between Christ being parted from the disciples, and they being placed, not in heaven, but on earth; and the light that Paul brought in, even that we are placed in heaven.
Rem And that is the assembly’s position.
JT Exactly. We are blessed in the heavenlies,
[p. 452] in Christ; whereas they were blessed on the earth and the High Priest while blessing them is carried up into heaven. Now, you may link the end of Luke with the millennium; a company here, blessed on earth, and in the temple praising God. That was the position; had the Jews accepted Christ, He would have come back, and would have resumed His position with them on earth, and they would be blessed on earth. But then, the counsels of God were in abeyance. Now, we come into the great parenthesis, which we may designate “our light”. Israel’s light is really in the end of Luke’s gospel; and she is called upon to arise and shine in that light; but she failed to do so, and has lost her opportunity.
Rem Those brought in, in the beginning of Acts, formed the assembly.
JT Yes, ultimately; but in the ways of God they were still regarded as the remnant here; and this was that which, as Peter says, was spoken by the prophet Joel: “it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh”. It was a wonderful moment for Israel. The Holy Spirit was upon earth, and Peter says, “the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call”.
Rem I suppose the assembly is not much looked at until the Lord took His seat in heaven.
JT Quite so. He is standing in the end of chapter 7; it is when He sits down that things are final. He is no longer waiting on Israel; He is seated.
Ques I should like to follow your thought about the light. Do you connect the light that shone on Saul, with the disclosure of the heavenly position of the assembly?
JT Yes; that leads you into the divine thought.
[p. 453] The light shone from heaven; it did not shine from Jerusalem. Remember there are three accounts of it given. I think we spoke of it before. It is very interesting. The first is Luke’s account in Acts 9, the second is Paul’s account at Jerusalem, Acts 22; and the third is Paul’s account at Caesarea, Acts 26. Now each account exceeds the other in the appreciation of it; the first is simply a light from heaven; the second is a great light from heaven, and Paul adds to that: I could not see for the glory of that light — the glory of it; and then the third account is that, “At mid-day, O king, I saw in the way a light above the brightness of the sun”; that is to say, above all earthly light.
Rem It shut out everything here.
Ques In what way do you connect the thought of the heavenly position with those people whom Paul was persecuting?
JT Well, the Lord, in His statement to Paul, announced that these people were His body, thus showing the intimacy and nearness of the saints to Himself. There is no “cloud” now.
Rem It is Himself.
Rem It is not, ‘Why persecutest thou My disciples’, but, “Why persecutest thou me?”
JT Yes; so that it is intimated that the assembly is the body of the heavenly Man.
Ques Where? It does not say the body on earth.
JT When that thought comes out as in Corinthians, it is more local. The Corinthians were Christ’s body in that city; but the disclosure to Saul is that the heavenly Man has a body; and that is what the assembly is. The voice came out of heaven, and said, “Why persecutest thou me”.
Rem The connection could not be closer. “Why persecutest thou me?”
JT I am afraid that many of the Lord’s people [p. 454] would be more content to be blessed on earth, than to be blessed in heaven. If we go through this book of Acts, you will find that it is an upward trend until you reach Ephesus in Acts 20.
Ques Why do you think there is a take up the heavenly position?
JT One has felt it in oneself, and one has noticed in others the desire to be blessed on earth. But the magnificence of God’s design that His people should be blessed in heaven is but feebly accepted. It is not simply that the blessings are heavenly; the point is; “blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ”.
Rem The point is to accept the position in faith, and turn to God for light and understanding.
JT That is the simple principle of the truth of God; it is a matter of accepting it; you must accept it first.
Ques Does not Ephesians 2 show how we enter into it?
JT It shows the power that places us there. The chapter really is a description of God’s work in us in its completeness. It is therefore anticipative, for it is not yet fully accomplished; but the Spirit of God takes account of it as if it were accomplished; hence it is anticipative.
Rem But made good in the souls of the saints.
JT Yes, quite so; only that literally it will not be completed until the assembly is in heaven.
Rem So you would say that up to Acts 20 it is development.
