Demands my soul, my life, my all!" (Hymn 272)

LIFE BROUGHT TO LIGHT

2 Timothy 1: 8-11; Genesis 41: 45; 47: 13-27

E.C.B. What is in mind in the verses read is that God has "brought to light life and incorruptibility by the glad tidings", and not so much as to incorruptibility. I just say, as to incorruptibility, that I think we may just touch it from time to time in our spiritual experience, but I do not think we shall actually know it until the resurrection: Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, "... when this corruptible shall have put on incorruptibility ...", v 54. I just remind all that we have a responsibility to preserve ourselves by the helps which come from God from the corruptible nature of the world in which we are. I do not say that just to the young people: I say it to all. But God has "brought to light life". I think the Spirit would have something to say to us all about life. Paul writes this epistle as "apostle of Jesus Christ ... according to promise of life, the life which is in Christ Jesus". Unless life is sustained among us, it is trite to say that things will soon perish altogether. Life is not sustained on the basis of formality and merely always saying the right thing. God has brought it to light through the glad tidings, and it would be interesting to enquire how that has been done. I have read the scripture in Genesis 41 as to Joseph's names because he is there presented, as we well know, as the Sustainer of life. Pharaoh called his name, Sustainer of life. That corresponds with John 4, where Jesus is presenting Himself as the Sustainer of life and He gives power for the sustaining of life in the well of water that springs up into eternal life, no doubt corresponding in its application to ourselves to the liberty of the Holy Spirit known in the believer. It would be well for us, I think, to seek to touch something deeper as to the way in which we may come to Christ in order to be sustained in life. I fear some times that so much is known among us and so many familiar words are used that their actual meaning is very little entered into. But life is life and there is no substitute for it. Preciseness and correctness and such things do not of themselves manifest life: in fact they may be a good cover for a dead condition.

Those verses in regard to Joseph in chapter 41 are perhaps somewhat objective. You came to Joseph and you found that he was the Sustainer of life. But I think the verses in chapter 47 touch the question of our own responsibility in relation to the maintenance of life and that that requires our progressive surrender to Christ. I do not think that Christianity is maintained just in objective knowledge; it will be maintained in the progressive surrender to Christ of every believer. Twice in that chapter, in that section, they say to Joseph, "Why should we die...?" But in the end they say, "Thou hast saved us alive" when they had surrendered everything, typically, to Christ. That is, I think, the epistle to the Romans, the progressive surrender to God and to Christ: "yield yourselves to God", Rom 6: 13, and "present your bodies a living sacrifice", Rom 12: 1. The progressive teaching of that epistle is fundamental to the enjoyment of what we speak of as Christian privilege, especially in the succeeding four short epistles, that is Galatians and Ephesians and Philippians and Colossians, but the truth of Romans and life and privilege are not fully entered into unless there is that progressive surrender to God and to Christ which I suggest is typified in the scriptures read in chapter 47. Is that all right?

R.W.F. Yes, I am sure it is and would be a help to us. Life brought to light is not an abstraction. It could not have been brought to light without vessels - we use that word - men, women, children in whom it could be expressed, but pre-eminently, of course, in Christ.

E.C.B. He has come into the world as light. He is the "light of the world", John 8: 12, and His closing words to the world are to "Walk while ye have the light", John 12: 35. In the goodness of God the light is still here. Not for the first time in the history of mankind, we live in a very dark day, but there is light still here and God has brought life to light - I carry in my mind the reference that ''the life was the light of men" (John 1: 4) - but the life that has been brought to light by the glad tidings must come into expression. Now, how has that come to light by the glad tidings?

R.W.F. I certainly think that makes the glad tidings exceedingly attractive.

E.C.B. The glad tidings are, of course, intended to be attractive and I at least am thankful in the present day for the evident manifestation of life which is coming into the preachings, especially by the younger men, and I think that should be encouraged. But God has "brought to light life in a world where otherwise there was death. The background, therefore, to 2 Timothy is what is presented in Ephesians, but where there was death, there is now life, and it is by the glad tidings that that has been brought out. It seems to me to be essentially bound up with the actual preaching of the gospel.

