THE REALITY OF CHRISTIANITY
This chapter, so far as I have read it, shows us how real a thing Christianity is. It lies in the fact that there are certain people on earth who are disciples of the Lord Jesus, who is in heaven, and there is also connected with it a well-defined way that is spoken of in this passage as this way or the way. Also what comes to light is that the lordship of Jesus is a very real thing, so that those who are truly disciples of His are available to Him for any service that He wishes them to perform. He knows them by name and speaks to them, and they call Him Lord; they call Him Lord genuinely as loving Him. There are persons of whom the Lord Jesus speaks who say ‘Lord, Lord’ but do not the things that He says, and He tells us, that as to them, He will say, “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity”. It is of no value at all to speak of Jesus as Lord, to say, our Lord, as people do, if in fact He is not Lord to you.
Christianity in the eyes of many people is just a religion, a religion which they compare or contrast with the religion of the Jews, and Mohammedanism, and Buddhism, and other things. They will tell you that it consists in the teachings of Jesus Christ and it has a large place in the world, and they will perhaps claim that it has been an influence for good in the world; but I think you will agree, if we are honest about these things, that in its public aspect as a profession it covers a great deal that is certainly not pleasing to God. It reprobates anything that is grossly immoral or evil, manifestly so, but it makes room for almost every conceivable variation of teaching and doctrine, and it accommodates itself very easily to the ways of the world. That is what Christianity is in the eyes of most people, but that is not what Christianity is in God’s sight. Christianity according to God is found only among those who personally know the Lord Jesus in heaven and own Him as their Lord.
Now there are many already in this position of disciples of the Lord. It was so when Saul of Tarsus was converted. The conversion of Saul of Tarsus is of great interest, because Scripture tells us; indeed, he himself tells us, writing by the Spirit of God that he was the chief of sinners, the chief of them. Therefore the conversion of the chief of sinners is obviously a matter of great interest, and it was very real. That is why I did not stop at the end of verse 20 but read verse 21, because it shows how very real his conversion was. It was a complete change round, and conversion is an essential if we are to have part in a living way in Christianity. You may say, ‘We have not been persecutors’. That may be, but the Lord Jesus said, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven”. There must be a change round, a yielding of the heart to the Lord Jesus Christ in glory, if there is to be any part vitally in Christianity.
Well now, as I say, it is a very interesting matter that, when the chief of sinners was converted, there were ready a large number of disciples of the Lord. He himself on conversion became another disciple of the Lord. He was just added to what was there. There was a company of disciples of the Lord. There were some in Jerusalem, some in Damascus and many other places, and as Saul was converted and yielded himself to the Lord Jesus he was added to the disciples of the Lord; and the position is still the same. As a kind of background to the preaching of the gospel there is the company of the disciples of the Lord and, if you are in touch with them, you will find in so far as they know the Lord Jesus and are subject to Him, that they are moving together in a well-defined way, and that they know what it is to have to do with the Lord Jesus personally, and the Lord Jesus knows what it is to have do to with them. You will find, also, that they carry in this world a testimony to His name. All these things enter into this chapter.
Well now, Saul, it says, was “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord”; I have no doubt that behind the energy of animosity against the disciples of the Lord that marked this man was the energy and power of Satan, though he himself was unaware of it. He was “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord”, and as thus marked had obtained letters to Damascus to the synagogues from the high priest, that if he found any of the Christian way, the way that is trodden by true disciples of the Lord, he should bring them bound to Jerusalem. As he journeyed, he was suddenly arrested by a light from heaven and he fell to the earth and heard a voice. I am not suggesting that the way Saul of Tarsus was converted is necessarily the way that everyone is converted, for it is not so in detail. Indeed, I suppose that everyone who is converted is converted in a different way, for God loves variety. Even in the physical creation you will see endless variety in God’s creation; it is stamped with wonderful variety. So in the spiritual realm, the reality of the work of God in the souls of people, there is endless variety in the way souls are converted, but there is no difference as regards the One to whom they yield themselves. They are all brought to the same Lord Jesus, to the same God.
So Saul heard a voice. Behind that voice was a person. He “heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” There was a living Person, having a personal interest in Saul and addressing Himself to his conscience, and asking him a simple question which he must have found extremely difficult to answer. “Why persecutest thou me?” It was a voice from heaven. There was irresistible power in the hands of the Lord Jesus. It says in the end of the gospel of Mark, that when He had said certain things to His disciples He went up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. “After the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God”. That is a place of power. The right hand always speaks of power in Scripture, and the right hand of God means irresistible power, and Jesus is sitting there. He was received up into heaven and sat down. It is an established position which is being filled out now by the Lord Jesus, and irresistible power is in His hands. He could have struck that chief of sinners dead, and who would have said it was undeserved, for he was persecuting those whose only offence was that they loved the Lord Jesus, and they loved the Lord Jesus for this reason, that they knew Him as their Saviour, but the Lord did not speak in judgment to Saul.
