FULNESS

^[p. 158] FULNESS

Genesis 15: 16 (last clause); Romans 11: as (last two clauses); Ephesians 1:22, 23

I have in mind to speak about fulness. It may be spoken of under three heads: first, fulness in connection with the Amorites, for though the word is not actually used in Genesis 15: 16, the word ‘full’ gives the same sense: “the iniquity ... is not yet full”; then the fulness of the gentiles, referring to ourselves as part of the race; and thirdly, the fulness of Christ, alluding to the assembly of which we, as christians, form part.

My first scripture, being of a negative character, will not detain me beyond the measure proper to it. It refers to sin becoming exceedingly sinful. The law has this effect, “that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful”, Romans 7:13. But the Amorites had no law to effect this. Sin was working in them without it, and it is working now without the aid of the law in many parts; but instead of things becoming in any sense better and better on the earth they are becoming worse and worse, and this is not to be changed from within. It will be changed from without; that is, it will be changed by God’s judicial action, a sorry contemplation for men without God, as there is no hope of a millennium working out of present conditions in the race, no Utopia or other change of that kind. There will be a wonderful time on earth, but it will not be by what works out from within, but by God coming in and removing sin. It will be effected by God. He has appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness, that is in the sense of physical judgment. But preceding the physical judgment, and including it, there will be a terrible dealing with actual sin, that is, sin according to its true meaning, which is lawlessness; men doing ^[p. 159] their own wills, whether as nations, tribes, families or individuals. God will produce ways and means by which sin will be effectively dealt with and removed. A little evidence of it will remain for a thousand years, but it will be ultimately judicially removed, removed thoroughly and for ever. It is not that sin essentially is destroyed, it remains, but in God’s own wise ways it will be relegated to its own place and allowed to continue in some sense but entirely under divine regulation.

Now this scripture in Genesis does not contemplate that. It contemplates something in the form of sin progressing and coming to the full. God Himself says to Abraham, I am waiting for that, and you will have to wait too, and while you are waiting things will become better in your family. God had taken up Abraham and his family, indeed the word ‘fulness’ attaches to it, and the fulness of Israel is coming in too. It is not fulness in the sense of wickedness but in the sense of what is law-abiding, for God says of Abraham, “I know him that he will command his children and his household after him”, Genesis 18: 19. He intimates in that chapter by the expression “after him” that he would die and be buried, but not cease to exist, for Abraham was held in the divine mind from the outset as essential to the divine purposes. And things were to go well with his family: “They shall keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice, in order that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham what he hath spoken of him”. So that Abraham was not to fear in this announcement of God, that the iniquity of the Amorites had not yet come to the full. Abraham might say, I am here where they are, for he was a stranger there for the moment, a pilgrim and a stranger. The Amorites were not pilgrims and strangers, they belonged to the place according to their own reckoning, and as sin continued developing among them God was saying, It is going to be that way until ^[p. 160] it comes to the full. This is a most serious thing for anyone who is admitting of any of this world’s lawlessness, admitting of it either by word, gesture, walk or conduct, for God says, This must come to an end! It is going to come to an end but it must come to the full first-a most serious matter! He will wait, will give plenty of time, so to speak, until it comes to the full. Sometimes we question why current occurrences are happening, why God allows them, but that is God’s prerogative, it is His way. If He intends that sin should go on after Adam and Eve transgressed, intends that it should go on and on as it has done for all these years, centuries, millenniums, that is His prerogative. If God wills that sin is to work out to its fulness, then He will do something drastic, something final.

So it is that if in any way our relations, public or private, are on the principle of sin, that is lawlessness, for that is the meaning of the word ‘sin’. It is something that has no law; law in the true sense of the word is not admitted. Perhaps we admit it in some matters but not in everything, but God will bring everything to pass in the believer. There must be an end to lawlessness in him, and if it does not cease God may have to say to us, ‘It has gone on too long’. The Amorites’ sin went on too long and therefore the Amorites, as a whole, were not saved. The Israelites had no commission to convert the Amorites. Whatever commission they had as to them was for their destruction-a most solemn thing! God indicated that from the time He was speaking to Abraham until that should come about, approximately four hundred years should elapse. The Israelites should go down to Egypt themselves, and the principle of their stay in Egypt would be that lawlessness in them should come to an end. Hence the law made sin exceeding sinful.