M.J.W. I wondered whether the present life of Christ in glory has come to light only though the preaching of the glad tidings because it has not been manifest before. It begins here the life which is in Christ Jesus". I wondered whether there was something special and glorious and wonderful about the life into which He has entered now which is brought into expression by the glad tidings

E.C.B. That is 2 Corinthians 4, is it not, 'the radiancy of the glad tidings of the glory of the Christ", v 4? That is the character of the gospel preaching to which we look forward every Lord’s Day, bringing out that God has now a Man in a quality of life, beyond sin and death and failure, beyond corruptibility, and it is preached for other people to enter into. For that they need the Spirit of God but it is presented objectively in the preaching that there is now life in Christ in another world.

M.J.W. Are you saying because it is Corinthians, it does not reach up to your ideal in Ephesians?

E.C.B. No; there are things in Corinthians which are in no other epistle, are there not? There is the Lord's supper, and there is no other description of eternity such as you have in Corinthians. Let us not think of Corinthians as only a corrective epistle to a local assembly! It is clear that Paul was burdened by the conditions in the locality as, in a sense, anyone might be concerned about conditions in any locality, but what is in his mind is that there are things beyond the failure of the present time into which he would draw the saints. We do a service to the brethren if we maintain things amongst us in the light of the most positive truth that we know.

R.H.B. In the second epistle he says "and he died for all, that they who live should no longer live to themselves, but to him who died for them ...", chap 5: 15. Is that, in part at any rate, the answer to your question as to how life has been brought to light through the gospel, that, contrary to the prevailing trend, there have been secured persons who do not live to themselves but live to Another?

E.C.B. Well, that is very good. It links with the application of the scripture in Genesis 47 because there if you lived to yourself, you would die. You have to come to another source of life and fully to surrender to it. I think Paul in a sense concentrates the truth when he says that life has been brought to light by the glad tidings: persons who are here in sin, and dead and unprofitable to God, not only have it presented objectively in the glad tidings but because people have believed the glad tidings, that life becomes manifested in them. That is the intention. It means that on a Lord's Day evening you consider whether the power of the preaching has actually meant any effective change in you because the word of God has been there.

D.E.B. Does the truth as to new birth enter into what you have in mind, inasmuch as new birth takes place nobody knows when or where, but the fact of new birth, and therefore life, is eventually brought to light by the glad tidings?

E.C.B. That is the way in which the effects of the gospel has worked in us. Paul says to the Philippians, "he who has begun in you a good work", Phil 1: 6. I think that would go right back to new birth. "He who has begun in you a good work will complete it unto Jesus Christ's day". The fruit of righteousness and the other things that are mentioned there will come to light, but the intention of God in initiating a work in us in new birth is that there should come into expression now life of another character. Is that what you think?

D.E.B. Yes, and going on from that, in the pastoral chapter of John 10, the Lord says He is come "that they might have life, and might have it abundantly", v 10. That is to come into expression.

E.C.B. In John 10 things are, I think, on the whole presented objectively: "I am come that they might have life ..." and "I give them life eternal; and they shall never perish", v 28. But all truth is first presented to us objectively. The question then is how do things grow in us by our attending to the care which God manifests to us, both in His fatherliness, but also in His giving us the light of the gospel. The maintenance of the light of the gospel amongst believers is a great provision of God, intended to keep the fire burning in them all. As it says in the Proverbs, "Where no wood is, the fire goeth out", Prov 26: 20.

D.A.B. Incorruptibility presupposes a source of life, does it not? That cannot simply be natural life: ''for if ye live according to the flesh, ye are about to die", Rom 8: 13. As was said, we are to live to Another who has died for us and has been raised. There needs to be a new source of life, but also a positive direction of mind and heart to make Him the power of the only kind of life that can be incorruptible.

