THE DIVINE STANDARD OF SERVICE (2)
THE DIVINE STANDARD OF SERVICE (2)
JT Our remarks this morning were largely preliminary. No doubt the Lord will help us in looking into these two chapters, as having their own voice and bearing on the subject before us; first in the apostle’s evident effort to inspire confidence in the Corinthians, linking himself up with their local affairs and exercises, telling them that his hope for them was sure, and then in carefully meeting the feeling amongst them that there was insincerity or even prevarication in his methods. This rendered his position in writing the letter extremely difficult, but we may learn from it how to deal with such circumstances in our service, for we may be sure that in serving Christ we cannot but meet them, the enemy being ever ready to instil insinuations and lack of confidence. So the apostle links them up with himself as far as possible in what he was going through, and he links himself up with what they were enduring, thus making assembly exercises, as we speak of them, universal in bearing, whether arising from certain local conditions or otherwise.
HH So both the epistles to the Corinthians are left on record to help us in such exercises right down to the very end.
JT That is quite evident. What is before us now especially is to see how one in the place of service is to act when evil or opposition arises in those whom he serves.
HH The apostle had been in the third heaven fourteen years before all this, but besides that he had been through much tribulation, despairing even of life, experiences which justified his taking up these exercises with the saints.
[p. 350] JT Yes; previous experience is made to tell in the letter in dealing with such conditions. The Lord enables His servants to use what resources they have, for every servant ought to have his own resources. Of course, our resources are in Christ, but there are resources arising from experience with Him peculiar to each of us.
Ques Would the first epistle, portraying the desperate state into which things had fallen at Corinth, have a special bearing on our time, coming in on the corrective line, and the second epistle bringing in what is positive growing out of the first?
JT Yes, and I think it grows, too, out of the experience that intervened with the apostle himself, so that there is a certain analogy between this epistle and the towel used by our Lord in wiping the feet of the disciples after washing them. The first epistle bears strong relation to the water which was poured into a “washhand basin”; it was a portable vessel, and thus the Lord came to each; it says, “He comes therefore to Simon Peter” (John 13:5,6), the service not requiring that they should go to Him. The apostle would readily have gone to Corinth, if by going he could have done as well or better than he could do by the letter. It was a question, as he tells us in this chapter, of love’s calculation. Love’s reckoning kept him away, not any want of self-sacrifice, so that the water reached them and did its work. Now he is approaching them, I apprehend, with the towel, which arises largely from the experience that intervened, on which he dwells at length in the opening part of the first chapter, an experience which brought God in perhaps in a way not otherwise known. God was brought in, and thus in being brought down and finding God in the circumstances one gains and becomes more effective in the service. So that we should notice the place that God has in these two chapters in relation to the apostle’[p. 351] s experience.
DLH There was a good remark once made by a well-known brother amongst us that the first epistle to the Corinthians suggests the use of golden snuffers, connected with the tabernacle system of things, and that this second epistle is rather the oil beaten for the light. The apostle seems to have gone through a good deal in that connection himself, so that he was able to minister the necessary oil to keep the light burning, as in this epistle.
JT Yes, that rather confirms it from another view.
FHB We get more positive gospel ministry in this epistle.
JT We do, and these chapters emphasise the minister. All the chapters do, we may say, but the circumstances experienced between the two epistles gave remarkable occasion for God to come in, and it is “God who raises the dead”, (chapter 1:9). The encouragement received thus by the apostle was for the gain of the Corinthians.
Ques Is the idea to establish mutual confidence and feeling between the servant and those served?
JT I thought so. Paul seems to link up the Corinthians with those experiences: “Ye also labouring together by supplication for us that the gift towards us, through means of many persons, may be the subject of the thanksgiving of many for us” (chapter 1:11). Their supplication is recognised, and it is suggested that there should be thanksgiving.
ASL As to the line of experience with God in view of the service, is it not necessary that all in some measure should go through the experience that Paul describes in the first chapter: “We ourselves had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not have our trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead” (verse 9)? Have we not to learn in some little way what it is to come to the end of all resources, to be at our wit’s end, and to cry unto the Lord? And [p. 352] thus experience is gained with God, the “God who raises the dead”. Is not that an essential part of the inward training we have to go through?
JT That is what I thought; the “sentence of death in ourselves” is a judgment formed definitely as to oneself, so that God is trusted.
ASL Death morally and resurrection; death in the sense of being brought to the end of all resources, so that we are shut up to God.
JT Quite, that we may not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.