Sin was never more sinful than it was in Israel, that is the Israel of the flesh, and the law helped that. So ^[p. 161] it is now that christendom has taken that same place. The Lord said to the scribes and Pharisees, “Ye, fill ye up the measure of your fathers”, Matthew 23: 32. That is, their measure was sin in the sense of murder, and that measure is brought into the history of Israel. Even Cain’s murder comes into that, and the example set by their fathers is filled up. A converted man is not going to pursue his father’s ways. His father was unconverted and died unconverted, and he is not going to fill out his father’s sins if he is converted. Yet the Jews were doing that. But the time of conversion has come and the Lord says, ‘There will be no hope for them unless they repent’. Then He acts judicially to prevent their conversion. It is a terrible thing to continue in a course of lawlessness in any degree, because God is saying, ‘It must stop’. He has fixed the day and the moment for it to stop, and there is no hope for you after that. Take advantage of the converting time!

In Isaiah 6: 10 it says, “Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and healed”. And in 2 Thessalonians 2: 11, 12 we read, “For this reason God sends to them a working of error, that they should believe what is false, that all might be judged who have not believed the truth, but have found pleasure in unrighteousness”. How solemn it is that God should act in this way, allowing sin to go on and on until He Himself stops it! He has fixed a day when it is going to be stopped, and then it will be stopped. But the point is for you to stop now. It is your opportunity now to stop, your opportunity to be converted; not so when the Lord says in Isaiah, “Lest they ... be converted, and healed”. So it is that the apostle Paul says of the Jews, “That they may fill up their sins always”, 1 Thessalonians 2: 16.

^[p. 162] Even in a christian community, like the assembly of Corinth, there are these warnings. The apostle Paul says, for instance, “Let your women be silent in the assemblies, for it is not permitted to them to speak; but to be in subjection, as the law also says”, 1 Corinthians 14:34. And no doubt they were. 1 Corinthians thus is full of directions. We may say, ‘They are only trifles’; but not one of them is a trifle. So the apostle goes on to say, “But if any be ignorant, let him be ignorant” (verse 38). Do not say, What is the matter with God? I am speaking from the word of God, and God says, “But if any be ignorant, let him be ignorant”. And so elsewhere the Lord says, “Let the filthy make himself filthy still”, Revelation 22: 11. You may say, That does not comport with the gospel, but I reply, It comports with the word of God. God is saying that to a christian company some of whom are lawless, and He may be saying it ironically, but it might help some who are standing in their own light to see what they are doing. The principle is that if people will be that, and they show that they are going to be that, God says, I am determined they shall be that; I have fixed the day, let them be it, let them be filthy! It says also in the same verse, “And he that is holy, let him be sanctified still”. That statement is perfectly suitable and logical, but for God to say, ‘If a man be filthy, let him be filthy’, should arrest us.

What past history is involved? Matters have been neglected and are still being neglected, and they may stand like that.

So it was with the Amorites, their condition was fixed; it was only a matter of years, four hundred years. God showed remarkable longsuffering in allowing the Amorites to go on for that four hundred years. No wonder that when Joshua crossed the Jordan, and Israel with him bearing the ark, the symbol of divine power, so that the waters of Jordan rolled back to the city Adam and were cut off toward ^[p. 163] the Dead Sea, the Amorites began to quake and fear! The time had come, the four hundred years had spent themselves, and there was nothing for the Amorites but destruction. So it is now, for we are living in times of this kind when sin is mounting up to heaven. Why is God not striking? Why does He allow the things that are happening? The best answer to that is that He is doing it. If God did not allow these things to go on as they are, they could not go on; God is ordering it. But let those who have part in the light, outwardly at least, take notice that we may be drawn into that whirlwind of things. We may be drawn into it although christians, or at least nominal christians, and it may happen that the iniquity will come to the full and God will strike and it will be finished! I cannot say too much about the negative side but it is a solemn thing. Sin at the present time is becoming exceedingly sinful, not so much in China, India or South Africa, for there it is no question of the Lord, but it is in christendom where sin in its nakedness is working, and God is allowing it.

