THE TESTIMONY OF OUR LORD
[p. 340] THE TESTIMONY OF OUR LORD
From the beginning, there was some special truth revealed, to which alone for the time the testimony of the Lord was attached. The truth was committed to some chosen vessel and, if it was accepted, the servant through whom it came was well received; but according as the truth was rejected, so was he refused. The treatment of the servant to whom the truth is committed is the index of the value which man attaches to the truth. If there has always been a truth which bore this great mark - the testimony of the Lord - how much more must it be so now, when the word or the counsel of God is fulfilled (see Colossians 1: 25). To the apostle Paul the final testimony of the Lord was committed; and when the saints were ashamed of that testimony they were ashamed of the servant - His prisoner. “All they which are in Asia be turned away from me”, writes the apostle; 2 Timothy 1: 15 Thus they proved their disregard for the Lord’s testimony in the way in which they disregarded His servant, who was the apostle of it. It is important to see first that there was always a special truth with which the testimony of the Lord was connected; and, secondly, that the effort of the enemy is to divert the people of God from it, and to hinder them from strictly and fully maintaining it; while on the other hand wherever there was faith in any, even in the darkest moment, there was always distinct succour from God to enable them to do so. Faith in God only could surmount the opposition which the people of God had to encounter in maintaining the testimony at any given time.
The testimony being of God, nothing but the power of God can enable one to maintain it. A portion of [p. 341] truth has always been held by the people of God. But to hinder the testimony being maintained in its fulness is Satan’s great aim, and nothing but divine power can enable us to resist him.
Now the truth which most distinctly vindicates God with regard to man, because it was revealed consequent on the breakdown of man, is the one necessarily most outside of man. God revealed Himself gradually, but as each successive trial made of man proved, more than the preceding one, that man is irrecoverable and unable to maintain the testimony of the Lord, He at last sent His Son, and consequent on His death and rejection He called out Saul of Tarsus to maintain the present testimony. This new testimony is not connected with the trial of man, but was given subsequent to it.
The trial of man was closed on the cross. Every previous dispensation had placed him under trial, and the testimony of the Lord at that time, if it had been maintained, would have given man some place as man; it conferred distinction on man according as he maintained it. Had Adam maintained the testimony given to him in Eden, he would have added distinction to himself. Had Noah maintained the testimony committed to him he would have distinguished himself. Had the fathers - had Israel done so, they would have risen in the scale, and secured a name for man in the flesh, as subject to God. But in each and all man failed, and finally proved his entire ruin in his inability to comprehend the excellence of every divine and human beauty in the Person of the Son of God manifested in flesh.
If man was found incompetent to maintain the testimony of the Lord when the maintenance of it would have exalted himself, how evident it is that he can get no place in that testimony which is subsequent to the cross, where the history of man under trial closed. We must bear in mind that our blessed Lord [p. 342] was refused both as a man on earth and as a man in heaven — “He came unto his own, and his own received him not”. They said, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours”. So they cast Him out and killed Him. The perfect Man, the Son of the Father, is disallowed of men, but God raised Him from the dead, He having given His life a ransom for many. Secondly, in the refusal of His servant Stephen, whom they stoned to death, they refused the testimony of the Holy Spirit concerning Him as risen, and avowed, “We will not have this man to reign over us”. Hence the testimony of the Lord, brought out now, must be characterised by that which will express the effect through grace of this double rejection. Therefore, it does not now subject man to any fresh trial.
The trial of man was over on the cross - in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom God has set forth as a propitiation for our sins, that He might be just and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. The testimony is of the Lord Jesus Christ - the one Man who has entirely met the mind of God in everything, and who also has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. It altogether ignores man as he was under trial, before the cross; there is no offer to him to recover himself, and the maintaining of the testimony now would in nowise add distinction to him, but the reverse, because the testimony now is of the One who died for him, and who, when refused and disallowed of men, was called by God to His own right hand.