FHB Do we not get a great deal of the apostle’s discipline as well as his ministry in this epistle?
JT That is what he brings out here and he links on the Corinthians in the most skilful manner with his experiences, bringing in their supplications. It is the part the saints have in fellowship with those who serve them. The supplications are by many persons, and then the thanksgiving is by many. The work of God thus proceeds in the most mutual way, for, after all, there is a great interdependence between those who serve and those who are served. And then there is the plain assertion of his veracity in all he was doing.
ASL He speaks of all he went through in the first chapter as being for the encouragement of others in any kind of distress. God allows us to be passed through all kinds of circumstances that we may learn to trust in Him, and then we can in a practical way be helpful to others.
JT It is thus that the towel feature appears, for you are concerned not to wound or cause discomfort. Plain things may be said, but said in such a wise and skilful way that there is the least wounding or discomfort possible, and that, I think, is what runs through this whole letter. It is said, “He ... began to wash the feet of the disciples, and to wipe them with the linen towel with which he was girded”, (John [p. 353] 13:5).
SJBC The last thing He took was the towel. He had that object in view.
JT He was girded with what would be most useful; there is the token of service, but of the most gracious and considerate kind. It is not a false clerical garb, for that is useless. There are those who put on outward garbs of humility that are of no use whatever, whereas the christian’s garb of humility is useful. I think the towel represents that, so that in the attitude of the service, the very thing that symbolises your service is in itself most useful.
JJ Would you say that Paul here is very much like the Lord in that chapter in John where He laid aside His garments before He took the towel?
JT Well, exactly. Paul is girded with the towel in the allusions to encouragement. He had acquired great ability in encouragement through the experience he had had, and he is, so to say, girded with that; he has that before him. Much has to be said, but that is what he has before him. He impresses the Corinthians at the outset with this sympathetic attitude.
MWB Do you think experience enables us to deal in that gracious way?
JT I believe that is the end in view in the usually severe discipline through which servants are passed. You can see in Moses how he would have served without it. He had it in his heart to serve, and one day he looked on his brethren and would have helped them, but he was wanting in the skill of a servant. But after forty years of experience with God he is spoken of as His servant in Psalm 105, “Moses, his servant”; God knew him thus. “He sent Moses his servant, and Aaron whom he had chosen”; that is to say, Moses had established the fact that he was a servant. In returning he was greatly reduced by the discipline of God, but in all the reduction he had learned God, and at the end of the forty years it was [p. 354] seen in the fact that God showed Himself to him in a way that in no way intimated human greatness. It was in a thorn-bush. That does not denote any greatness in this world. Well, Moses took account of that. He was accustomed to great things in Egypt, but he took account of an insignificant thing like a thorn-bush burning. It is said that he turned aside to see, that is, he showed he was interested, and then we read, “Jehovah saw that he turned aside to see”, and He said, “Moses, Moses!” as much as to say, I am taking full account of you. God is taking him up now and He says, “Loose thy sandals from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground”. (Exodus 3:4,5).
SJBC He spoke about it as a “great sight”. Learned in all the wisdom and skill of the Egyptians there was something in the burning bush that was wonderful in his eyes.
JT Well, it was most important that he should know God. That is the one great necessity, that we should know God, because one of the great features in service is representation, and representation lies in the knowledge of God. How can I represent one whom I do not know? In the knowledge of God I act like Him. So that God says to him later twice over that he would be as God, first to Aaron and then to Pharaoh. That is what was in God’s mind, that he should be a complete representative of God to the king of Egypt.
MWB Do we find the same thing in this epistle with regard to the apostle that he personally, in that way, was a representative of the Lord?
JT I think he was. That is the ground he takes, not only officially, but in character. The skill and grace of the apostle brings out the character of the man. Chapter 4 speaks of Christ as the image of God and in it the apostle shows how like his Master he was.
HH And he speaks later of the grace of our Lord [p. 355] Jesus Christ, who being rich became poor. That was how Christ came down, and so we have it in the apostle as well, no doubt as an object lesson for the Corinthians.
JT Quite. God has a standard of service in Christ, presented in Mark’s gospel, and He keeps to it. Paul is in accord with it here.
Ques Are you suggesting that these exercises and experiences are to be mutual, both on the part of the servants and the people of God?
