CHAPTER 15
[p. 189] CHAPTER 15
All through Mark the Lord is the Servant, and the account here given of His death preserves this character.
He could relieve man of everything, but He could not put man in a permanent position. He could and did relieve of every kind of grievance that was upon man, but He could make no relief permanent to man except by dying for him. All His service and relief to man, which we find in the gospels, He accomplishes morally now, and this is a much greater thing than mere bodily relief. He gave sight to the blind then. He removes moral blindness now, and this is much greater, it is a new power, you belong to a new order of being. You may be like a bird in a cage, and groan, being burdened; but, like Stephen, you are master of your circumstances - “in all these things .. . more than conquerors”, through Him.
The Lord as a divine Person going through this world showed that there was not a thing which He could not set aside - sickness, sorrow, or the power of Satan. As a Man down here He lifted off all the pressure that was upon man; but in order to put man into a new condition He must die.
If we had but chapter 15, after all that has gone before, what would it be? To think that that Man who had been relieving men of every ill - not only of sickness and sorrow, but of death - that perfect Man had gone away and left Adam’s family in the same condition as it was before! If He had not died, there could be no change in that condition. It is not the unitarian thought of bringing something new to man - of adding to him. It is not restoration nor recovery to the old condition. It is a Man risen out from among the dead and from under the judgment of the old condition, and bringing in an entirely new condition in Himself. If I read Mark 5, I say, Here is all I [p. 190] want. I find man delivered out of the power of the devil, out of weakness and out of death. But, notwithstanding all this, if He is to perpetuate us in that condition of grace and power in which He was Himself, He must die for us.
He made man in His own image. The Lord came (Hebrews 1) in the brightness of God’s glory - the express image of His Person - to maintain God’s image here. But He stood alone - the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die in order to bring forth fruit.
If I am of that new order, how can I have a doubt? Everyone owns that there is a new work, but they do not see that it is a new creation. All things are of God, so that I can say, “Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased”. I am like a bird in a cage singing to the glory of God. The cage is not in itself of God. We groan, being burdened, the outward man perisheth. Often the cage goes to pieces - that is for the emancipation of the bird!
This world is as the quarry to the stone - a person is taken when he is fit for the peculiar place which God has intended for him in the temple, where no sound of the hammer is to be heard. The preparation may be quick or slow - God knows when; I do not. But we shall all come out in perfect bloom, the complement of Christ. Here the leaves of the rose are scattered, there it will be perfect and in full bloom. Babylon will be the concentration of man’s beauty, according to man’s ideas. The New Jerusalem is the concentration of Christ’s beauty in the divine conception of it. Everyone is working for one or other of those two cities. Babylon is to be destroyed because it is the rival of God’s city. It is a great comfort that nothing that is of Christ can be lost - nothing that is the workmanship of God.
In that new order nothing is acceptable as good [p. 191] works but what is wrought by the Spirit of God. We need to be spoiled of will.
Ques Is it possible down here to get altogether rid of our will?
JBS No, it will be always cropping up; but the more I walk with the Lord and go on with Him, the more I am free from my own will. When I let my will act, the thing in which it acts may not be wrong in itself, but I have the humbling sense that it is will.
Ques Is it possible to keep the will in subjection because we have the Holy Spirit?
JBS Quite possible, but it is not watching the will but watching the Lord that gives power.
It is no excuse to say, I cannot get rid of will - if you sow to the flesh you will reap corruption. Paul found out in those three days that he had a will opposed to God. It was not a bad conscience, but a will that runs against God. When he went to Jerusalem at the end of his course it was not exactly will - he loved his nation as a Jew - but God’s will was on a higher and a different level. Will is the flesh; the body is the Lord’s. When the will acts through the body it is acting independently of God. The Lord would not eat, even when He was hungry, except in obedience and dependence on God.
You get great principles in this chapter. A murderer is preferred to Christ - a Roman governor going contrary to his conscience at the voice of the people. If you assume a certain position, you will have to take it some day. We assume the place of the church, but you may not have faith in the very thing you have assumed. Many accept the light, but have not the faith to follow it, and when tests arise they are greatly troubled, because they have not faith for the position which they have assumed.
From verse 24 every barricade is gone - the Lord’s hour is come - Joseph craves the body. It is cheering to see how nobly a faithful person comes in at the end.
[p. 192] He or Nicodemus could do nothing for the Lord during His life because of their position. Joseph was an honourable councillor, but he was of no use to the Lord in the council; but when he dropped his position and came as a suppliant he was a very useful man.