JT You will find, in Acts, some particular feature of the testimony in each locality where Paul visited; there is no repetition. The Lord says, “Why persecutest thou me?” Now Paul reaches that in his ministry in Ephesus. There was a company formed there in which Christ was expressed. He said to them, “I have not shunned to declare [p. 455] unto you all the counsel of God”. There were conditions at Ephesus which enabled the apostle to do that: to open up the counsels of God. He could not do that at Corinth.
Rem There was not the state. Having that state is necessary for the revelation of the truth.
Ques Would you not say they had a great deal of exercise to go through?
JT Yes; but He brings them up to it. He had laboured longer in that town than in any other; He laboured three years there, and he accomplished a mighty work. He tells us what he did there, how that with tears he preached the gospel to them, taught them publicly, and from house to house. He visited them in their houses, and then having done all that, he calls for the elders of the assembly, and places upon them the responsibility of maintaining the full truth. Then, having been taken a prisoner to Rome, he writes to them his epistle.
Rem Then you think that the saints at Ephesus had accepted the heavenly position.
JT I am sure they had. The inference is clear enough. Paul says, “I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God”. The whole counsel of God implied that the assembly was to have a place in heaven. They evidently had accepted the light of God’s counsel. When Paul said they should see his face no more, they all wept. They loved him on account of his ministry.
Rem They were in the apprehension of the truth. They responded to Christ as the heavenly Man.
JT The apostle shunned not to declare unto them the whole counsel of God; he had it in his own soul doubtless; yet from the way he speaks, one would infer that he waited on God until they were ready to receive the truth.
Rem He tells the Corinthians formally that he [p. 456] could not unfold the divine wisdom to them on account of their state.
Ques You have spoken a good deal about the state of soul, would you say that to accept the position in faith would be the thing for us; though exercises might come afterwards to test us?
JT Yes. If you accept it by faith, then you maintain it by prayer. It requires a person to be established, to take up the heavenly position. If you get the light of it, and lay hold of it by faith, then you pray. Prayer brings in power; God will not fail you.
Rem One scarcely goes after a thing unless he values it.
JT Yes; that is a good point. What a marvellous thought of God that we should be blessed in the heavenlies.
Rem: I suppose you would say that really there is no other position for us at the present moment.
JT No other. As the hymn puts it, “Heavenly light makes all things bright”.
If we do not take up that position, we are not right in any position. To use the language of Isaiah, it is the light in which we shine, and we ought not to shine in any other light than that, because that is where we shine best.
Ques “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest”. Why did He give that name?
JT To identify Himself, I think. It expressed His complete identification with the saints whom Paul was persecuting; that they were not simply His disciples; they were Himself. The assembly is the complement of the heavenly Man. Paul prayed to God that they might know “the exceeding greatness of his power ... which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion,
[p. 457] and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all”. It is a Man in heaven that is in view, set there according to God’s pleasure and power, and the assembly as His fulness.
Rem It is not the thought of headship in Acts 9.
JT It is more identification here. I have often thought that what answers to Paul’s ministry in the types is Isaac. After Isaac is born, all the communications come out of heaven; even the communications relative to Ishmael came out of heaven. Showing that all Abraham’s seed are taken up in connection with Christ in heaven.
Ques Is not the name of Jesus connected with suffering?
JT Yes; the moral features of that Man shone in Stephen; and he saw Jesus in heaven.
Rem That is, a Man who was rejected here. “Behold I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God”.
JT Paul bore about in his body the dying of Jesus: And it was that the life also of, Jesus might be manifested in his body. If we could only get into our souls the idea of a Man in heaven.
Rem I suppose it was that light that gave Paul to deal so tenderly with the saints afterwards.
JT He saw “Christ’s body” in them afterwards, and he was so humbled; he said he was not meet to be called an apostle, because he had persecuted the assembly.
Rem James says, on lower ground, “Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you”. That is Christ; that is a feature of Christ: “he does not resist you”.
[p. 458] Rem That is what Paul was doing — “Why persecutest thou me?”
JT Paul witnessed Stephen suffering, and the character of Christ shone in the martyr; and then when he went into the houses of the saints, he saw Christ in the saints; they did not resist him. “He was led as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth”. That is the kind of Man the eunuch saw; and that is the kind of Man who shines out of heaven, and who was reflected in His suffering saints on earth. That is the kind of Man who said, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks”.