E.C.B. Yes; as you say, the continuance of life implies incorruptibility, and I repeat that we need to be very careful about exposing ourselves to the corruptibility in the world. That God has begun something in us through the glad tidings is not just doctrine. The reality of it is a new power in the life of man, life from another source, another origin. As was said, it begins in new birth which originates with God, but it is intended that it shall come into expression, and be maintained in expression, the power of something new in exhibition here.

J.McK. Is it interesting that in chapter 45 of Genesis when Joseph has disclosed himself to them, he says, "And now it was not you that sent me here, but God", v 8. "So God sent me before you to preserve you a remnant in the earth, and to save you alive by a great deliverance", v 7. Do you think there is a danger that we stop at being preserved a remnant in the earth?

E.C.B. And especially at the present time. We tend to dwell on the sorrows of the path and how few we are but what we need to hear is that something has come in in Christ that not only saves us eternally but introduces us now into the power that is connected with the whole work of God in the world. Small positions keep us humble, but we are connected with the greatest things that God has ever had in this world, that is, the things that are in Christ Jesus. There was a time in the 1890s when Mr Stoney in writing to a brother said that the Lord saw that we needed sifting and He took us in hand and He reduced us; but what I see now, I think he says, is a work of better quality, but on a firmer base. Now that is what is needed, is it not?

J.McK. I wondered whether "save you alive by a great deliverance", has in view not only the earth but another scene.

E.C.B. Yes, and in the scripture to which you refer Joseph was already in that other scene. Christ is already in that other world, but are we drawing our resources and the power of our life from that world? He has given us the Spirit to sustain us in life.

P.M. Was there the witness of that in Act 3? Life was brought to light by the glad tidings. I was thinking of those two men going up to the temple and it speaks of the other man "walking, and leaping, and praising God", v 8. Was it not the witness of the Spirit here in men that brought to light life in that section?

E.C.B. You might say that it was contagious because they took him by the hand. I wonder whether we are sufficiently concerned about communicating life to one another. We need what the Holy Spirit is giving at the present time as the manifestation of the life of Christ seen in people here.

R.W.F. Life came into full expression in that man: complete soundness. It was not that he was just alive or that he was a bit better. He was thoroughly healed and well, a full expression of life. It is remarkable that that comes at the beginning of the Christian day.

E.C.B. The man remained as a demonstration. Life should be maintained on the level of "walking, and leaping, and praising God". What I am concerned about is that our meetings, which spring from what we are in ourselves, should be a manifestation of the reality of what Christianity is, not just in perfection in the expression in words, but increasingly in the life of actual people.

J.R.W. How is this life manifested?

E.C.B. It shows itself in the liberty in which people actually are, (that does not mean that they have liberty to do as they like: liberty to do as you like ultimately results in bondage for everybody) in the manifest experience of joy in the things which we profess. It shows itself, for instance, in readiness to talk about Christ and about God and the Father and divine things, and less about one another. What do you think?

J.R.W. That helps. I think it has been said that our life is involved in unseen things. If we look at the things which are seen in the world around us, there is no life there, there is only death; so life is involved in unseen things, but that is why I raised the question as to how it is manifested.

E.C.B. I think it is manifested in that people are manifestly different from what they were at one time. The life which is "hid with the Christ in God" is to be in expression here in the display of the life of Jesus as it is brought out in that epistle .

D.A.B. Is that the testimony of our Lord? It is the life that is in Christ Jesus. It has been said as to that that while it does refer to Him where He is, it also refers to what there is of Him in us by the Spirit and that comes into expression in testimony, so that what is seen is the features of a Man who as to His Person is in glory.

E.C.B. The manifestation of life is the testimony of our Lord, and we can all bear the injunction not to be ashamed of it.

D.A.B. And there is alongside His life His mind which we have in Philippians, which also comes into expression in our disposition, does it not?

E.C.B. It is good to refer to that. That scripture relates to our disposition: "For let this mind be in you ...", chap 2: 5. There will be no Christian testimony at all unless there is life in individual people. Other people are not going to be helped in their souls by quotations but by seeing that you or I are a different person from what we were at one time.