JT That is the way — interdependence between the servant and those whom he serves. Now you get in John 13 that the feet-washing was before the passover, that is, it is a new thing, a thing by itself. It is not anything arising out of the passover or anything that existed previously to it; it is of Himself. “Jesus, knowing ... that he came out from God and was going to God, rises from supper and lays aside his garments”. His service is of Himself; it does not take on any current practice at all, no current religious custom or manner, and it is before the passover. The passover in John represented what was current religiously, but what He was doing was by itself, and so He was representative of God. He came from God and went to God, and so with Moses, he carried nothing at all into Egypt which was of Egypt. What he brought into Egypt was what he gathered up with God, and hence he was “God to Pharaoh”, (Exodus 7:1). He represented God, and that is the principle. One is not to be like the current religious servants, but to be different. This is sure to be resented, indeed, it will involve persecution, but it is a feature of the testimony.
WCG Did his experience on that line begin with sitting down by the well? It was different from sitting by the great things of Egypt, and was not Paul, as it were, sitting down by the well when he enjoyed the consolations that were in Christ?
JT Just so. It is remarkable how [p. 356] much instruction we get in connection with wells in the early scriptures.
WRP Would not that give great distinctiveness to our service, so that we should not want to imitate one another, but have something distinct of ourselves?
JT That is the thought. It was before the passover in John. John emphasises throughout that what the Lord brought in was of Himself and was different and I think you get that here. The apostle really is coming from God in a new way; he had been down into death and despaired even of life and had the sentence of death in himself, but in that he found God in a special delivering way: “Who has delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver ... he will also yet deliver”, (2 Corinthians 1:10).
JHT Does the contrast between the beginning and the end of Moses’ service help at all? The beginning was characterised by a man slain, but the close of it was when he blessed the tribes, “a people saved by Jehovah”, (Deuteronomy 33:29).
JT Quite; it is the blessing of “Moses the man of God” (verse 1); it is the one who has had to do with God and now regarded as the man of God. He is so with God that he is able to see the saints now apart from the flesh, which is another important feature. He saw them as loved by God: “Yea, he loveth the peoples”, he says, (verse 3).
HES Is that why emphasis is laid on the fact that it is “the assembly of God which is in Corinth” in both epistles?
JT Yes; and so you will notice here how much he makes of God, but then the Son of God was preached by him. He says, “For our boasting is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and sincerity before God, (not in fleshly wisdom but in God’s grace,) we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly towards you. For we [p. 357] do not write other things to you, but what ye well know and recognise; and I hope that ye will recognise to the end, even as also ye have recognised us in part, that we are your boast, even as ye are ours in the day of the Lord Jesus”, (2 Corinthians 1:12 - 14). Then he goes on to say that he had a purpose to come to them; he was sincere and concerned with a definite purpose to come to Corinth and to give them a second benefit and to be put forward by them to the different parts which he wished to visit in his service; that is another thing to be noted; he had a definite purpose before him. In their view it was prevarication or lightness, but in truth it was the working of love. The servant learns how to reckon as to his movements in love; he is not moving haphazardly, but with calculation and purpose. And he goes on to point out that the Son of God was preached by him, and by Silvanus, and Timotheus. He is putting all on the level of what he preached — the Son of God was not yea and nay.
Ques Do you extend the thought of representation to the company, or limit it to the apostle or the individual, and was that the object of the enemy’s attack to obliterate the thought that the company should represent God?
JT It is in the assembly, of course, but we are speaking now of service, and I thought those who enter into service should see to it that they are conscious of being pleasing to God, that is on the principle of “Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight”. The consciousness of being pleasing to God underlies the anointing. God anoints us as pleased with us, and then the idea of gift and being sent comes in, so that one is, so to say, personally great enough to represent God. God must be the judge of that, and He gives His servants to understand their place with Him. It involves our place with Christ as sons, for the Levites were all “firstborn ones”. It also implies, as we have said,
[p. 358] what we are in our secret lives with God — that He is pleased with us.
PL Do you get that in the prophet, “Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul delighteth” (Isaiah 42:1)?
JT That is the direct statement of it. God is pleased with you, and then, as going forth, you represent Him, which is really more important than what you do. I should prefer to make being the representative of God the first thing, and then what I may do is manifestly of God. So this epistle develops the idea of our being “God’s fellow-workmen”.
AHW Is that why the apostle opens the epistle with the “God of all encouragement; who encourages us in all our tribulation”?
JT Quite. God is emphasised throughout, but then, the Son of God is, so to speak, God’s best, to speak with the greatest reverence. It is what He had always in mind as representative of Him. Hence He had in mind in regard of Israel that the testimony that Moses should render was, “Israel is my son, my firstborn ... Let my son go, that he may serve me”, (Exodus 4:22,23). Now, that is taken up in the prophet and in Matthew 2:15: “Out of Egypt have I called my son”. He is, as I said, God’s best. He is in that way the Son become Man; He has a mediatorial position, but as One who is personally great enough to represent God in all that He is.
