(3) CHRIST'S WITNESSES
(3) CHRIST’S WITNESSES
John 15: 26, 27; Ephesians 1: 15 - 23; Acts 7: 54 - 60
In connection with the thought of fruit-bearing, what was before my mind on the last occasion was that we might understand how that God has been pleased to connect us with what is on the resurrection side of death. We are individually, on this side of death, though risen together with Christ in connection with Christ and the assembly. But as a matter of fact, we are this side of death and expect to be quickened, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”. At the same time, it is very important that we should apprehend the link which God has already formed to connect us with Christ on the other side of death.
The source of vitality to us is the other side of death. I refer to Romans 7, “Ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another” — mark the next clause — “to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God”.
Now, the same thing comes out in the chapter from which I have read, namely, John 15. Fruit-bearing is spontaneous, the evident effect of vitality, and the source of this is the other side of death. The apostle says, “I am crucified with Christ, and no longer live I, but Christ lives in me; but in that I now live in flesh, I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God who has loved me and given himself for me”.
I want to proceed now on the same lines, and the point to which I come is witness, which is a little in advance of fruit-bearing; and, in connection with witness, I want to shew the power for it, and that, I need scarcely say, brings in the thought of the Holy Spirit. The Lord takes that up at the close of the chapter. The chapter in the main is occupied with [p. 25] fruit-bearing, but, at the close, Christ speaks of sending the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, and He should bear witness. The apostles also were to bear witness, because they had been with the Lord from the beginning, or outset, of His ministry.
The witness of the Holy Spirit came out in a very marked way in Stephen. It came out also in Philip and others, but hardly perhaps in such a distinct way as in Stephen. He was a witness to Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. So far as we know Stephen had not been in the company of Christ upon earth, nor was he a witness of the resurrection; but he was a witness in the power of the Holy Spirit, he was full of the Holy Spirit; and the effect of that we are permitted to see. Stephen became a martyr, he had to suffer for his witness.
Now my first point is, that the Holy Spirit has come down here to witness. He has not come to establish anything upon earth, that is not the idea of the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is true that Jew and Gentile are builded together for a habitation of God by the Spirit, but that is not the establishment of anything upon earth. The object of the Holy Spirit is to establish the kingdom of God in the hearts of saints. The kingdom has come in the way of mystery, that is, not publicly, but at the same time, true in the hearts of believers. “The kingdom of God is ... righteousness, and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”, and from the fact of the Spirit having come, to make good the kingdom, you get the house of God, Jew and Gentile built together for a habitation of God. The house is in a sense dependent on the kingdom, for it is evident that if God comes in in grace, the first thing He must do is to establish His sway over the heart of man; and that must be in grace. Judgment would assert and vindicate the rights of God, but grace establishes the sway of God in the heart of man. At the same time, the [p. 26] Spirit of God has come to connect the hearts of believers with what is in heaven, and not only that, but to form them for it. You get the idea of this in the renewing of the Holy Spirit.
We see the work of the Spirit exemplified in Stephen. He looked up to heaven and saw what was there, and bore witness of what he saw. He saw the heavens opened, first of all, and the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and he was sustained in power down here. He was qualified in the power of the Holy Spirit for a witness, and testified to what he saw in heaven. The Holy Spirit gave him not only the light of heaven, but the consciousness of what is there; and to that he bore witness, and that is the true witness of the Spirit of God.
Evidently the witness of the Spirit of God must be to what is in heaven. He has come down from heaven — not as the Lord did, in incarnation — and has brought from heaven the report of the glory there. The Spirit has not formed any links upon earth; Christ did, of necessity, in becoming man. Scripture speaks of Him as Son of Abraham, Son of David, and Son of Mary; but the Spirit reports that which is in heaven, the glory of God and Jesus at the right hand of God.
What I want to dwell upon now is how we are formed for witness. I do not think a man is a real witness of anything which he simply believes. I may be able to speak of a thing and report it as fully believing it; but if I am to be a witness of it, according to the divine thought, I must be in the consciousness of the thing of which I am witness. I may have heard of some wonderful thing having taken place in some other part of the world, and fully believe it, and be able to report what I have heard, but I am not a witness of it, though I have the faith of it. If I have seen the thing then I am qualified to be a witness, because I have the consciousness of the thing of which I witness.
