NOTES OF READINGS AND ADDRESSES
“JESUS OUR LORD”
Ques. Jesus our Lord?
FER The Christian claims Jesus as Lord. It is the appropriation of Jesus as Lord, “our Lord”. At the present time there is no assertion of the Lordship of Christ, and so the believer claims it. We come under His Lordship by claiming it. If there were any assertion of the Lordship of Christ it would be the day of the Lord. Christ is not Lord to the world, He is Lord to us. “To us ... there is one Lord, Jesus Christ”, that is, to Christians.
Ques What is involved in coming under His Lordship?
FER We get the good of the kingdom, that is, the reign of grace through righteousness which is effectual for us. It is a place of security, and you get that place by the Lord. Christ is Lord over all, that is, He has title, and that will be asserted, and then all will be put under His feet. Now He is hid. Christ is Lord, otherwise we could not confess Him as such. He is Lord and we claim Him as such. He is Lord to us. It is Christ Jesus our Lord. We have not got the day of the Lord yet. The Thessalonians thought the day of the Lord was present. If there were the assertion of His Lordship it would be the day of the Lord. I could not go to an unconverted man and say he was responsible to own Christ as Lord. He is responsible to bow to Christ as Head. A man believes with the heart unto righteousness. No one could confess until there was faith in the heart. “How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?” You must believe before you call upon the Lord, and “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”. Man’s soul is in bondage, and God comes to [p. 119] deliver a man from all that to which his soul is in bondage. No one could call on the Lord unless they had believed. How could they call on Him on whom they have not believed?
Rem Saul of Tarsus said, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”
FER Saul of Tarsus was not converted in an ordinary way. The Lord Himself took him in hand. He never heard. He was a kind of exception. The Lordship of Christ is connected with strength and grace, authority and power, in which we can stand down here so that we are not afraid of evil. The Lord should be a much greater reality to us than the evil. The Lordship of Christ brings in the thought of fellowship. Our common bond is the Lord. The bond of our fellowship is Christ as Lord. It is (to use a common expression) the articles of our partnership. We only know about His Lordship by the Holy Spirit. The testimony that goes out world-wide is the Head, the Christ, repentance and remission of sins in the name of Christ. The subject of the testimony is “the Christ”. We know nothing about Jesus as Lord save by the Holy Spirit. We may repeat it, but no one can know the reality of the glory of Christ except by the Holy Spirit. This will not be the case in the millennium, for the day of the Lord will be asserted. It is a great privilege to us to confess Christ as Lord. He is hid now, but His Lordship will yet be asserted. Joseph in a way was a type of the Lord. He had authority and power given to him, but he was hid from his brethren. All authority belongs to Christ now, but He is hid. Israel in the future will have to confess Christ as Lord. The supper is called the Lord’s supper because of the state of the Corinthians. It is not the Lord’s supper really, according to the original, it is the “dominical” supper. It is a characteristic idea. It is the lordly supper. It is the character of it. It was in contrast with everyone eating his own [p. 120] supper, and the apostle brings it forward as the dominical supper in contrast to that. Christ is not Lord to the assembly, but to the individual. Christ is Head in the assembly. He is pre-eminent there. If the assembly acted in discipline it would act in the name of the Lord. The Lord’s day is the dominical day, it is not a common day, it has a special character in that way. The disposition to do our own will is probably what hinders our appropriating Christ as Lord. The presence of the Lord is realised through the supper. That is the reason why it is important that the supper should come to us early in the meeting. In the supper it is Himself who is presented, and if we want the enjoyment of Christ’s presence, it is through the supper we realise His presence. The principle is “He was known of them in the breaking of bread”. We get 1 Corinthians 10 before chapter 11. We have to be in the fellowship of Christ’s death first. The supper is the collective and outward expression of fellowship, but then the fellowship is there, and chapter 10 supposes we are in that fellowship of which the supper is the outward expression. We come together in assembly. The supper tests us, and if we answer to the test then we get the privilege. We are put into touch with the Lord and with one another. All privilege in Christianity is in the power of the Spirit. I used to wonder that we should get formal things in Christianity like the supper, baptism and the scriptures. They are a test in that way. If the bread and wine are taken up in what they are simply, that is, according to what they represent, they become a test: these formal things test us as to whether the mind is in accord with them. If we eat the bread the question is, Is the mind in accord with what it represents? So baptism is the test to a Jew, his conversion would not be the test. Baptism would test a Jew, because if he answered to the test of baptism he would be cut off from his Judaism and his friends. If you [p. 121] answer to the test of the supper, you get the consciousness of His presence. It is in the act of breaking bread that you get the sense of His presence. Having been baptised by one Spirit into one body, it is natural for Christians to come together. We cannot get at 1 Corinthians 11 save through chapter 10. The great point in chapter 10 is separation, and chapter 11 is seclusion, but you could not get seclusion without separation. The blood comes first in chapter 10 because God is in view, and it is by the blood that we get separation.