L.W.B. It speaks of someone who threw away his garment and came to Jesus (see Mark 10: 50). He was manifestly a different kind of man.

E.C.B. He was left with no cloak for what he was. He was not intending to make Christianity respectable in the world. He was going to be here as somebody in whom it was manifested that ''for me to live is Christ", Phil 1: 21. And that is what God has intended to bring to light by the preaching of the gospel.

C.J.G.B. Is that again what the apostle was particularly aiming at in 2 Corinthians 4. He says "we have this treasure in earthen vessels", but as he comes to the end of the chapter "wherefore we faint not" and "our momentary and light affliction ". There are pressures upon brethren and it is remarkable that it is the “treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassingness of the power may be of God", v 7.

E.C.B. Then the question is, how is life to be sustained? Typically in Genesis, you have to come to Christ. Pharaoh in that part of Genesis may be said to represent God and he has ordained that if you want to live, you have to come to Christ. You come to Christ as the Sustainer of life.

E.C. Would you say something about bread because people did not give up themselves and their possessions for anything but bread. Bread is the staff of life. The Lord is the bread of Life.

E.C.B. Life is sustained by food and that will enter into what we may speak of in regard to chapter 47, but John 6 is what you are saying. You will not live unless you are feeding on Christ: "I am the bread of life". There is power and nourishment in Him that will sustain you in life. I venture to think that there is little enough private occupation with Christ among us. We live on meetings but the power of what is to come into expression depends on our personal feeding on Him. Dr Roberts used to ask what we mean by feeding; but I like an expression of Mr Raven's, that feeding implies that we assimilate into the life of our being. Now who of us can say that we have fed on Christ to the extent that we have assimilated Him into the life of our being?

M.J.W. What Christ do you appropriate and assimilate? The gospels speak of a Jesus who was here and younger persons are going to say, I do not know much about Jesus where He is; so how would you help me there?

E.C.B. I would start by telling you something about Jesus where He is. Many things are perhaps talked about among us that are not grasped in experience. We live only because Christ lives. If you sought to live here imitating Christ in the gospels, you would continually have a sense of total failure, because you cannot keep up to the Model. The believer has only one Christ and that is a glorified Christ. If I am living on account of a glorified Christ, light will come out in my life and I will be able to say something about the fact that because He is where He is, every problem between me and God has been resolved and thus I can walk in the power of the life of Him glorified.

J.R.W. Other things than food are needed for the sustainment of life. I was thinking of what you were saying as to occupation with Christ, with Joseph. There is everything there necessary, as well as food, is there not? Atmosphere needed, light and rule are needed in order to sustain life, do you think?

E.C.B. Yes. There are two necessities for the life of man, bread and water. John 4, which is peculiarly a Joseph chapter, brings out that the Spirit "shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life", v 14. The power of life is maintained in the Spirit active and recognised in the believer. But other things are needed for the enjoyment of life. Company does not constitute life: but company is needed for the enjoyment of life. Rule is needed for the enjoyment of life: you cannot enjoy life if everything is in disorder. There are things which are essential to the maintenance of life and things which are essential to the enjoyment of life. Would you agree with that?

J.R.W. Absolutely. I was thinking about what you were saying as to our preparedness to speak about Christ and His things. A right atmosphere is needed for that, is it not?

E.C.B. Yes: but many of us could have spoken about Christ and we felt the atmosphere was not quite right, so we did not. Speaking about Christ is the result of my occupation with Him.

D.A.B. Does it help that creature life has never been self-sustaining. Paul speaks about living to yourself, but Ecclesiastes says, "the king himself is dependent upon the field", chap 5: 9. We perhaps find some difficulty with the idea of drawing our life from somewhere else, someone else, but we do it all the time naturally, so it is not that we do not have the faculty to do it. God would give us the faculty to draw on that source of life that is in Christ.

E.C.B. The Spirit is here because Jesus is glorified. Now, how do we live on account of Him? “We live of Thee, we've heard Thy quickening voice” (Hymn 137). That is what we have heard and it as made us live in relation to Jesus glorified. I think that Joseph as the Sustainer of life in Genesis 1 is objective truth, and Christ as the Sustainer of life is objective truth. The question is whether It has entered into us as power.