Rem If one is suffering persecution he is not to resist; but to leave it to the Lord.
JT That is the spirit of Christ.
Rem That is where the trial comes in, if one feels one is in the right.
JT If you feel you are right, you are prone to justify yourself. But who was so right as the Lord Jesus? Think of Him in suffering and not opening His mouth. He committed Himself to Jehovah. I have often thought of Zephaniah’s prophetic allusion to the remnant: “The just Lord is in the midst thereof; he will not do iniquity; every morning doth he bring his judgment to light, he faileth not”. In the English courts, if you have a grievance, you may bring your case and have it tried; some morning it will be called. God never forgets anything. If there is a case, it is down, so to speak, on the calendar; and the morning comes for your case to be heard, and it is judged. The just Lord is there and He will not fail: “Every morning doth he bring his judgment to light, he faileth not”. Your morning will come; and the question for you is whether you can wait for that. As a matter of fact, you do not think whether it ever will come up or [p. 459] not; it will all come out at the judgment seat of Christ.
Rem That is the fourth chapter of 2 Corinthians “I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified; but he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing, before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart: and then shall every man have praise of God”. They were charging Paul with things, and he left it to the Lord.
JT I think it is well for us to see that those whom Saul persecuted, were Christ.
Rem It would help us greatly, I think, to take that in.
Rem So that what would follow, in the light of the position, would be in accord with that blessed One here.
JT It would help one to be the kind of man that Jesus is, that is to say, that the traits of that Man might dwell in us. And there is abundant opportunity for this, because we are in a scene of suffering. It is suffering that brings these traits out; but then, woe be to the man by whom the saints suffer, unless he judges himself as Paul did.
Rem But that is not our side.
JT No; the Lord takes care of that. The government of God goes on, morning by morning; those who have eyesight for it, see the working out of that. You cannot escape the government of God. The Lord says, in Matthew 18, “Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea”.
Rem I was thinking of 2 Thessalonians 1, where the apostle speaks of their faith growing exceedingly, and the charity of every one of them toward each [p. 460] other abounded. And then he goes on to say “So that we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure; which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer; seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you”.
Rem It was wonderful the way the saints were brought before Paul at his conversion, speaking of what they were to Christ.
JT It all serves to show the place the assembly had at this particular juncture. They are brought to the attention of Paul in this way at the time of his conversion.
Rem Yes; he was made to hear what the Lord had to say about them.
Rem In Ephesians 2, the saints are viewed as “seated”: I suppose that is final, as regards them.
JT Yes, they are made to correspond with Christ. It is a wonderful thing to be introduced to a place of privilege, and to stand there; but it is still greater to sit down. Ephesians 2 contemplates the whole work of God in the saints, from beginning to end; but then it includes every item of it; it is going on now in detail. There it is seen in its grand result. It is not a question of what is being done, or of time; it is the grand result. So that in result it is said, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them”.
Rem It goes on now, but we shall have the full bringing out of it in a day that is coming.
Ques What is the force of “quickening?” Is not that making us to live?
JT I think so; only in Ephesians it includes the quickening of our bodies. “That in the ages to [p. 461] come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us through Christ Jesus”. It is anticipative rather than retrospective, although stated as already accomplished. Chapter 1 is the work of God in Christ; chapter 2, His work in the saints; the latter viewed in its totality.
Ques Do we take our place there now, anticipatively?
JT Yes, as a matter of light. But what a thought, that your place is in heaven. You have the enjoyment of it now according to your spiritual power.
Rem That is the quickening side.
JT The quickening and formative work of God is to enable us to anticipate all that.
Rem That is your power to enter into it.
Rem In Ephesians 1, we get the purpose of God; and in chapter 2 we find how He carries it out.
JT A man may draw a plan of a house he is going to build; but what is in his mind? It is the house; and the plan is of little use when the house has been built. Now that is the idea; God is thinking of the result; in His mind it is concrete; He is looking at it as He will have it; He is thinking of the concrete thing, because He knows how He will bring that concrete thing into existence. He is carrying it out now; He has planned it, but He describes it as complete. It is not the plan He is giving us, it is the concrete thing. The work is going on now, but that chapter shows it in its grand result.