MWB Is that why he links his preaching with his actual movements in service here?
JT I think so. “The Son of God” — that is how he brings it in; he lifts the subject out of the mere local circumstances to the full height of what God was doing. What was God doing? He was working in the Son, and the Son is His ideal. In Him He shines out, and in Him He sets out His purpose for men.
MWB Do you suggest that that should have an answer in our own movements?
[p. 359] JT That is the thought. You are moving in relation to the Son of God. That is how God has come in, in the Son — “only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”, (John 1:18). You get an apprehension of that, and your movements are in that relation. So the apostle brings in what he preached among them — the Son of God; he lifts the thing up to that level. It is not a mere question of your being led in what you are doing, it is what God is doing. What did he preach? What was the testimony rendered at Corinth? The Son of God. That is, God’s best was presented, the One to whom God has committed Himself absolutely, and He was preached not only by Paul but by Silvanus and Timotheus; there was thus a threefold testimony. It was in Him every promise was yea and amen.
WCG The apostle had nothing less in view than “until we all arrive at ... the knowledge of the Son of God”, (Ephesians 4:13).
JT That is what he had in view in his ministry, but he brings it in here to show the level of his own purposes and movements.
WCG Is it that knowledge that affects us as pleasing God?
JT He brings it in here as the working out of the faithfulness of God which is another great element, see verses 18 and 19. The faithfulness of God is bound up in the Son.
JJ In bringing it forward in this way, is he not like Moses in Exodus 3:14, speaking of the name of God, “I AM THAT I AM”?
JT Moses goes personally much further than the types. “From eternity to eternity thou art God”, (Psalm 90:2). That is how he apprehended God as expressed in his prayer — the “prayer of Moses, the man of God”. You get the man himself. Moses could speak about the tabernacle, but he says, “Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before [p. 360] the mountains were brought forth, and thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from eternity to eternity thou art God”, (verses 1,2). That is how he apprehended God, and so it was the Eternal who sent him — the “I AM”, hence, Moses comes into John’s gospel perhaps more than we have noticed; it is the opening up really of Exodus 3 that God had come within man’s range. He came in in the most lowly circumstances and Moses turned aside to see the sight, and it is from that point his ministry begins, and that is what he alludes to in his prayer. It is what God was to him, and so it is, “I AM hath sent me unto you”. Now the Lord says, “Before Abraham was, I am”; the connection between that wonderful statement and Exodus 3 is clear.
JRS Are you linking up the gospel of John with the thorn-bush?
JT Certainly, that is the point. “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us”; that is the thorn-bush; God come into those circumstances. Will any one turn aside to see? The great servants did. “We have contemplated his glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a father”, (John 1:14). That is what underlies service, and Paul alludes to it here — what God was to him.
Ques Does 2 Corinthians 4:6 show that representation is according to the knowledge of God? “God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine who has shone in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”.
JT Just so. As already remarked, earlier in that chapter it was said that Christ is the image of God, and now Paul represents God in his measure. It is the Son of God that is preached; that is, he is bringing before them what was preached by himself and Silvanus and Timotheus, so that whatever they might think of Paul, the Son of God was preached,
[p. 361] and that is the level on which God was moving. He is moving on the level of His Son. Paul was on this level also; not trifling miserably, as they thought, in making promises he did not mean to keep.
MWB Why does he group the other two with him in his service?
JT I think to show the beautiful spirit that prevailed in the service at Corinth, and that there was a threefold cord in it which could not be broken. The Lord had said, “The scripture cannot be broken”, (John 10:35), “I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High”, (Psalm 82:6); that could not be altered. Well, those three brought the Son of God in in their preaching, and in connection with it Paul now brings out one great feature of Genesis, that is, the faithfulness of God.
SJBC Referring to the Son of God, would it be the Son as begotten in time, or would it suggest resurrection? He was “marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection of the dead” (Romans 1:4), or would it be His eternal sonship?
JT I do not know that there is such a term in Scripture as eternal sonship. “Son of God” is a question of a Person. The Son of God is announced in Scripture after the Lord Jesus was here. In Luke 1:35 it says, “The holy thing also which shall be born shall be called Son of God”. That is what Luke says, meaning that that should come out in Him in due course. Jesus asserts His relation as Son at the age of twelve in saying, “My Father’s business”, but the Father’s voice announcing it is at His baptism.