E.F.W. At the very beginning God breathed into man the breath of life. That was really Gods objective, was it not? - different from very other creature in which there was a natural life, but the breath of life seems to connect with the Spin in God's mind to be given later. God had something in mind in breathing into man the breath of life, I think.

E.C.B. It has distinguished man from every other element in the creation. We even talk about flowers as alive or dead: in that sense they have a life. But man has a life which has come directly from God and the Christian has life which has come directly from God in the Holy Spirit, God Himself in you in the power of the Spirit.

P.M. If Christ is really my life, does that mean I do not have a life anywhere else?

E.C.B. Yes. That is important. Another has underlined that we have to live in the real world, and we do live in the real world, but our life is not in that world, and the resources in the believer are not in the world through which he goes. He is intended to be a testimony against that, but in another sense tor it because a testimony that is against the world is a testimony for the world's salvation. But there are no resources outside Christ. This is why I think the history in Genesis is interesting.

P.M. I was interested in what you were saying as to the objective view in chapter 41. They are forced to come to appreciate that by necessity. Are we maintained in it not just by necessity, but by affection for Christ?

E.C.B. I think that. In the hymn which we sang (No 235), it is love, love, love. That was the character of Jesus, but are my affections responsive to Him in such a way that I maintain, in the quality for which God has provided the Spirit, a life which reflects the life of Jesus glorified? As soon as you begin to draw from the world, your light begins to be dimmed.

P.M. Does the eating of the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of man in John 6 put an end to every other form of life for me? The Lord says, "Unless ye shall have eaten the flesh of the Son of man, and drunk his blood, ye have no life in yourselves", v 53.

E.C.B. I am sure that that is right, but that teaching is one of the most difficult for us, is it not? Who here can put up their hand and say, I have come to the end of the first man? Who could say that I have come to the end of the man of whom God saw the end in the death of Christ. Yet I suppose we know it in degree. Do you not think that?

P.M. We would use an occasion like this to further our desire to know Him more so that we should not be hesitant to speak of Him, do you think? It would encourage us to go in for it, that because of the death of Christ and His present position, for me the whole order of life here is finished: that is really the point I should come to through a reading like this.

E.C.B. That is what I have in mind. I can remember one day walking down the road and the line of the hymn came to my mind as to the "barren place where Jesus died". That is the view in which we need to be sustained. That is why I have referred to chapter 47. I think in chapter 41, typically, Christ is presented objectively to us as the Sustainer of life. You could not say it was wholly objective in John 4 because the difference in the woman is manifest straight away, but chapter 47 requires that I progressively surrender myself to Him. I start with my money. Money occupies us a very great deal, and perhaps other people's money occupies our minds more than our own, but the first thing which comes to an end in this type is your money, then progressively your goods. Ultimately all are to be surrendered, and each time you say, Why should I die? Then, you come to this, I shall not die if I give this up. And then you go on another stage, another year, and you say, Why should I die? You say, I shall not die if I give this up, and in the end, you are saying to Him, when you have given everything to Him, Take my life and let it be. You give it all up to Him:

"Love so amazing, so divine,

At that point, you say, "Thou hast saved us alive". These things are very easy to talk about, but I do not hear much amongst us about the principle of surrender to Christ. What do you think about that?

J.McK. The question they ask is very interesting, "Why should we die before thee?" It is in the light of the fact that Christ lives that this question has such force.

E.C.B. Yes. Why should you die if Christ is alive? Why should I die? If He is Lord of all, why should I die? Why should I live in some profession of Christianity that has poverty behind the facade? "Why should we die ...?" and Joseph says, here is a step you can take. I think few believers have surrendered themselves wholly to Christ at one go.

J.R.W. It was when the money came to an end that the Egyptians came to Joseph. Previous to that Joseph gathered up all the money. It does not make reference to them coming to Joseph, but when the money had come to an end.

