REFINEMENT
A. J. E. Welch
We have had this verse before us today and yesterday, yet I feel impressed to dwell upon it, because of the pointed urgency of seizing the great issues of a positive kind which are involved in this present moment. Times sometimes come when we may need, with the help of the Spirit, to break through the detail of current things that may have engaged us closely, to see the great ultimate end which is in mind in all the detail. What has impressed me in reading back into the great ministries which the Spirit so signally used is the place the assembly had in the affections and minds of those who have served us.
Those ministries have not left us ignorant, speaking generally, as to teaching concerning the assembly. There is not, in general, great lack of knowledge as to what is suited to the service of God. But what the Spirit of God is getting at relates to the deeper roots of devotion to Christ, and of longing for what befits Christ, that develop as our hearts and renewed minds are filled with that Man. We are then brought to realise, not so much by the detail of the teaching, but by depth of conviction that the Spirit would impart to us, that the securing of a vessel, a creature vessel suited to Christ, is the great point of this wonderful time of the Spirit.
I would ask myself what conviction I have as to the assembly. We know the term; we use it often; we speak of it; we sing hymns of it. Thank God, we touch the features of the service that relate to it; but the root being tested out—which will still be tested out—is that depth of conviction in devotion to Christ that cherishes what fully answers to His heart. As He has it, what an outcome there is for God—I say that, that we may realise the place that the assembly has, and is to have, in the final filling out of what is eternally to God’s glory. The assembly united to Christ, and moving under His headship, will fill out the whole scene as that in which the blessed God substantiates what answers to Himself, to His own blessed heart.
But what is in mind, beloved brethren, in all this is the greatest refinement. A chaste virgin presented to Christ represents a kind of essence of refinement in a creature vessel, a vessel which is in view in our present service. It is a vessel which is to be rightly brought into substantial expression as we continue together in numbers which may be very small, or small, or not quite so small, but never large, in our time. In its refined character, detached from everything that relates to man in sin, it is presented for the heart of Christ to delight Him, so that the Lord can take His place in view of what goes forward for the pleasure of God.
What are our convictions.as to Christ and as to the assembly? Have we yet drunk into the quality and character of that love, known as it springs up in the heart of the heavenly Man, that seeks, whatever the cost, a suited answer to itself? And if something of that love has affected us, to what lengths are we ready to go in committal, that such an answer as that might be secured?
Therefore the writer here speaks of his jealousy. “I am jealous”, he says, “as to you”. What an expression of the depth of feeling of the beloved apostle—“Jealous as to you”, he says. That is, he has no formal objective, would emphasise, no formal objective. He is not filling out a kind of formality of service; he is thinking of what is for Christ, seizing the full character that must attach to it, if it is to be truly for Christ. He is allowing no reduction in his mind and heart of the refined quality of that which must be secured to afford a full answer to Him. But he is labouring to that end. He had a hard time, did he not? His was no easy path of service. Even when he went to Corinth, I suppose relatively early in the history of the place, it was with fear and much trembling. How he felt things in that city! You wonder what the cause of his fear was. I would think, from the way he presents it, that it was not the fear of man as such; it would be the fear of the subtlety of the foe spoiling what God would work out in that city, in the midst of all its corruptions. How he felt these things. His heart was just in tune, in harmony, with the heart of an exalted Christ, a Man in the glory. He was labouring in the gain of all that is set forth, for him and for us, in that Man.
Are our engagements with Christ in heaven sufficiently frequent and sufficiently extended? Are we ready just to ponder, and still ponder, and still ponder, what is up there in that glorious Man, and be affected by it? Is our view of Christ extending? Are we getting enriched thoughts about Him? If not, what is standing in the way?’ Our flesh will always stand in the way; it will always do so, if it is allowed. What is of man and his world will always stand in the way, if it is allowed. We shall never gain expansion in these things as occupied with the passing matters of man’s world. We have to walk in soberness, and work in soberness, in the midst of current affairs; but what is our absorbing engagement in these closing moments of the richest time of all in God’s ways in blessing? Shall we let the closing moments pass, beloved brethren, without getting the simple point of them? That point, I believe, is conveyed to us in these brief verses we have read. Shall we come out in Pauline character, or shall we come out in some other character? If so, what character is it? Is it a character that God is pleased with? Is it a character as to which God might say, Here is a man in the full, rich current of My mind and thoughts? You and I, any of us here—elderly ones here, young ones here can just go forward in the full current of God’s mind and thoughts. He has no thought otherwise for us.
Shall we yield, shall we move on in these things, or is some passing thing hindering us? Am I a self-centred person, thinking of things as they affect me? How many of us have had to face and see what that really means, to get self-centred, and relate everything to ourselves. God has just to come in and say, I am not going to have that. God must be the Centre of the realm into which He has come. It must be so. He has set a glorious Man. His beloved Son, as the Centre of His world, and God is committed to that. It is a simple touch, I know, but if what we bring forward, if what we make our objective, is out of accord with the Son of God, God will have to disallow it. He is committed to the establishment of everything in relation to His beloved Son.
So, dear brethren, let us cultivate what is refined. Let us repudiate the small things, the trivial things, the things maybe that have grown and grown and grown in our minds, because of self-occupation. Let us see them, and judge them, and set them aside, that we may arrive at the true level of Paul, of divine refinement, which God is at in our time. I would love to think that we get a view of Christ in that connection. Think of the awful corruption of man’s world into which He came—right into the heart of it. He came.
What there was in that precious Babe, “the holy thing”, as the scripture says; something that nothing of man could contaminate or reduce in its infinite perfection. Luke presents Him growing; a boy of twelve; a man beginning to be about thirty years of age; and what came into expression in that Man was absolute refinement according to God. Think of that scene in the Pharisee’s house in Luke 7. How Luke delights to present the refinement of things in Christ in view of the understanding of what belongs in the assembly. That Pharisee, thinking critically within himself, had his own thoughts, which were diverse from the great point of the occasion. So the woman appears, a repenting woman. The Lord calls attention to her; He commends her, and He sends her away in peace. Things are kept on a level of moral refinement, with the perfection of Jesus there. The utter degradation of man in flesh is evident, but Jesus comes into the totally dominant relation of the whole episode. He sends that woman away in peace but never abrogates divine standards; He does not pass by the history of that woman in sin, to which the Pharisee calls attention, but provides for it in accomplishing redemption. There is for men forgiveness of sins, peace, the gift of the Spirit, that this refined level of things should go on.
So it was as the Lord was among His beloved disciples; you see it running right through the gospels. Just take account of the moral perfections of Jesus, in the midst of all the corruptions of man in his affairs; you see there what the divine point is in the suggestion of what is so intrinsically precious and refined, “to present you a chaste virgin to Christ”. We have the hint of it, of course, in many previous passages; the mind turns to David, fuming as he went to slay a man who had offended him, and being met by Abigail, who brought the discerning, refined touch to bear upon David; thank God, he answered to it, showing how these refined elements of things work as they are brought into view in the assembly. I fear—and the fear springs from what I find in myself—that the assembly has become almost a word in our vocabulary, when what the Spirit of God would have it to be is the great, substantial, divinely-adorned objective of all that He is carrying through to completion in the latter moments of His sojourn down here. We are to take on the spirit of that, dear brethren. My intention was to be brief, and that is what I had to say; but I believe we need to heed the peculiar character and force of this verse in this time—to which we have come, that we do not lose the life-stream of this wonderful time of revival in which our God has called us.
May we take on these things, and, if we have never done it before, continue in whatever may be opened up to us by way of service or activity in the assembly, to have the full divine objective in view.
Spaldwick
27th January 1973