In Romans 5 you get two thoughts: first, our Lord Jesus Christ, and secondly, the one Man, and yet the one depends upon the other. To make the Lordship of Christ available there must be the Man. You get the benefit of His Lordship in the beginning of the chapter, but then you get the Man. “By one man” is quite distinct from the thought of our Lord. If you had Christ as Lord alone you would have had all swept away in judgment. You would have had all swept away, a silent earth, and the Lordship would not mean anything. Christ’s Lordship in regard of this world is that He will judge. No man would be left if His Lordship were asserted, but the condition of things is not yet ripe. It will not be ripe until the whole state of things is developed in connection with Antichrist. You get into righteousness by the one Man, and then you pass into the good of the Lord. “So by the obedience of one [man] shall many be made righteous”. Christ is the righteous Man, and the effect is we get righteousness. Practically the “many” is the “all” in the chapter. It is the “many” in contrast to the “few”. Every tongue will have to confess He is the Lord, but that will be when He asserts His Lordship. I do not believe in people preaching hell, but I do believe that you should press that man is amenable to the judgment of God and that judgment will be enforced by Christ. The [p. 122] great mistake is people preaching all that they know. People preach now more than the apostles preached. I think the glad tidings of the Son of God is what should be preached. If God is to judge I should preach that, but that is moral. I do not believe in terrorising people. We are not entitled to preach all that Christ preached. He could draw aside the veil and shew the ultimate end, the rich man in hell; but I would not be justified to preach all that He preached. The great point is to press upon men that Christ is Head of every man by divine appointment and man has no option; he is called upon to accept Christ as Head, and then he will get the benefit of coming under Him as Head. Christ is Head of every man because He has borne the liabilities of every man, and He is a life-giving Spirit and can impart to men living water.
In preaching you must have a moral foundation in man. Man naturally has no idea of God, nor of his right relation to God. Man has to learn that God is God, and that man is man and responsible to God, and hence amenable to judgment. God is Judge, and He will judge by Christ. I want to affect men morally, not to terrorise by working on man’s imagination. What will affect man is to know that God is Judge and that He will judge by Christ. The great thing is to preach the preaching given to you. A man’s authority for preaching is that he has a gift to preach. The preacher has to be sent. A man has to be sent from the Lord. He may not have a commission like an apostle, but a preacher ought to feel he is sent to preach. A man cannot serve without a gift. The little captive maid had in principle a gift. Her spirit was regularly stirred that there was a prophet in Israel.
The gifts are all here. Christ is not giving gifts now. The gifts are here, and the Spirit distributes severally to every man as He will. The gifts were given by Christ, and they are in the administration of the Spirit. Mr. Darby said, “If there were more devotedness there would be more gift”. If a man were devoted he would get what gift really is, and that is, as Mr. Stoney has said, an “impression of Christ”.
The meeting that people are in gives tone to them. If a meeting is slack in a general way, people will get slack. The meeting has a profound effect upon people.
It can be preached in a general way that Christ bore every liability under which man lay. One could hardly say that He bore every man’s liabilities, but He did bear every liability under which man lay — death, curse, and judgment — and hence His death is available for every man. It is the grace of God to all men. It is ample for all. Then there is another side, that is, the appropriation of it. He bore my sins. That means that Christ had my sins in view in His death. Isaiah 53 is Israel’s appropriation. We cannot deny that Christ’s death had the elect in view, still it is equally true that Christ has died for all, and that He is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. God’s mind for man can thus be proclaimed. If Christ is owned as Head, men get righteousness and living water. As Head He is on our side. He is the pre-eminent Man. But as Lord He is on God’s side. He is Lord, but He is the one Man, otherwise we should have an empty earth.