"STRIVE LAWFULLY"
“STRIVE LAWFULLY”
“Strive lawfully”. You must not resort to human resources and expediency. All has to be met with the light of the testimony. You must employ no other weapon. People want to accommodate Scripture to science. Light from God excludes all else, whether it falls in with science or not is no concern of mine. I leave it with God to reconcile the facts of nature with Scripture. I believe Scripture. I have nothing [p. 305] to do with science. If a living God is addressing Himself to a fallen creature what is He going to speak to them about science for? A servant must strive lawfully. Do not give up one hair’s breadth of the light and truth of God. Scripture if not light from God is the greatest imposture that ever was. We are in a world of darkness. What an immense mercy from God it is that we have light from Him!
In Christ all His manhood took character from Himself, from what He brought. We cannot understand christianity if we do not see this. In becoming Man Christ revealed God, but He also took His place as Man before God. The gospels are (as some have said) really the setting forth in Christ of what man is for the pleasure of God. “Good pleasure in men”. Where? In one point only — in Christ.
Once Christ has been here nothing short of that — of Christ — will do for God. God’s object in the ‘body’ is that Christ should be reproduced here. The great thought in the mind of God in the body is that it should be a vessel for the reproduction of Christ here.
Study the gospels and see how totally opposite Christ was to man! See the tremendous contrariety between Christ and even the disciples, faithful men though they were. The disciples say, “Send the multitude away”. “Send her away; for she crieth after us”. Again, they say, “Master, we saw one casting out devils, and we forbad him”. Jesus said, “Forbid him not”. Their thought was always different from Christ’s. It was the human in them — the divine in Him.
[p. 306] In Genesis 24 we get foreshadowed in type the church being conducted to Christ, not conducted to heaven. He Himself will come to take us to heaven, but the Servant, the Spirit, is here so that He might conduct us to Christ.
The riddle of all the confusion sin has brought in is solved, for we know a spot where there is no confusion, and Jesus as Man set down there. The world says, ‘Might is right’; but none can unravel the confusion where man’s will works, but there is one way out of it all, and that is in Christ. Our hearts can rest where Christ is — He is salvation, sanctification, and High Priest. He suffered being tempted; there was no temptation inwardly in Him, but temptation brought suffering to Christ. Now He is able to succour them that are tempted. The Lord succoured Peter when he fell: “I have prayed for thee”. He is a merciful High Priest. Christ has reached the goal, and that goal is ours, and He stretches out His hand for us and gives us a helping hand on the road, and I cannot doubt as we realise that, our hearts are drawn to Christ where He now is.
2 Corinthians 1 There was no man in the Old Testament in whom the promises could be taken up — that is the subject of Stephen’s defence. The patriarchs all died, but Stephen looked up into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus. He saw the Man. Out of Him rivers of living water flowed. The infidelity of the [p. 307] present moment is against the Man — not exactly against God. There are but few atheists. The spirit of antichrist and the liar go together. “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?” (1 John 2:22). In acknowledging God, people satisfy their conscience.
If we can divest ourselves in mind of all that is not according to God in us, and take account of ourselves according to what is of the work of the Spirit, then we are according to that glory. In resurrection bodies we shall take account of ourselves only according to what we are in connection with the Spirit’s work in us.
1899.