This is not a day of judgment; not that God has not the right to exercise judgment; He has. There are times when He does come in in judgment, but in the main the character of this present dispensation which has extended now for nigh two thousand years is one of grace and salvation. It says, “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance”. That is the attitude of God at the present time. He is longsuffering and the Lord Jesus is longsuffering. He has not yet taken up His rights or been vindicated; the last this world saw of Him was when He, the Son of God, was crucified. The day is coming when He is going to be vindicated publicly, and He is waiting for that day patiently, because there may be someone here who has not turned to the Lord and come into salvation. That is what He is waiting for. So with Saul He says, “Why persecutest thou me?” Saul said, “Who art thou, Lord?” Who taught him to say Lord? He was constrained to say it. The light shone from heaven. We are told from the Scripture that follows, that he actually saw the Lord Jesus. He did not know who it was. The last that had been seen of Jesus by those who were not disciples was a Man crucified as a malefactor, a Man whose visage was marred more than the visage of any man. The Lord Jesus is not like that now, but He is still a Man. Scripture speaks of His body of glory. He is in a condition suited to the exalted position He is filling at the right hand of God, and Saul saw Him (we are told that) but he did not know who He was, but the glory in which he saw Him, constrained him to say Lord. “Who art thou, Lord?” The Lord says, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest”. Jesus—the very One whom he was persecuting. He was persecuting the disciples of the Lord, everyone who called on the name of the Lord Jesus, and. now as the Lord spoke to him from heaven He said, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest”.
There is a great deal of meaning in the name of Jesus. If anyone here is unaware of the fact, I would say that the meaning of the name Jesus is ‘Jehovah, the Saviour’; that is, God Himself, the Saviour of mankind. God must become Man in order to become the Saviour of mankind. That is the glory attaching to the name of Jesus. In the first chapter of Matthew when an angel came to Joseph and said Jesus was to be born, he said, “thou shalt call his name Jesus”. Why? “For he shall save his people from their sins”. Why did he tell Joseph to call His name Jesus? Joseph was a man, and represented the side of responsibility, and every one of us has to face up to the question of our responsibility. If we do, we will find that the question of our sins is sure to arise. The question of our responsibility before God has to be faced by everyone of us and results in the question of our sins being raised; and when you are facing the question of your responsibility before God what you want to know is someone who saves His people from their sins, and that is Jesus. “Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins”. You learn to know the Lord Jesus in that light. Of Him Scripture says, “who is over all God blessed for ever”, and yet become a Man and known by the name of Jesus, in order that He might become the Saviour of men.
You know, dear friends, saving from our sins is a very complete salvation. He had to die in order to save us from our: sins, or how could the judgment attaching to our sins be lifted from us unless someone died for us? Who could do it save the Lord Jesus? Who in heaven or earth? Thank God He has done it. The very One who was crucified is now on the right hand of God, and while it was by the hands of wicked men that He was slain, it was by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. The men were only the instrument to carry out God’s own will that His Beloved Son, the Lord Jesus, should come into this world and die for sinners, giving Himself a ransom for all. It is one thing to be cleared by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ from every imputation of guilt, “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”. That is one very great blessing open to us now in the gospel through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, but then you want more than that. You want someone who can save you, save you completely from the power of sin, from wanting to go on in sin, doing your own will. That is what God proposes. In Proverbs 16 it says, “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man”; that is his own will, “but the end thereof are the ways of death”. But there is one who can save us from our sins and that is the Lord Jesus.
There are thousands of disciples of the Lord Jesus on the earth who are saved from the kind of thing that previously marked them before they were converted, and they are saved by subjection to Jesus as Lord. It is a great thing to come under the sway of the Lord Jesus. It is more than coming into the gain of what He has effected in Christ. “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. The blessing for everyone who believes does not depend on the depth of his repentance, nor on the strength of his faith but simply on the abiding value of what Christ has done and on the blessed grace of God that desires that we should be saved. But this I say: to enter into the full gain of the gospel at the present time we need to be yielded to the Lord.
