"NOT HOLDING THE HEAD"
“NOT HOLDING THE HEAD”
Many saints are conscious of deficiency and want of power who cannot tell the cause of it. No one can prescribe a remedy until he discover the need, but many, after they have become acquainted with the need of the church, or of individual saints, cannot tell what is the true remedy. Like unskilled physicians, they try many remedies; but though actual collapse be prevented by the exercise of heart which there is in trying the remedies, yet the same spiritual need as to its type and nature still continues. Surely almost every conscientious saint can see the great need spiritually of individual souls, and of the church in general; but as a rule they fail in relieving or removing it, because they have not discovered the true remedy. In Scripture there is but the one remedy for any particular defect, and unless one is taught of the Lord to use the spiritual specific, there is no true remedy; and this accounts for so much time being expended in seeking and in doing what in the end proves to be profitless.
Unless I am true to God, and in keeping with His mind at any given time, I cannot be supported by the Holy Spirit. Every true saint from Adam down had to learn that his strength and power to be for God was in proportion as he was in keeping with the mind and purpose of God at the time; otherwise he was not in the current of divine power. There might be holy desires in his heart, but in order to partake of the power and support of God, I must go in His way. Now however truthful or laborious in service any saint may be,
[p. 408] there is immense loss and glaring defect, where there is lack in holding the Head. Holding the Head is the cardinal truth for the church, and it is the vital point as to power and walk. I do not deny that there is some power, and some attempt to walk with God, where this great truth is unknown or overlooked, but I hope to show in this paper that there can be no real christian energy or practice except in proportion as this cardinal truth is held and enjoyed.
It is a truth entirely belonging to the time of Christ’s rejection; it was never revealed until Paul’s conversion. Many and various were the energies of divine grace in souls, in great power and zeal, before this truth and the virtues it confers were made known; but those energies, though great and excellent, never did rise up to or participate in union with Christ, which holding the Head implies, and which therefore confers a greater privilege and order of power than could have been known by any saint previous to the ascension of Christ. If saints would admit and maintain that holding the Head is the main point, the heart and seat of life for all personal and relative action in the church of God, there would be a given centre for all saints; and according as it was insisted on and preserved with integrity, the refusal and extirpation of everything contrary to it would be simple and easy. I am very far from making little of the faith or zeal of any of the saints of God before the resurrection of the Lord, but I do say that no saint before that great event could know the privilege and virtue of being united to Him who is the Son of God. But unless souls see the magnitude of this grace, they cannot be exercised as to the gain of accepting it or the loss of overlooking it. Almost every kind of divine virtue was displayed in the line of witnesses from Abel downwards, but in none of them, I need hardly say, was there perfection. This perfection was in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Now a saint might be equal to Abel, or Enoch, or Abram, or Moses, or Samuel,
[p. 409] or David, or Elijah, as to his particular grace and faithfulness; yet he is called to a higher grace and walk than any of them, because united to the perfect One, the Son of the Father in heaven. The witnesses who went before do indeed provoke us by their faith and zeal; but great and wonderful as was their course, none of them is our example or model; our example is “the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God”. And even if I acted as well as, or better in any given thing than, one of the former witnesses in that in which he was most distinguished, yet, if that were all, I should be below my calling; because I am called, not to do it as he did it, but as Christ did; and I should do so were I holding the Head. Let this be admitted, and then the gravity of our responsibility and the greatness of our privilege will be evident enough. Many a saint is like a branch of a tree which you try to keep alive by placing it in water; there is life in it, but being detached from the root of the parent tree, it soon fails to give any evidence of it.
Saints present to themselves a lower standard than Christ. They seek one that their power will be able to reach up to; and many have no sense of acceptance higher or fuller than Abel’s, and do not aim at any higher walk than Enoch’s. Our acceptance is in the Beloved, and we have no lower standard than to walk even as He walked. The contrast is immense between an individual saint, even the greatest, in whom the Spirit of God merely acted, and one in whom the Spirit of God dwells, uniting him to the Head in heaven. The saints in the former dispensation were individual; their power was not derivative from the Lord in heaven, though it was conferred by Him. The Spirit of God acted in them but not in concert one with another. Each stood alone. Now it is immensely different. There is one Head, the Lord in heaven, and each saint,
holding Him, derives from Him, “from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God”.
If the Head be not held there must be a degenerating to the order of saintship previous and inferior to the present calling and order. Nothing could be higher than the present, nor could there be one which ensured greater gain. If it be a question of acceptance, it is “in the beloved”; “as he is, so are we in this world”. If it be walk, we are to walk “even as he walked”. If it be a witness, it is “looking unto Jesus”. If it be as to place, “God ... hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus”. If it be glory, “the glory which thou gavest me I have given them”. If it be love, it is “that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them”. Now if the Head be not held, there will always be a degenerate apprehension of every one of these virtues or privileges.
It is most important to see that at no former period could the same manner or measure of grace be imparted to a saint as there is now to every one true to his calling. When the disciples accompanied our Lord on the earth, they were undoubtedly made familiar par excellence with what was most blessed. But though they were with Him and enjoyed the charm and blessing of His presence, yet they were not in moral company with Him. He was alone. To have enjoyed His company as a Man, and to have participated in the wondrous shelter and love which His wing afforded them, was indeed their unique privilege, but they were in no wise like Him; they were at home with Him, but they were not united to Him. He was not their known Head, though He was their support, and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. But now we are united to Him above, and we feed on Him as He was here on the earth; the life of Jesus is manifested in the body. Again, on the holy mount, though some of them saw Him transfigured, and heard the voice from the excellent glory, and were [p. 411] eye-witnesses of His majesty, yet they were only spectators; they were not partaking of what He was partaking of, as joined to Him. Every one holding the Head now beholds with unveiled face the glory of the Lord, and is transformed into the same likeness; but this did not in any degree happen to Peter, James, and John.
Again, when the Lord was risen from the dead, and when He showed Himself to His disciples in this new and transcendent way, they were quite conscious of His wondrous state. They had the peculiar and unspeakable gladness of seeing Him triumphant over all the ruin brought in by man. But though they were in a degree conscious of the new and bright day now inaugurated for them through Him, they did not really partake of it, as in it with Him, because the Holy Spirit had not as yet descended to unite them to Him the Head. They saw the Head, they heard what He would confer on them, but they were not yet one spirit with the Lord, nor could they enjoy resurrection as He enjoyed it, though they could rejoice in the risen Lord. Thus neither in His walk, nor in His transfiguration, nor after His resurrection, were His disciples, though most highly favoured, made acquainted similarly in any degree with His state at the time, because they were not united to Him. And therefore the weakest saint united to Him now tastes, as to degree, a greater thing than any of the disciples in any period of His life on earth.
When holding the Head is actually known, there is always a seeking the things above, “where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God”. Stephen declares the efficacy of union when he “looked up stedfastly into heaven”; Paul, when he says, “Not I, but Christ liveth in me”. But it is not merely individual, as all grace had been hitherto in every dispensation; but now, as one member is honoured, all the members rejoice with it. And this is the only true way of learning or understanding the unity of the body. In a variety of ways of late years, the unity of the body has been accepted as a doctrine [p. 412] without any power flowing from it; and simply because it is with the effect of union with the Head that christians are occupied, and not with that which produces the effect. They speak and dwell on the unity of the body without insisting on holding the Head as the only way to arrive at or secure this unity. The consequence is that one will regard the unity of the body as a club of christians, and another will contend that a congregation which takes the place and form of worshippers is the body of Christ. All and every shade of inaccuracy on the subject is simply traceable to not holding the Head, this greatest and most wondrous of privileges and benefits.