E.C.B. I think first of all that Joseph established his right to everything: he gathered up all the money that was in Egypt. But then we acknowledge the Lord's rights. We preach that you confess Him as Lord, and we maintain that and we take the Supper in the light of that. But then we still have some resources left to which we cling. And He says, You say you are going to die: well, you have this, have you not? Is there some corner of your life in which you can make room for Me? Now, this comes about, to use a current expression, by creating space for Christ, which you do by giving up something else, and space which is left for Him, He will fill. I do not think this all happens overnight. There are believers in the world, and I have met some and I very much honour them, who think you come to this in the moment you are converted, and perhaps it does "flash upon that inward eye" the moment you are converted . But progressively we come to, Lord you must have this, and I shall not get through unless, Lord, you have this. Progressively when everything in you has become His, you can say, We are still alive.

A.J.E.T. It is progressive: it is getting more and more to the core. It starts with what we might be able to do with less of or do without, the money, and we might feel, Well, we have to live so we need our cattle, but they have to be yielded. And what have I left? I have my life and my land and that has to go. Is this reference at the end, "Thou hast saved us alive" now that they are really proving what has been set out in chapter 41, Sustainer of life?

E.C.B. That is what I am seeking to suggest, that you come to Christ objectively as the Sustainer of life, but then you have to come to it experimentally.

A.J.E.T. And in one sense they are now accepting it before the final experiment in the way that it says he has given them seed. They have not actually sown it yet. They are saying, "Thou hast saved us alive" before they have proved what he said. They have yielded entirely to him in that way.

E.C.B. You can understand why I link this with Romans . It says, "Yield yourselves to God as alive from among the dead", Rom 6: 13 - that is Genesis 47 - and then chapter 12. The structure of Romans is that you take account of the evil world in which you are: you find that you are yourself contributory to it on account of your sins and God deals with that: you then find that there is another power working in you and that God has dealt with that in raising Christ from the dead and you are free from that. Now what are you going to do? You have the Spirit in chapter 8. The next thing you learn is not about yourself, but in chapters 9, 10 and 11, you learn the faithfulness of God that nothing He has promised will He ever let go. And, now you say, in the light of that, "Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God ...", Rom 12: 1. That, I think, is Genesis 47 when everything is for God. After that you learn that you can work at every practical detail in life, even such things as respect for the temporal government, in the light of the fact that you have surrendered yourself to God and can accept everything from Him. I think that is the teaching of Genesis 47.

E.F.W. It is interesting that the matter of seed rather than bread comes from the people themselves. They asked to be given bread but then they think they want something that will sustain them beyond because they have nothing else to give and so they say, seed, and Joseph provides seed.

E.C.B. That is verse 27: "And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen; and they had possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied exceedingly". You give everything to Christ and then you prosper. You may wonder how you came through, but progressively, and I would rather underline the idea of progressively, because I know that I could not tell you how far along this chapter I have gone, but I believe that the idea of surrender to Christ, you might say overnight, will find you betraying it the next morning. But, "yield", Paul says, yield, and then yield again. And the result of that is that you say He has kept you alive and now you prosper in the land, and in the best of the land. Is that not so?

M.J.W. Do you think the Father's discipline is behind this experience as well, because He wants to make room for His Son in us and therefore He operates through discipline that we come to it that we are prepared to sacrifice these things. Christ is everything to us because the Father wants it to be so, He wants us to be filled with His Son.

E.C.B. Yes, so the Father's discipline is always tender. It does not feel like it always "but after wards yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness", Heb 12: 11. The Father's discipline is all the time making way for His Son. The next two chapters of this book bring out what you are saying in another man. They bring Jacob to light again. It is as if Moses writing this book says, when you have learned what it is to surrender to Christ, now I will show you a man in whom all this happened. He had a difficult life. He was not always good, he deceived people and the Scripture has not concealed all that. But when you have really given yourself up to Christ what will come out, is that you find that there was a God who shepherded all your life long and preserved you to that day.

J.McK. Is that why in verse 25 it says, "and we will be Pharaoh's bondmen"?