[p. 27] Faith is divine light in the heart of man, and a man cannot please God without it; but the peculiar spirit and power of Christianity is not faith but consciousness. In Old Testament times, saints had the faith of things, promises and the like, but they could not have the consciousness of the promises, because the time had not come for their fulfilment; but that is not Christianity. We begin with faith. We believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but, in the Holy Spirit, God has come in to give us the consciousness of the things that we believe. It is not only that we have heard a credible report, and can transmit it to others, but we are qualified to be witnesses of the things of which we have the consciousness, as was the case with Stephen. The glory of Christ has changed everything in regard to us. It has inaugurated a new order of things. The power of God in resurrection has brought to light a new Man, and consequently a new world connected with the new Man: and all God’s ways, new covenant, reconciliation and so on, are connected with this new world, the centre of which is Christ, and that is very important for us to take into account.
God has been fully glorified, in regard of righteousness, in the death of Christ, and that has left room for the power of God to operate; and the result is that He has brought into view a Man whose origin was heaven. Resurrection really brought fully to light the heavenly Man, and the world to come is founded on Jesus, crowned with glory and honour; and hence it is that the Holy Spirit has come down to report the glory of God and Jesus at His right hand.
I will say a word, in connection with the verses in Ephesians, as to how we are formed for witness. The text is, “Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love to all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom [p. 28] and revelation in the knowledge of him: the eyes of your understanding [heart, it should be] being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead”. One thing I wish you to notice is that the word ‘know’ in verse 18 is not the same word as ‘knowledge’ in verse 17. The thought in verse 18 is to know, not only by faith, but in consciousness, what is the hope of His calling, and the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe.
There are three things in the passage, (1) the hope of God’s calling, (2) God’s inheritance, and (3) the exceeding greatness of God’s power; and the point is, that you should be conscious of these things; and the way in which you are to get at this is by the knowledge of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory. Evidently that must be by the Holy Spirit. The first beginning of all real knowledge of God is by the Holy Spirit. You have no real knowledge of God Himself until you love. “Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love”. Apart from love, there is no real knowledge of God. The Holy Spirit has come in order that we may know God, not that we may know something about Him, but know Himself. You may hear a great deal about Him, but it is a different thing to know Him. I may hear a good deal about a man, but it is a different thing when I come to know the man himself. So with God; and you do not really know God if you do not love.
If you want to get intelligence in divine things the way is by the knowledge of God. The Holy Spirit has come down to form us in the divine nature, and [p. 29] the beginning of this is the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us. The Spirit is not the witness of God’s love; God’s love is witnessed in the death of Christ. “God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us”; but the Holy Spirit has come to make that witness good in the hearts of God’s people; and the effect of it is that we love, and thus prove that we are born of God. “Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God”. The spirit of wisdom is got by the knowledge of God.
If you would make advance in divine things you must set yourself for the knowledge of God. I think many good people have studied scripture as they would a science; but that is not the way to get at the knowledge of divine things. It is God’s favour which leads you into the knowledge of divine things. No saint has any ability to grasp divine thoughts beyond the measure in which he knows God, and no one knows God beyond the measure of his love.
The spirit of wisdom and revelation is that we may understand. What I apprehend to be “wisdom” is “resource” and “revelation” means “unfolding”. You get the spirit of resource and unfolding in divine things, and the end is that you may be conscious of the hope of His calling, of His inheritance and of His power.
Now all these things are dependent on the fact of Christ having gone to the right hand of God. First, we have the hope of His calling, and that is heaven. Heaven is open. It is no longer a secret to us, because a man has gone there, and we are in Him. The next thing is the inheritance; and the inheritance exists for man in all being now headed up in a man. In the early part of the chapter we have this brought out. God has made known to us the mystery of His will, and Christ is the One in whom all things are gathered up, and you see the greatness of the inheritance [p. 30] because you see the greatness of the One in whom all is gathered up. But there is also the power which is toward us. First, you get heaven opened by the fact of Man having gone into heaven, God having been glorified, and then you have that Man as the Head of God’s inheritance, He is the Heir of all things. Then there is the power of God that has raised Him from the dead, and that power is toward us; and having the consciousness of these things, we are qualified to be witnesses here for God. We are consciously linked with heaven and the things which are there.
Resurrection is the great triumph of God. It is the expression of His power triumphing over everything which was contrary to Him: death, sin and Satan’s power. It is of great importance that we should apprehend the moral import of the resurrection, for it is the power of God’s ways in the world to come. “God has triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea”. The enemy is silent, vanquished in death: God has triumphed, He has raised Christ from the dead.
