DEVOTION TO CHRIST

A. J. E. Welch

Numbers 6: 1–3; Mark 10: 21; 1 John 3: 16

I have an impression of the way in which the Spirit of Christ in the saints enters into these days of revival. We were reminded in prayer of how the Lord Jesus was here, the path He pursued; that becomes the pattern for everything that properly attaches to manhood in Christianity. In thinking over these times of reviving, one is impressed by the total commitment, the entire devotion to Christ and His interests, which has marked those who have led in what we speak of as the revival. This raises a very penetrating challenge as to how the revival is to finish. We would all be assured, I think, that we should finish in a way which is of God, with the Spirit of Christ evident and maintaining vigour in the saints. My conviction is that this present time calls for what is, to use the word in Numbers 6, “special” in ourselves; not just a contentedness to continue, but the definiteness and energy which properly belong to the concluding of things in the Spirit’s day, just as it belonged, and was manifestly evident, in the beginning of His day. Therefore we have the suggestion of “the special vow of a Nazarite, to consecrate themselves to Jehovah”. It applies to a man or a woman; it would affect brothers and sisters alike, “a man or a woman”. It is not restricted to any special element of service or movement; it represents a commitment which is of a special character.

The times we are in are special times, marked on the one hand by great smallness, and constant pressure in different aspects of the enemy’s activity, but marked on the positive side by a

sense of the love of Christ for the assembly which is unique in the history of most of us. We come together with a sense of the love of Christ towards us in all the power and active character of it, and it becomes immediately real. We are made to realize His longings for the assembly and His feelings about everything that affects His name and glory in the assembly.

It is in this sense, dear brethren, I would say from my own little experience, that we have the positive special character of these closing moments in which we are; they are characterised by the active love of Christ, the longings of His own for His coming, and the readiness for that cry, “Amen; come, Lord Jesus”. This calls for what is special in the sense of commitment on our side to whatever may be in the will of God for us, to whatever may be contributive to the great building work that is going on. Much of it is going on in small circumstances, yet it is proceeding, and I believe what is called for is this special vow, something that is over and above the normal course that things would have taken in less distinctive days. There is an appeal in the Spirit’s voice bringing in, as the mind of the Lord, an appeal among us for what is special in the sense of devotion, and the avoidance of things that may in themselves be legitimate.

I read, therefore, the third verse, which speaks of wine; there are things that are legitimate which we may very well leave aside for the time, for ever maybe, that we may devote ourselves in every possible sense to the furtherance of what is precious to Christ.

Now in Mark 10 it says of this man that “Jesus looking upon him loved him”. I wonder how we respond to the love of Christ, severally. This was just one man whom the Lord is in a very unusual way said to have loved—He looked upon him and loved him. But He has to say to this man who had come to Him and questioned Him, “One thing lackest thou”—

“One thing”. The Lord tells him what this one thing is and he goes away; he is not ready to meet the question of the one thing. It has impressed me sometimes of late that we are usually held up by one thing. Our general course may be such that God can bring blessing from it, or bring increase from it, and yet it may be that there is one thing that hinders us. I am not suggesting what it may be; the Lord would bring a conviction of it; the Spirit would bring conviction of it whenever there may be need, but in my own little measure of experience I look back and realize that at particular times what has hindered me has been one thing, and it is in the abandonment of that one thing that a course of blessing and fruit for God results.

Dear brethren, there may be many things in our individual pathways that may hinder us more than we realize, but the Spirit of God would disclose to us clearly what they are and give us to have the ground clear, with no hindrance in the way, no barrier to progress and prosperity.

The “one thing” is discerned with the Spirit’s help, and rejected with the Spirit’s help, that the Spirit of Christ in its full character of energy and positive devotion to God’s will and pleasure might come out into expression with us.

Therefore John writes in a very definite sense and reminds us of the love of Christ—“Hereby we have known love, because he has laid down his life for us”. We are back on collective ground now; it is “us”. Think of how the Lord has loved us in the company. Think of how far His love has gone, the laying down of His life. John brings out that side in his gospel, that He had authority to lay down His life and to take it again (see John 10: 18); it is not exactly in those scriptures that men put Him to death. He went that way of His own volition, and that in His own unique and distinctive personal affection for His own. Then John says, “and we

ought for the brethren to lay down our lives”. The brethren are accessible to us, they represent what is of Christ here in the circumstances practically of the days and the weeks in which we move together, “and we ought for the brethren to lay down our lives”. It may sound an extreme suggestion, but here it is in John’s writings. It represents a committal to what is of Christ in His own, in the realization of the preciousness of our brethren, severally and collectively, to the heart of Christ, and a readiness to spend all, to lay down our lives. It may not be our lives physically, the point will be, I take it, the way we live in the Spirit and move in the testimony, but it will be as laying down our lives for the brethren. It is this fulness of committal to what is of the Spirit of Christ that comes to my mind this evening, and I trust the Lord may help us just to maintain it in all these ways in view of the nearness of His coming.

Word in meeting for ministry, Los Angeles
27 March 1984