PROGRESS IN THE APPREHENSION OF THE THOUGHTS OF GOD
No 1: THE CALL OF GOD AND HIS COVENANT
It is desired to trace certain features of the thoughts of God towards us, and the way we grow in the apprehension of them. Abraham’s history illustrates this growth in apprehension. It starts in this twelfth chapter with the Spirit of God recording that God had said unto Abram: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee”. We gather from Stephen’s address in Acts 7 that Abram responded in part, but was hindered for a time until the death of his father, when he fully answered to the call. But here the call is presented, and the character of it, that it involved separation from his country, his kindred, and his father’s house, and it was to be to a land that God would show him. As it says in Acts 7, “The God of glory” came before the soul of Abraham. His call became effective, and he responded, and the effect of responding was to separate him from his country, his kindred, and his father’s house. Now that is something which each believer can take account of, that in the sovereignty and grace of God, the call of God has reached him in the gospel, and it essentially involves separation. Those who receive the call, and get the light of the God of glory before their souls, have a light that governs them now which is not possessed by those who have not been partakers of the call, and this inevitably results in separation. Alas, with Christians the idea of this essential separation between those who are the subjects of the call and those who are not is often given up; but I believe the moment the call is received, the element of separation enters into the soul. It is a principle with God that light separates from darkness—“God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night”, Gen 1: 4, 5. That is, when the light of God, even in its initial form, enters the soul, there is an element which God can name and call Day, and separate from the darkness.
Now Abram responded, and departed, and Lot went with him. It does not say that God appeared to Lot or called him, but he went with Abram. He is allowed to be influenced by the light possessed by Abram, and go with him to a certain point, which is allowed of God to bring its own test, to confirm Abram at a later stage in obedience to the call of God. We know that later on there arose a conflict between the herdmen of Lot and the herdmen of Abram; and Abram, as having the light of God before him, understanding that he was called of God, could afford to leave the choice to Lot. It is a great thing to get the sense that we are called of God. In the sense of it the believer says, “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” Rom 8: 32. We read in Romans 8: 29, 30, “whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called”. These are things we knew nothing about at the time the call reached us, but having answered to the call, we come to understand that we are “the called according to ... purpose”, Rom 8: 28, and that God is for us. Hence Abram was able to let Lot take his choice, and Lot lifted up his eyes with the natural man’s outlook; his choice was entirely wrong, see Gen 13: 10-13, but after Lot had parted from Abram, God could say, “Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever”. He will not withhold anything from those whom He has called; “all things are yours ... And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s”, 1 Cor 3: 21, 23.
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Passing on now to chapter 17, we find the thought of a covenant between God and Abraham. There is a definite understanding, so to speak, between God and His people; something which indicates the terms on which Abraham is now in relation with God. God says, “Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you”. It is a great thing to understand the terms on which we are in relation with God. The keeping of the covenant on our part involves that we recognise the Spirit of God, and recognise, too, that we are in no way debtors to the flesh. “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live”, Rom 8: 12, 13. It is a question of certain definite conditions under which we may go on in the consciousness of the love of God. It is one thing to believe that God has loved us, and to believe indeed that He does love us; it is another thing to be conscious of the love of God, and respond to it. As it says in Romans 8, “all things work together for good to them that love God”. Not to those whom God loves, but those who love God, that is, those who keep His covenant.
Now in order to make a little clearer the idea of the covenant in this individual aspect of it, I refer for a moment to the beginning of Romans 8, where, you remember, the apostle says, “what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”.
As young believers go on with God, there comes a point in their exercises, it may come early, when they are greatly troubled by the question of the flesh, and the presence of the flesh, and their consciousness of its workings, and so on, and they long to be free of it. Now Romans 8 shows us that God has gone to the greatest expression of divine love to deal with that very thing that troubles us; as it says, “God sending his own Son”. What greater expression, in an individual way, of the love of God towards us could there be than God sending His own Son, that sin in the flesh might be condemned? How could we come in our souls to a complete, unsparing, judgment of the flesh, save as in the light that God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, so that sin in the flesh might be condemned? God has taken that way in order that we might receive the Spirit and be for ever set apart from the flesh. “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you”. Now since God has done all this for us, what is to be the answer on our part? It is, surely, that we recognise the Spirit, and maintain in our souls, by the Spirit and under the influence of divine love, the same judgment of the flesh that God has expressed. We no longer identify ourselves with it in our minds; we learn to judge it in the power of the Spirit, and we bring forth fruit to God, as it says, “if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness”, Rom 8: 10. This is what answers for the believer to the keeping of this covenant that God made with Abraham. The sign of it was circumcision, which is typical of the repudiation of the flesh in the power of the Spirit. It was to be a perpetual thing; not only was it to be personal to Abraham, but it was to give character to what was found in his house—every male child of his house was to be circumcised—and it was to be handed down as the sign of the covenant to succeeding generations.
It is a great thing to be concerned as to the practical maintenance of the disallowance of the flesh in the power of the Spirit. It is on those terms that we are with God, and on those lines the love of God becomes a known reality and is responded to, so that we are among those who love God.
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