The power of God is to put us, in due season, in possession of His inheritance. It is a power which has been proved, and therefore you can be conscious of this power, because it has been brought into exercise. You could not be conscious of the inheritance if Christ were not in heaven, any more than you could be conscious of the calling if heaven were not open. But heaven is open, and the power of God will put us there in due time. If we took these things in, we should bid good-bye to the world and take one simple step outside of it. We would see the heaven open, Christ there, and be very conscious of the power of God to put us there.
Now we are shewn how this came out in Stephen. The first part of his witness was, “I see the heavens opened”. It has been said that the heavens were never opened until Christ was here. Now we get the [p. 31] heavens opened to a man, Stephen, who bears witness of it. It was a new thing, a new point of departure. If the heavens are opened, do you think they could be closed upon the Holy Spirit? “Stephen, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up stedfastly into heaven”. The heavens could not be closed to the Holy Spirit, nor to those who are full of the Holy Spirit. Christianity is that the heavens are open. God has been glorified in regard of righteousness, and a man has gone into heaven on the behalf of men, and hence the heavens are opened to man — we see Jesus. Every one of us would do exceedingly well to look up to heaven stedfastly.
The next part of Stephen’s witness is, that he saw the glory of God and Jesus. What I understand by the “glory of God”, is God’s moral effulgence, that is, all His attributes effulgent, and, at the same time, perfectly in harmony with His nature, and that in regard of man. God has taken His own way to glorify Himself, and He is glorified, not in man, but in the Son of man. The Son of man is put in distinction from man, and in the Son of man God’s glory is shining out. The One in whose face the glory of God is set forth is the One who is the centre and gathering-point for man. You must put these two things together. Nothing of God has failed. All is conciliated, and displayed in the One who is in heaven.
There is another thing about Stephen; you find in him the evidence of power. He is prepared to face the bitter consequences of his testimony, and is sustained by divine power. His spirit is superior to all through which he had to pass. He was conscious of the power that was toward him, and he knew very well that that power would land him in the heavens which were open to him.
We see the proof of this in what he says, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”. There was a place in the heavens for his spirit, and further evidence of power [p. 32] comes out in that he prays for the Jews, saying, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”. We get here a beautiful expression of Christ in Stephen. The grace of Christ came out very distinctly in him. He had looked up to heaven and seen the glory of God. I have thought in connection with this of Psalm 19, “The heavens declare the glory of God”, and it is in heaven that God has set a tabernacle for the sun: the sun in heaven is Christ.
In the present day people are very much agitated by the confusion upon earth; but things are really resolving themselves into their elements. Ritualism and Rationalism are here, but the words of the Lord, and of the apostles as well, have led us to expect it, and we should not be taken by surprise. God has declared from the beginning what things would be in the end.
We are privileged in the power of the Holy Spirit to look away from the confusion to heaven, like Stephen, where there is no confusion. There was confusion enough in his day, and our course is the same as Stephen’s. He saw the glory of God and Jesus. The heavens are open to us, and we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour, and we know the certainty of the inheritance, because it is in Christ we have the inheritance, and in Him we find the power to maintain us here in the reality of these things.
If I have, like Stephen, to die the death of a martyr, I can commit my spirit to the Lord; but on the other hand, if I am to live here, the power of God comes out in my being a witness. If we are in the consciousness of things, we can bear witness on earth to what is in heaven. In the consciousness of divine things, I do not care much for what is going on upon earth; but I would like to bear witness on earth of the glory of God, and Jesus at His right hand, the gathering-point for man. “Let him that is athirst come; and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely”.
[p. 33] I would like to lead people to the centre and gathering-point for man, Christ in heaven. That is the effect of being a witness. We are witnesses of what is in heaven.
In experience one has found that when people have heard something which is perfectly true and repeat it, they repeat it with certain additions or deductions. It is quite a common thing to know something by report, and to find that it is another matter altogether when you have the conscious knowledge of the thing. Then it is that you can bear true witness. That is the value of being conscious of what is the hope of His calling, and the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe.
The effect of it would be not only that the apostle’s prayer would be answered in us, but that we should be witnessing to the glory of God and Jesus at the right hand of God, and that would be a great thing.
May God in His grace give us to enter into the reality and consciousness of these things, that we may be true witnesses of them.