E.C.B. Well, that is Romans: "Yield yourselves to God as alive from among the dead", and "bondmen to God", is it not?

J.McK. So that though submitting to Joseph, they had become bondmen to One who was greater and the great realm of the revelation of God is that in which we shall then live, is it not?

E.C.B. Can I ask you, is being bondmen to God a greater thought than being a bondman of Christ Jesus? "Paul, bondman of Jesus Christ". What do you think?

J.McK. I do not know the answer to that question.

E.C.B. I think that if you yield yourselves as a bondman to God, He will take you up for service as a bondman of Christ Jesus. I think a bondman of Christ Jesus is for service to the Lord, but I think you have first to become a bondman to God. What do you think about that?

P.M. I was thinking of Moses. Was he not a bondman of God? The fulness of what was in God's heart is before us as bondmen of God, but here in testimony we can be taken up as bondmen of Christ Jesus. Is that your thought?

E.C.B. I think that and that is why Paul begins epistles with the fact that he is a bondman. James too writes as bondman of God, but Paul writes epistles as a bondman of Christ Jesus because he wants to help the brethren. He has learned what it is to be wholly under the power of God having given himself up to God as a bondman. Having learned Romans right into his system, he is now as a bondman to God prepared to open out to other believers the greatness of what God will give to His bondmen. God may look at you as a bondman for a moment but in the next moment He will be looking at you as a son.

R.W.F. Would it give great pleasure to the heart of Christ to hear us say to Him, ''Thou hast saved us alive"?

E.C.B. Say more about that.

R.W.F. Well, He has delivered Himself up for us. The believer individually can say He "has loved me and given himself for me", Gal 2: 20. He has loved us, loved the assembly. How much He has given up! What pleasure there is for Him therefore in the expression in practice of readiness to yield ourselves completely to Him.

E.C.B. I think that. Christianity has in it a combination of bondmanship and liberty which is known nowhere else, but the idea that you are bringing forward of the pleasure of Christ in having believers give themselves up to Him is something which should touch us. We are fairly strong on doctrine and fairly weak on emotion and I think that we could do with a little more of power working in us that comes out in the expression of the enjoyment of what is actually ours and what the enjoyment of Christ is in having a people for a possession.

J.McK. Whilst life is dependent and always will be, it has certain characteristics all of its own, does it not?

E.C.B. Yes. But it goes back to the earlier question as to the character of that life being that of Jesus glorified. It is not really possible for us, because we are in a mixed condition, to live so that nothing we do is anything other than an exhibition of Jesus glorified. But let us have aspirations that way! Christ glorified is the Object of the believer, and a manifestation of Him in life, but it will not come about unless we are prepared for the anti-type of Genesis 47.

J.McK. We should then think of how this comes into collective expression as well as individual expression, should we?

E.C.B. Exactly, but there will not be collective manifestation of life unless there is life in everybody who makes up that collectivity. We cannot expect more of the company than we ourselves can express and enjoy.

B.H.C. I was thinking of the need to rely on the Spirit. It would be a daily matter to keep Christ, and fresh impressions of Himself, before us. The testimony is the consequence. If Christ is our life, we will not have to put anything on or seek to view it naturally but it would come into expression, would it?

E.C.B. I like what you say that we will not have to put anything on. It will come into expression. Mr Darby has a quotation as to 'the blessedness of a man naturally Christian’. That is what you are saying: you do not have to put anything on. What you are manifests itself.

A.C.S. Does the maintenance of life depend on fruitfulness and multiplication? Is that where the seed comes in in relation to God's primary thoughts in Genesis 1?

E.C.B. Yes, that is good. Thus you find in verse 27 that when the people have seed, they ''were fruitful and multiplied exceedingly". In that sense they are fulfilling what God had in mind in Genesis 1.

A.C.S. You spoke earlier as to the man who was leaping and dancing that it was contagious: is life contagious in that sense?