Then I was saying a moment ago that the angel spoke to Joseph and told him that she was to call His name Jesus for He should save His people from their sins. In the first chapter of Luke’s gospel we read that the angel spoke also to Mary, and he told Mary that she was to call is name Jesus. Now Mary does not represent the side of facing up to our responsibility, although of course every woman has to face her responsibility just as much as every man. I am not suggesting that a woman has any less responsibility than a man has, but in Scripture a man usually represents the side of responsibility, and a woman usually represents the side of affection, and so the Lord Jesus is presented not only as the answer to our responsibility but also as the answer to affection which God Himself creates in the heart. Think of it being possible for you or me to have as an object of affection one so great as the Lord Jesus Christ. That is what is proposed in the gospel. Christianity is a great system of affection, and that is why it holds genuine Christians. It does not hold professing Christians because they do not know the Lord Jesus Christ personally. What Christianity really is is a system of affection in which all those who are truly converted are bound in affection to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So the angel speaking to Mary, in telling her that she was to call His name Jesus, did not say to her that He should save His people from their sins but “thou ... shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest”. Think of the greatness of Jesus! The Highest is a title that applies to God, and refers to the exceeding moral excellence found in God. It says, “God is love”, and He is “rich in mercy”, and He delights in grace, and now Jesus is the Son of the Highest. The one who has come out from God is the perfect expression and representation of what God is as the Highest, the One who is supreme in every moral excellence, and Jesus has brought it all to light and made it available to the sons of men, even to sinners to the chief of sinners who was “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord”. The Lord Jesus brought to him all the moral excellence of righteous grace, with a view to his being brought through Jesus Christ into the reality of knowing God as He is revealed. Scripture speaks, and it is known by those who are true believers in the Lord Jesus of the possibility of our dwelling in love and dwelling in God. Having God Himself so blessedly known through our Lord Jesus Christ you find you can dwell in God. That is possible, but yet before that can be known, this question of our sins must be settled, and there is no other way of its being settled save through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. As Scripture says, “For there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved”, save the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well now Saul said, “Who art thou, Lord?” and the Lord said “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest”. I am sure Saul’s course of persecuting the disciples of the Lord must have risen up before his eyes as a most heinous thing. The One whom he as persecuting was there at the right hand of God with all power in His hands, and there was a poor puny man daring to persecute the disciples of the Lord Jesus, and there was the Lord Jesus speaking to him in grace. Already He had died for him. The redemption in Christ Jesus was there waiting for Saul of Tarsus to claim it. God’s right to show mercy to that dreadful sinner had already been established by Jesus dying for Saul of Tarsus and rising triumphant in order that Saul and every other sinner might understand that the work is absolutely finished and nothing needs to be added to it.
The Lord, as rightly representing God and expressing what is in His own heart, spoke tenderly to Saul and said, “Arise and go into the city, and 1t shall be told thee what thou must do”. It is a question of the Lord. The Lord Jesus is wonderfully gracious, but He is the Lord. “What thou must do”: He says. It is the King speaking. He is the Lord. It is not a question of our being free agents, it is a question of coming into subjection to the Lord. There is no one on earth who is a free agent. You are either, unknown to yourself, under the influence of Satan, or you are under the influence and control of the Lord Jesus and of God through Him. That is not an extravagant statement for, in chapter 26 of this book we find Paul giving an account of his conversion to king Agrippa, and he said that the Lord Jesus sent him to open men’s eyes that they might turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God. It is one or the other; a person is either in darkness under the power of Satan, or else in the light and knowledge of God. There is no such thing as a free agent in this world, and the Lord Jesus is announced, in all the grace connected with His name and the graciousness of His administration, in order that souls might come through repentance and faith under His blessed control, and be found among the disciples of the Lord.
Now it says that there was a certain disciple at Damascus. I invite attention to this for it is really the very root of the gospel as it is preached, that behind the preaching there is a background consisting of those who are already disciples of the Lord; there are such on earth, there are those in this place, at Rangiora, disciples of the Lord. Saul, as yielding himself to the Lord Jesus had to identify himself with them, but first of all he had to learn that the disciples of the Lord were available as usable by the Lord to serve him, to serve Saul, and so for the moment we do not hear any more of Saul but we are introduced to a disciple of the Lord named Ananias. “And there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias; and to him said the Lord in a vision, Ananias. And he said, Behold, I am here, Lord”. See how personal Christianity is! The Lord called Saul by name and then He made Himself known to Saul by name. He said, “I am Jesus”. That is the distinctive feature of Christianity that it is a personal matter. So here the Lord says “Ananias”, and he says “Behold, I am here, Lord”. The name Jesus is cherished by every true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, for it means so much to believers. It enshrines the glory of His person and all that He has done. You can understand those whose sins have been washed away by the precious blood of Christ, who have yielded themselves to Christ and who have come into the gain of complete salvation from the world around, being ready to say ‘Lord’. It is foolish to resist His rights as Lord. God has made Him Lord, and Lord He is, and Lord He will be, but it is a great thing to say ‘Lord Jesus’ from the heart. It is a very great thing. It means that you yield yourself to Him and your affections now are free to embrace Him; and, on your part, as you call upon His name it means that all the power of that Name and the gracious administration of it too are available for your protection and support. “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”.