Before the death of Christ, while man was under trial, although the maintenance of the testimony always required divine power, yet, as it was maintained, whether by Noah, Abraham or Moses, it gave distinction and place to each - as men in the flesh. But the cross sets man aside in a double way. In it there is atonement for man’s sin, which of itself is evidence [p. 343] that there was nothing in man through which he could live before God; and that there was no other way but the death of Christ to reconstitute him according to the mind of God, or to plant him in the likeness of Christ. Therefore, if man in the flesh be allowed a place now, there must be at the start an incapacity to maintain the testimony of the Lord as committed to, and preached by, Paul - the prisoner of the Lord. The testimony is that there is one Man in heaven who has answered in every way to the mind of God on earth, and who then died for our sins, glorifying God while bearing the judgment which lay upon us - that He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father and has sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high; that this one Man in heaven is not only our Saviour, but He is our Head, and we, the members of His body on the earth, draw our strength from Him and find our life in Him, through the Holy Spirit who is here consequent on His exaltation, dwelling in each of us, and thus uniting us to Him and to one another. This is the testimony which was committed to Paul, and from this all in Asia had turned away. Hence, the apostle warns Timothy (the servant of the hour) not to be ashamed of the testimony of the Lord, nor of himself - His prisoner.
Now the failure of “all they which are in Asia” is that to which every saint in the present day has a tendency, or is in danger of, even though he may have suffered on account of the testimony; for those who turned away from it in the apostle’s day had been personally taught and led by himself. It is not that the truth of christianity as a whole is relinquished, but there is a return to a previous testimony in order to escape the peculiar and exacting nature of this the greatest of testimonies. Hence, for nearly 1800 years, this great testimony has been in abeyance, and now that through unspeakable mercy it has been revived, we are not one whit more secure against the adversary than were those in Asia.
[p. 344] The danger of those who have learned the testimony is that, while owning the truth as the Colossians did, they should reduce it to a theory - for instance, holding the doctrine of the unity of the body merely as a doctrine, instead of as the known result of union with the Head. Hence the apostle had great agony for them that they might realise and enjoy the unprecedented blessedness of association with Christ. This was the paramount energy of the Spirit of God, and if it was so in that day before the universal demoralisation had set in, how much more now in our day when through God’s unaccountable favour the truth has been partially recovered!
Whatever God is most set upon, that Satan most opposes. ‘Be anything, or do anything’ is in fact the language of the great adversary, so that you do not aim at being what God desires you to be. Do any good work you like; be earnest preachers; be anything, except maintainers of the testimony of the Lord. For hundreds of years Satan has succeeded in keeping the most faithful servants of the Lord in the dark as to this great truth, and if he can succeed now by any means, be it even by withdrawing opposition to the spread of the gospel, or any good work, he will do so, I am persuaded. Surely to any godly and enlightened soul it is the gravest question whether he answers to the apostle’s appeal: “Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner”.
I have no hesitation in stating that the greatest duty that now devolves on any servant, and the one attended with most honour from the Father (see John 12: 26), is the maintenance of this testimony. It overrides all gifts and services. It is, like the colours of the soldier, the first and unmistakable expression of every true servant. He owes the Lord a higher duty than he owes any one. It is true that gifts and services are for men, and to be used for their benefit. But the servant of this hour is mistaken when he places even the benefits [p. 345] of the gospel above the colours under which he serves (the testimony), as if the former were superior to the latter. The servant who through mercy has been taught the testimony, and who has emerged from the general demoralisation, cannot but feel that he has one duty paramount to all others, and that is, that he is not ashamed of the testimony of the Lord or of His prisoner; but he glories in the Lord’s wondrous favour to him in calling him to the front of the battle, and in order to please Him who has chosen him he wears His uniform, and in everything he is a marked man in maintaining what is due to his Lord; all his ways declare that the man here is superseded, and that all that is of the blessed One in heaven is to be fostered and contended for.