Now over against that we have “the fulness of the nations” coming in. It is not the fulness of time for the nations, though that also is found in the Scriptures. The fulness of time for the nations is measured by years, God having allotted a certain time to work out something with the nations as nations. But the verse I read in Romans 11 is not the fulness of times for the nations but “the fulness of the nations”, or the gentiles, and that is not a matter of wickedness. You might say it is if you looked around, but God is not dealing with it like that in this scripture. He is not leaving the human race for the devil altogether, for He is saying, I am working out something according to My purpose in the nations, and their fulness will be that. That is what these readings mean and others like them, and what the gospel implies. Consider the remarkable meeting at Jerusalem in Acts 15, what we ^[p. 164] may call a church council, perhaps the only one ever held that was owned of God. There were many afterwards but we cannot say God owned them, yet we can say God owned that council, and it was a remarkable time. Paul and Barnabas went there from Antioch because of certain teachings that had come down from Jerusalem. The apostles were there and Barnabas and Paul went there from Antioch to see about this matter. It was a matter of administration, a matter of adjustment of doctrine. It is a very important matter that doctrine be right. We have already been speaking today of the doctrine of Balaam, an awful thing! It takes form at certain times when some unrighteous conduct is condoned in a place and presently it is legalised and formulated into doctrine. Balaam’s sin was that, “the doctrine of Balaam” it is called. Then, too, there was “the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes”.

Now this may be going on with us in certain communities, as it went on at Jerusalem in some sense. There were those there of the Pharisees suggesting Pharisaic conditions, and others, perhaps Sadducees, who worked out judicial reasons for certain evil conduct, requiring that the christians who had been liberated by the death of Christ be brought into bondage. Christ had set them free, He had said that Himself, “If therefore the Son shall set you free, ye shall be really free”, John 8:36. Hence the wickedness of persons formulating the doctrine that saints must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, which is what they were saying at Jerusalem. It was wickedness. So Paul and Barnabas went up from Antioch and were received by the apostles. The apostles were not infected by the doctrine, thank God; they were kept throughout. But others had been infected, though not the mass of the people. They came together and Paul and Barnabas told them about the wonderful works of God among the nations. It exhilarated them ^[p. 165] to hear how the Spirit of God was working abroad among the nations. Idolatry was overthrown, for many hundreds, I suppose thousands, were converted in Asia Minor, as Paul says elsewhere, “So that I, from Jerusalem, and in a circuit round to Illyricum, have fully preached the glad tidings of the Christ”, Romans 15: 19. I do not suppose he had gone all the way at that time. Thus they had a very encouraging and profitable time at Jerusalem at that first great council. We speak of it more properly today as an assembly meeting. Peter got up at the end of the discussions and said, “Brethren, ye know that from the earliest days God amongst you chose that the nations by my mouth should hear the word of the glad tidings and believe”, Acts 15: 7. He says, “by my mouth”, not ‘by my writings’. The gospel was not spread abroad among the heathen by writings, writings came in after that. The testimony was by word of mouth, which is usual, and the confirmation is by writing. The writing is to endure but the testimony is from man’s mouth. Peter says, By my mouth the gentiles were to hear. Then James gets up immediately, or at least, shortly afterwards, and says, “Simon has related how God first visited to take out of the nations a people for his name”.

Now that is what is meant by “the fulness of the nations”. It has been going on, and it is going on tonight in this very hall in a little way. The intent is that as we sit here these three days and talk together the Spirit of God may do something, and that something is to separate us from the world, to take us out from among the nations for Himself. You get nothing of it in the newspapers. You may get religious notices, some of them announcing the preaching of the gospel too, but this matter is not public news, it is the news of heaven-of what God is doing. He is doing it even on the battlefields. All this helps to make it clear that the fulness of the nations refers to the saints,

^[p. 166] ourselves, and all the saints that have been gathered out from among the nations, including those from among the Jews, since Pentecost until now, and those who are yet to come. This verse implies that the work is going to continue on until the last soul is secured for God. May God grant that something of a separating character may go on in the heart of every one of us here, something of a sanctifying character that will make us usable by God and pleasing to Him! The fulness of the nations, what a time it is! The very suggestion implies that God is taking out of the nations a people for Himself, to dwell among them. That is going on, and it will go on too, for though the time left may not be very long there will be completion. It really synchronises with the completion of the assembly.

