CHRIST’S PRESENT INTEREST IN THE SAINTS
It would help us greatly if in our hearts we could grasp the thought that each one of us, the youngest and the feeblest saint, has a place in the heart of the Lord Jesus, and is an object of interest to Him. It is not only that Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it, that He is occupied with it, sanctifying it and cleansing it with the washing of water by the word, but He has an interest individually in each one who forms part of His church, in each member of His body. It is a great encouragement to think that His eye is upon every one of us and that He has a distinct thought about us, and if we are together in that way to-day we shall be encouraged.
The first thing in the passage is that Christ has ascended up far above all heavens, after going into the lower parts of the earth. There is a blessed Man who is great enough personally and morally, and in all the fulness of the work that He has accomplished, to fill everything. He has gone up far above all heavens in the power of redemption that He may fill all things. There is a day coming when the whole universe will be filled by Christ, when everything will be of God and according to God. He who went into the lower parts of the earth and gained everything for God by redemption will fill all things; heaven, and earth also.
What is there not in Christ for us? In Christ we have everything. There are two parts of the truth—in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, the glory of God is seen in the face of Jesus Christ, all that can be known of God is set forth in Him. On the other hand, in Him is set forth every moral perfection that is proper to man—Man presented to God in every way according to His own heart. He it is who will give character to the whole universe; He will fill all with the knowledge of God. He Himself in the glory of His Person and work will bring the whole intelligent creation into the effect of that knowledge, everything will answer to the mind of God, and all will be the result of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ—that is the ultimate; at the present time that blessed Person can fill us, we are complete (filled full) in Him. He is now filling the church and those who compose it. Christ is great enough to command the affections of every saint, and to engage the whole mind; each heart and mind can find full satisfaction in Christ. This is what He would bring us to; the work of the Spirit to-day is to engage our whole affections and thoughts with Christ, in order to our being filled full with Christ. If that be so, it means the entire exclusion of all else, of self, the world and man. Christ is great enough to fill us, and all the gifts and ministry are to this end. What are the gifts for unless for the ministry of Christ to the saints, so that they may grow up unto Him in all things, and thus everything else may be displaced?—“till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God”.
What is a gift? A gift here is a person, one who has received an impression from Christ, and of Christ, so that he has something of Christ to communicate to others, something in which he has been himself formed, so that he can speak of what he has learned of Christ. We have an illustration in Paul (Gal 1); he says, “It pleased God … to reveal his Son in me”, and he adds, that I might preach Him as glad tidings to the nations. If I have received ever so little of Christ, in that way I have something to communicate to others, and it is really the only way. Something of Christ and His fulness which has been apprehended by the power of the Spirit—that is what we can speak of.
Any gift of Christ is for all saints; it is an expression of His interest in and care for the church; that is how we are to look at and receive the gift; it is the expression of the love of Christ to His saints. Christ has His eye upon every one. “Till we all come” (Eph 4: 13) shews that Christ’s object is to bring every saint to this perfection of knowledge, to the stature of a full-grown man in Christ, into conformity to Christ. This goes on down here. In glory we shall be actually like Him and with Him. That is the thought of Christ and which He puts before us. To carry this out now, we are set in liberty to behold the glory of the Lord, we are thus morally transformed into His image. God’s work by His Spirit is to acquaint us with the fulness of Christ, and thus conform us to Christ, and make us to grow up to that fulness. Christ is the object of our faith, what He is to God, and all that He is to us on the part of God. God’s mind is that every saint should be established in the fulness of Christ.
“Of the knowledge of the Son of God”—that is faith’s top stone and crown, it is the height of the testimony. He is the One in whom the Father is revealed—a divine Person in relationship with the Father—the One who is the full expression of the purpose of God in regard to us, and of our relationship to the Father. (See 1 John 5: 20.) He wants to bring every saint to that, and the effect will be that every one else is excluded. The more we are filled with Him, finding our delight in Him, the more we shall grow up to Him, and this embraces every saint. It is a most wonderful thought.
There is another thought in the epistle of John, which I would bring before you. John says, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols”. The very best thing may become the worst form of an idol; we may glory in a gift so as to make that gift an idol. That is what the Corinthians had been doing, they had been glorying in men, looking at Paul and Apollos as men, and not as ministers of Christ. Thus they were making idols of the gifts. We want all the gifts, and we ought not to be content to do without a single gift the Lord has given. Paul, however great he was as a gift, was not sufficient; no servant can go beyond his measure, and we cannot set up one servant against another. We should receive each gift and think of it in connection with Christ’s interest in His saints. If we disconnect the gift from Christ, we are likely either to idolise it or to despise it. If we think of the gifts as given by Christ, our hearts go up in thankfulness to Him, and we are encouraged by the sense of His care for the church, and are delivered from the snare of making an idol of any of them,
May we each one enter more fully into the thought of Christ’s unceasing care for the church, and for each saint who composes it, until He brings us to glory conformed to His own image, to be with Him and like Him for ever.
Norwich
16th April 1906
From Food for the Faithful vol 9 (1906)