THE END OF ALL TEACHING AND WARFARE
THE END OF ALL TEACHING AND WARFARE
The end before us in anything necessarily gives a character to everything we do. I may be very far distant from my aim, and I may advance very slowly towards it, and yet as I advance, I become more coloured by, and more stimulated to advance. Hence it is of all importance to the believer to know what is the end of all teaching and warfare. The simple soul would at once answer, It is Christ. This is quite true; but while He is the end and aim of all teaching and warfare, it is of the deepest interest to ascertain how this end is to be reached; for [p. 216] here it is, I am persuaded, so many fail. The aim may be the only right one, but this is not enough; we must learn how it is to be effected. One is not crowned unless he contend lawfully. A man would not become a great linguist by studying mathematics. If the aim is the acquisition of languages, the only course to pursue, in order to reach this end, is the study of languages. Now as Christ is the only true end, as will be admitted on all hands, it is plain that it is only as He is displayed and developed, that the end is attained.
The only true end for the christian is to set forth Christ. The momentous question then is, What is the way to do this? It is here where divergence of opinion occurs, and failure as a rule ensues. Each earnest believer would assert his desire to pursue this great aim; but while in conscience it is so, many evidently have not learned the only way of ensuring it. The greater the aim, the greater and the more peculiar must be the way to secure it. Christ is the end. We know that the blessed God will head up all things in the Christ, “which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate”, 1 Timothy 6: 15. This is future. He will shew Christ Jesus to all as His faithful Servant here on earth. Christ himself is here (verse 13) viewed as the faithful man, whom God will manifest in glory before all creatures, at the time ordained in his counsels. The more firmly and assuredly we hold that the blessed God will yet set Christ on the earth as the Man of His purpose, the more shall we see that in the counsel of God, He should be presented here in the time of His rejection by His body, the church, “till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ”. Surely this is the end of all teaching; the true edification of the body of Christ. While, as we read in Ephesians 6, the great result to be attained through all warfare is that there may be boldness of utterance “to make known the mystery of the gospel”.
[p. 217] We have now arrived at two things: one, that the aim of all teaching and warfare is that Christ should be glorified here. Secondly, that through His body only can this be accomplished. The teaching would reach on to this; and the warfare is effective when we can open our mouth boldly to declare “the mystery of the gospel”. Now then, we come to the course of action by which this can be secured.
The first thing that bursts in with a light above the brightness of the sun, on the soul established in grace, is that his Saviour is not here, and that being rejected by the world — not only by Jew, but by Jew and gentile, the blessed God has called Him to His own right hand, a glorified Man in heaven. Hence every believer here, when restful in grace as to his perfect acceptance with God, and escape from the man here under judgment, enters on a new day when he learns that the man with whom he was connected, and utterly ruined, has been judicially set aside in the cross, so that it is a relief to say, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world”. In a word, that I am morally apart from the man on earth, who has rejected my Saviour — the Son of God; but that I am now of the stock and lineage, as I may say, of the Man at God’s right hand, whom God has glorified. “Both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren”. While Christ, the Man of God’s purpose, is absent in rejection, there is not any divine dealing with the man here, save and except to set him aside altogether. Not only cleared of judgment, but he must die, leave this earth; he must cross the Jordan in Christ’s death to be where Christ is, or he would have to remain here, where He is not, with the man, that is, the world, who with wicked hands crucified and slew Him. In the millennium Christ will be reigning here; then the man here will be taught to acknowledge Him in His rightful position, and they [p. 218] shall know the Lord. Now Christ is rejected here, and is set at God’s right hand, in heavenly places, and all who believe in Him are no longer connected with the man here, nor with the earth, but with Him — the Man whom God has glorified, and who is in heaven. This is the first great thing to accept in faith, and to hold to as the truth of God. Sealed by the Spirit, who is the earnest of the inheritance, we have the Spirit of Christ, and enjoy His life, for He is in us. We are thus on the earth after a new order. It may be contended that we have as mortals to pass through this world. Quite true. Our blessed Lord was in our circumstances, and yet was always the Son of man who is in heaven. I do not forget that we are in Hebrews, while I press that the calling of God for us is set forth in Ephesians.