E.C.B. Yes; unfortunately, the counterpart is contagious too. A dull brother or sister at the meeting can really put the brakes on. It requires real diligence on the part of everybody else there to overcome that. We ought to come to the meetings pleasant and cheerful because we have something in ourselves that is real.

P.E. Verse 21 speaks about from one end of the land to the other end of the land: everyone was involved. Apart from the priests, everyone had to go into the city which shows how much God can do: everyone can come under the gospel. No-one is left out.

E.C.B. Christ, in type in this chapter, that is in Joseph, would move everybody in the meeting, from one end of the land into Goshen. He refers to it earlier, the best of the land. He would have us all there. Sometimes some of us are a bit rooted where we are, but He will dig us up, and also enjoin us according to the prophet, "Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns", Jer 4: 3. He is going to have everybody in the best of the land and there, with everything surrendered to Joseph and thus indirectly surrendered to God, in type, you find that you multiply and enjoy. The enjoyment actually in Egypt, but typically in another world in these verses, is greater than Israel ever experienced in Canaan because there they never experienced it to its fullness.

J.R.W. Why were the priests excepted?

E.C.B. Because their portion was in God.

J.R.W. I wondered if you could open it out a little for us.

E.C.B. A believer looked at apart from what he is towards God has this great sphere of enjoyment open to him and he has surrendered everything, but if you are going to serve God, you have given everything up to Him already and it is all His, and in the moment when He took you up to be a bondman to God, everything was His. Why I refer to this chapter in its progressive surrender is that in our experience we find that it is little by little that we come to what God had in mind for us. Even if you have not given everything up to God yet, He will still use you as a priest, will He not?

D.A.B. In a sense the status of all the people became more equivalent to that of the priests. It seems as if the priests lived on Pharaoh's land already. They had their food from Pharaoh and in the end all the people did the same. I was thinking of what has come into the reading about the way God in the process of this self-surrender would draw us not only closer to Joseph but into greater things.

E.C.B. Yes, and when you come to Exodus, when there is a different Pharaoh, God views the whole people as priests. He says, "Let my son go, that he may serve me", Exod 4: 23. He views the whole people as priests.

D.E.B. The land was sold and they did not have ownership of it, but they still had the use of it and the enjoyment of it and they cultivated it. It was the same land. I was just thinking the ownership may be transferred but the enjoyment becomes fuller.

E.C.B. Yes, you are a lease-holder, are you?

D.E.B. No, I am a free-holder.

E.C.B. In this world? The people here were leaseholders. They held the land from Pharaoh and thus they had obligations towards Pharaoh, but their obligations were in type through Christ.

D.E.B. Paul does speak about Christ's freed man, does he not?

E.C.B. But for the people here nothing now was their own possession. They held everything from God in type and were to use it for God and ultimately for God's glory. The millennium will be like verse 27: everything will be prosperous; there will be no adversary or evil event; the desert will blossom as the rose; and the lion will lie down with the lamb and so on; and things are administered under Christ because everything has already been given up to Him.

D.A.B. It seems that family life is what Joseph is especially keen to preserve. He says, You are all going to be bondmen, and I suppose they thought, Well, we will be away from home now; but Joseph says, This is not going to touch your home life except to put it on a new basis altogether.

E.C.B. That is right: He will put it on a new basis altogether. Well, that is what I had in mind, God has brought life to light. The power to sustain that is known objectively in Christ. The experimental enjoyment of it requires that progressively I surrender everything to Him and I will then find that I am better off than I have ever been.

 

SUNBURY

9 March 1996

 

Key to initials

C.J.G.Brodie, Ealing; R.H.Brown, Barnet; D.A.Burr, London; D.E.Burr, Redbridge ; E.C.Burr, London; L.W.Burton, Kingston; B.H.Clark, London; E.Croot, Dorking; P.Eagle, London; R.W.Flowerdew,Sunbury; J.McKay, Woodstock; P.Martin, Colchester; A.C.Stay, St Albans; A.J.E.Temple, Sunbury; J.Walkinshaw, Bexley; M.J.Welch, Sunbury; E.F.Woodford, Dorking