I want to come to the assembly in verse 22 of Ephesians 1. Ephesians is the assembly epistle par excellence in the sense of blessing, not exactly in the sense of order, government or administration, but in the sense of blessing. The Spirit of God has singled out that assembly for the apostle Paul, that he might write to it the fulness of heaven’s mind and heart in regard to the gospel and the ministry in which it culminates. It involves the gathering out of the assembly and forming it into one body; as is said here, “The assembly, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all”. What a thought that is! We can think of it by itself, so to speak, abstractly, but how blessed and how great it is too that we should be able to think of it as inclusive of ourselves at this very minute; for the work that is going on at this very minute in relation to it all is in view of translation. So the Lord is said here to be given to be “^[p. 167] Head over all things to the assembly”; not here Head of the assembly, it is said elsewhere that He is “head of the body, the assembly”. We get that idea in Colossians, and in Ephesians too, but here He is given to be “Head over all things to the assembly, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all”.

I would encourage the brethren to transfer their minds from the fulness of the gentiles to this thought of the assembly, which is the same thing only viewed in another way. How patiently God has gone on with the nations and raised up governments century after century to keep order, to police the world, keep down evil, restrain it, so that this precious thing should be brought out, the fulness of the nations. I do not say that organised government has had anything to do directly with that, though used of God; it is the Spirit of God who has done it through the influence of the teaching from above. Then we transfer our minds from that to the great thought of the assembly, Christ’s body. It is “the fulness of him who fills all in all”. Paul prays “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of him, being enlightened in the eyes of your heart, so that ye should know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints”, Ephesians 1: 17, 18. This is all a prayer on our behalf, and it goes on: “and what the surpassing greatness of his power towards us who believe, according to the working of the might of his strength, in which he wrought in the Christ in raising him from among the dead, and he set him down at his right hand in the heavenlies, above every principality, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name named, not only in this age, but also in that to come; and has put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the assembly, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all”, Ephesians 1: 19 - 23. Dear brethren, I have read those verses because of their magnificent richness. And they are all applicable to us. They are not written about the Jews or any other nation, tribe or kingdom, they are ^[p. 168] written about the saints that form the assembly, the people of Christ at the present time. Such have received the Spirit on the principle of faith, as it is said in this chapter, “In whom ye also have trusted, having heard the word of the truth, the glad tidings of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, ye have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the earnest of our inheritance to the redemption of the acquired possession to the praise of his glory” (verses 13, 14).

So that what I have read is one of the most magnificent passages that applies to us, to our very selves, though not to us exclusively. It applies to myriads, extending back for over nineteen centuries, and it applies to our very selves at this present time. What is going on here in this small way is the continuance of this work of God, so that there should be what is called “the assembly” over which Christ is Head; it is great enough to be His body, the expression of Himself, the fulness of Himself. It is marvellous “the fulness”, and yet that is spoken of creatures. The assembly is not divine, yet it is said to be the fulness of a divine Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, “the fulness of him who fills all in all”. That expression could only apply to God. Christ is God, the One who fills all in all is God. Indeed it is said in 1 Corinthians 15, “That God may be all in all”. That is the great ultimate of all the operations of God and it enters into what I am saying, for we ourselves here, a few christians in this city of Montreal, gathered from many parts, we belong to that. These meetings have in mind that heaven has had to do with us, and that being so we would like to know what is in the mind of God concerning this wonderful formation called the assembly, which is Christ’s body, His fulness. It is not stated as being simply the fulness of Christ, but the fulness of Him who fills all in all, suggesting God; for that Person is God; Deity is ^[p. 169] there, and yet the assembly is the fulness of that! In Colossians the fulness of Deity is Christ, “For in him all the fulness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell” (chapter 1: 19); and so in chapter 2: 9. The fulness of the Deity is undoubtedly in Christ personally, and the fulness of Christ is the assembly.

I cannot say much more, I have arrived at the limit of the matter. The great ultimate of God, in that sense, is Christ, “Head over all things to the assembly, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all”. There we have Deity-God. It is God in Christ, of course, but nevertheless it is God. We would not alter that, and, dear brethren, we belong to that. Is it not enough to move us, to make us see what we are missing if we are not practically in it? How can I afford to be out of it, to say nothing of the danger! If it is mine according to divine light I want to be in it, otherwise I can hardly be classified as a responsible person. This is what is within our reach, that those who are real christians according to divine light are the fulness of Christ, “who fills all in all”. How marvellous! That is really what the epistle to the Ephesians is throughout the book, wherein christianity in its fulness is set out. It is applied mainly to the gentiles, though there are some Jews; but now it is almost exclusively gentiles. And it covers this wonderful inheritance that has been brought down to us while we are still here on earth, but about to be translated to heaven; meanwhile we are being purified by current conditions so as to be fit for translation, suitable for the pleasure of God.