THE SPHERE OF LIFE NO. 4

^[p. 49] THE SPHERE OF LIFE NO. 4

First, the question (as to eternal life) was never, as I understood, whether it was given to every believer now, but whether every believer is enjoying the gift.

Secondly, I admit that John and Paul are distinct lines, but surely the spiritual man can recognise where they coalesce, as the up line would with the down line. Paul is the up line, John the down line. J.N.D. says that the child in John is not up to the perfect in Philippians 3, that he has not learned himself. Neither the babes nor the young men are in a bad state (I never heard that said); but they are in a young or immatured state. The babe in John is not at all the same as the babe in 1 Corinthians. The babes in 1 Corinthians were carnal; but in John it is that they were not as matured as the fathers; they had to combat, step by step, the antagonism in this scene, just as a tropical plant would have to be strengthened to be proof against an ungenial climate. I do not see how any one could be a father unless he had been first a babe.

Thirdly, the main question, as I understand it, is, What is the nature and condition of the life which the fathers intelligently realise? The three classes have it as God’s gift, but the fathers really are consciously in it. You say it is the basis for walk; I admit this in a way, but surely walk is not all? Walk certainly is the path here, but there is the life of communion with the Father and the Son. The great point of John’s epistle is, that we might be in conscious knowledge of eternal life. See chapter 5. It was manifested by our blessed Lord. Though He humbled Himself, became a Man, and walked here in the life of flesh, in all His ways as a man He acted consistently with His own proper life in which He was all the time in the Father’s bosom; so that in leaving us an example to follow His steps, we are not only to seek to live as He lived here, but as He now lives unto God....

Paul was not only set for living Christ here, but he desired to know Him in glory, and he means this when he writes to Timothy, “Lay hold on eternal life”. I hold that there is a great difference between realising the blessed life of Jesus, as He was down here, and being ^[p. 50] in communion with Him where He is now, where, as Paul says of Him, “In that he liveth, he liveth unto God” (Romans 6: 10, and as J.N.D. adds, ‘and to nothing else’.

The babe and the young man must be real; they must surmount the antagonistic influences here; they must verify their new position, through grace. They are in the true Christian position, but they are not in the communion in which the fathers are. The fathers would not retain their advanced position if they were not sustained by Christ’s grace on the vantage ground to which He had conducted them.

I believe that we all shall learn much if we are patient one with another and really wait on the Lord, seeking to be near Him.