It is admitted that Christ is the only true end; and that He cannot be expressed here but by His body, the church; and now we are seeing how the believers are qualified for this great service. No sooner has the established soul — the one able to say, “Abba Father”, with the right through the blood to enter the holiest — learned that he is joined by one Spirit to Christ in heaven, than he not only feels bound to glorify Him here, in his body, which is His, but he rejoices that he is in association with Him where He is. who is the Head, to whom he has to grow up in all things, in common with all saints, all raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ. Then he learns that he is introduced as a member of Christ’s body into an acquaintance with an enjoyment of Him which must surpass all the types given as the brides, more especially the brides elect, in the Old Testament. The type gives the phase or character of the affection. Thus the word educates the heart into the sentiments proper to the bride. There must be the knowledge of His love before the exercise of His power. If Eve was filled with rapture and surprise as she stood before the only man who would claim her as his own, how much more must each believer [p. 219] be entranced, as he learns the nature of his relationship to Him as a member of His body; and this is the great mystery; and the practical enjoyment of it, of which there is no type, is that we are not only raised up to the place where He is, and in union with Him by the Holy Spirit, but He dwells in our hearts by faith.
Then there is a worship only typified, as it appears to me, by Deuteronomy 26. We are educated into the affections of the bride-elect in Canticles, but the Spirit now leads us into a restfulness of heart unknown to her; even the confidingness of real union, as has been said, ‘What is complete in glory, is wrought into the soul now, by the Spirit operating with the word’. I only turn to types to point out how immensely we are beyond any of them, though, as I have said, I get divine suggestions from the type, as to the incipient sentiments proper to me. We should remember that a bride-elect is not united at all. There is affection; and, as I have said, we derive a very great help to our affections from the types; but we are placed far beyond, in our union with Christ, of which there can be no type, because it could only be by the Holy Spirit sent down from an exalted Christ; and this “was kept secret since the world began”.
I have referred to Eve to point out her unrivalled position; so entirely unique, and therefore setting forth the wondrously new position which the church now occupies with regard to Christ. But the sense the church should have of her portion for heart and life is far beyond anything that Eve had.
I also refer to Rebekah, as setting forth the practical walk of one truly bound in heart to Christ. She presents the phase of one who, previous to seeing him, having heard of him, determines to surrender every natural association in place and relationship, in order to come to THE PLACE where Isaac is. Truly she had heard of him, and had received his gifts; yet how feebly do these things represent the church, of whom in the wilderness it can be said, “whom having not seen, ye love; in [p. 220] whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” — the joy belonging to glory. The church has thus an immense advantage over Rebekah, who had not known Isaac before she saw him; for each one in the church now, by the Spirit, is given to know Christ in the same kind of intimacy which subsists between the Father and the Son (see John 10: 14, 15). Yet Rebekah left all for Isaac. Christ is our Head. We know our wondrous place in Him; so it would ill become us not to leave every relation here, and this place, for His place. This is the proof of whole-heartedness — “Whither thou goest, I will go”. We are “raised ... up together, and made ... sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus”. “Forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house; so shall the king greatly desire thy beauty”. As my heart grows into a deeper knowledge of His love in the place where He is (Ephesians 3: 19) — though His work for us was on the earth, I am qualified to be the vessel of His power that worketh in us on the earth. Like as the branches of a tree “planted in the house of the Lord”, so the ways and life of the heavenly Man are displayed on earth by His own body, the only way in which they could be truly displayed. It is not possible to represent any one personally but by himself. Surely no one could in any way represent Christ but His own body. To exemplify the traits and features of the heavenly Man, you must come in His power, with Himself dwelling in your heart; filled with the knowledge of His love, which passeth knowledge; here there is the filling unto the fulness of God, the making increase unto God, and we “grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love”.
Beside all this, which all teaching works up to, so that the church may be according to God’s calling here, and made ready for her Lord’s coming, there is the warfare, when we each, as we are placed by God’s ordinance, refuse to withdraw from our heavenly position, or to make any terms with the enemy. The whole force of Satan’s power is waged against the reproduction of the Man Christ Jesus here, whom God had glorified when He was rejected here. It must be so. When Satan had worked up man to reject Christ, and when it was accomplished, then the blessed God divulged His secret, that the body of Christ was on the earth (formed by the Spirit of those who believe on Him), and though they have not entered, save in spirit, into their future portion, they are already united to Him; and as they are true in heart to Him, they stand here against all the wiles of the devil for Him; in armour resisting Satan, and in dependence on God, in “supplication for all saints”, they reach this great end, that in all boldness (the more so because the apostle has been cut off) they “make known the mystery of the gospel”.