And so Ananias says, “I am here, Lord”, and the Lord said, “Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and enquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth”. Every detail is known by the Lord Jesus: the street called Straight, the house belonging to one named Judas, and a man called Saul of Tarsus. He was not then in Tarsus, but he came from Tarsus. The Lord knows all about him and He says, “Behold, he is praying”. How God loves to see a person praying! Someone here perhaps wants to pray and does not know how to pray. Scripture gives us an indication how to pray. There was one man who smote upon his breast and would not lift up his eyes to heaven, and said, “God be merciful to me a sinner”. There is a sample prayer! Another young man is given us in the parable who is recorded as saying, “I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” It is a great thing to speak like that to God. In the last chapter of Hosea it says, “Take with you words”; not mere words, but words that speak the truth. That is what God loves to hear. “He that doeth truth cometh to the light”. God loves to see a soul coming to the light and speaking words, committing himself to the truth.
So Saul was praying and Ananias raised his difficulties. He says, “Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem: and here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name”. Over against authority from the chief priests there is the authority of the Lord. The Lord said to him “Go thy way”. It is not a question of the chief priests; it is a question of the Lord. The Lord said to Ananias, “Go thy way”. No one else has authority in these matters. The king and his ministers have authority from God in secular matters, and we recognise that and pray for them, too, but when it comes to spiritual matters it is a question of the Lord. The chief priests had given Saul this authority, but now the Lord says to Ananias, “Go thy way”. It is the Lord, and His authority. “Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake”. The name of the Lord Jesus is a great factor in the testimony of God in this world and disciples of the Lord Jesus have the great privilege of bearing the name of the Lord Jesus in this world. That is what they are taken up for, among other things, to bear the name of the Lord Jesus in this world.
Ananias comes into the house and lays his hands upon him and says “Saul”, calling him by name. What a personal matter Christianity is. He says, “Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared to thee in the way as thou camest hath sent me”. The bond is established, and the bond is the Lord Jesus. “The Lord, even Jesus”. Ananias, so to speak, is saying, ‘I have known the Lord Jesus a good many years. You have just come to know Him; and I can embrace you as a brother’. He says, “Brother Saul, the Lord even Jesus”. ‘He is Lord to me and now He is Lord to you’, that is what he is saying. “Jesus that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Spirit”. That is the characteristic blessing of Christianity. It is very important that that is brought in here. What makes Christianity what it is, such a matter of real enjoyment to those who have believed on the Lord Jesus, is the gift of the Holy Spirit, and God has nothing less in mind for those who repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, than that they should receive the Holy Spirit. That is what He has in mind. Forgiveness of sins? Yes. Never to come into condemnation? Yes indeed; but far above that is the gift of the Holy Spirit.
It says of Saul that he preached Jesus in the synagogue that He is the Son of God. How great it is! It is as though the Lord Jesus is becoming greater and greater before the heart of this man who has become converted. Think of his preaching that He is the Son of God! Do you really apprehend that the Lord Jesus Christ your Saviour is the Son of God? He answered to God for all that attached to you in your guilt, and by His precious death has taken out of God’s sight all your history as in flesh, as sinful. That is what the Lord Jesus has done.
There is marvellous depth in the death of Christ. It is not only the means by which propitiation has made for our sins, but in His death there was the ending of each one of us as in the flesh. As you receive the glad tidings it means that you are entirely free from all that to which condemnation attaches, and God, by the Holy Spirit, sets you up in life in the Man that is in His presence. That is a delightful position of favour from which you can never be removed. Taken into favour in the Beloved, and set up in it with the possession of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God’s Son in your heart. Think of that! Paul, in writing to the Galatians, said, “When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons”. God gives sonship to those who believe, gives it to them as a gift, brings them into a place of sonship before Himself. “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba Father”. It produces in you liberty with God, so that you call Him Father gladly as in the consciousness by the Spirit that His grace has set you in sonship before Him.
That is Christianity, dear friends. Saul of Tarsus was brought into it thoroughly and brought into it happily. He found his place among the disciples of the Lord and he preached Jesus in the synagogue that He is the Son of God, and there is no reason why everyone of us should not be brought into the same blessing, into a place of present salvation free from every influence of this world as subject to the Lord Jesus and as finding our life and portion among the disciples of the Lord. You will find that there is a way in which the disciples of the Lord Jesus walk, a way of complete salvation from this poor world, a way of deep satisfaction in the things of God and in the fellowship of the love that is found in the circle of the disciples of the Lord, and, more than that, the glory of the Lord Jesus becomes greater and greater to you as the days go by. As the angel said to Mary, “He shall be great”. You may rest assured of that, that if you go on in the Spirit of God the Lord Jesus will become greater and greater to you as the time goes on. May God grant it may be so.
RANGIORA
This preaching was probably on 2 March 1947 as Mr Gardiner gave an address in Rangiora on Saturday 1 March 1947 (published in ‘Piety and Other Addresses’)
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