SJBC You believe He was the Son in eternity?
JT What the Scriptures say is, “In the beginning was the Word”. It does not say ‘the Son’. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), that is to say, His eternal personal existence is stated, He [p. 362] was there personally in the beginning. To go so far as to give Him a personal name or designation then, is going beyond Scripture it seems to me, but that the Person was there is the great point. To give Him a name is another matter, but the Person was there. It is the foundation of Scripture that He was a divine Person and so was there in the beginning. Now Luke says that He “shall be called Son of God”, and He says Himself at the age of twelve years, “Did ye not know that I ought to be occupied in my Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49) There is a plain intimation of His relation with God. There is the assertion of His relation with His Father as Son at the age of twelve years, and then God Himself calls Him Son as He was thirty years old: “Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight”, (Luke 3:22). That is what He was here. Luke presents Him in that way; and John speaks of His sonship only after He is said to have become flesh.
EJM “God ... at the end of these days has spoken to us in the person of the Son”, (Hebrews 1:1).
JT Quite. It was a divine Person, and that Person was the Son, but in a mediatorial position; it is in that way He speaks. The speaking was by Him, as in manhood. I am sure we should be most careful as to applying to Christ as “in the form of God” designations given to Him as in Man’s form.
GJE When the Son of God is mentioned in Scripture it is not always in manhood?
JT I know of no other way in which He is so spoken of in Scripture than in manhood, but that in no way detracts from the fact that He was a divine Person and was there in the beginning. I believe many assume that the revelation of God and the form of God are equivalent, but this is to ignore that it is expressly stated that no one has seen God at any time, that He dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen, nor is able to see, This was [p. 363] written after God is said to have been declared by the only-begotten Son.
Ques Does the title “Son of God” stand in regard to God’s faithfulness to His Old Testament promises?
JT It does. It has to be borne in mind that the divine personality of our Lord is properly based on the statement, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. He is a divine Person and that underlies the fact that He is capable of representing God. As Man the designation “Son” undoubtedly regards Him in this light, but to make it apply to Him as “in the form of God” is another thing entirely.
SJBC I thought that in incarnation He took up in new conditions a relationship that had ever existed in eternity and that as the Son of God it was the relationship in a new condition.
JT I think you are asserting too much in saying the relationship ‘had ever existed’. It does speak of the glory He had with the Father, but to give the thing a name is, I believe, going beyond Scripture. That the Person was there and that He was God is the point. I believe many have in their minds a fixed conception of the form of God. That is, they think they can bring the infinite and unknowable within their finite comprehension. But we have the declaration of God, of His nature and attributes, and that is in “the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father”; God is now working in that connection in His own Son. Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus preached Him among the Corinthians. While God is thus brought within our range in a Man, owned as Son of God — the title showing who He is — there is infinity in the Person — what is beyond us. “No one knows the Son but the Father”, (Matthew 11:27).
MWB Is your point that it had to wait for revelation before the title “Son” could be disclosed?
JT That is how Scripture presents it to us. He [p. 364] is called Son in manhood. So Paul was not moving in Corinth on the low level of man’s mind, but on the high level of what God was doing. God is operating in His Son, His own Son, and that is what was preached.
JJ What a wonderful way to use the towel, by bringing in the unalterable system connected with the Son of God!
JT Quite, and that every thought now, everything that God had intimated, every promise given is yea and amen, “for glory to God by us”. The whole system is brought in in that way. God is operating in the Son, but the thing is reflected in the servants.
JJ Does he correct their idea of prevarication by bringing in such a positive range of glory connected with Christ?
JT And “for glory to God by us”, (2 Corinthians 1:20). There would be no glory to God by prevarication or lightness, but the glory of God as in the Son of God was reflected in Paul.
HD'AC There was no yea and nay in the apostle; it was in the Corinthians. They had changed, they had allowed what was shameful, but the apostle had remained steadfast as the Son of God was steadfast.
JT So he brings in the striking expression of that: “I call God to witness upon my soul that to spare you I have not yet come to Corinth”, (2 Corinthians 1:23). He was with God in this matter; he was on the high level of God’s operations in the Son, and so if he did not come to Corinth, it was because of the calculation of love.
PW “Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:8); that is the Son of God, it is seen in the apostle here.
DLH Do we not get a very remarkable statement of the truth of Christ’s Person in Hebrews 1 that God has spoken Sonwise, or “in Son”. Well, that is God speaking in a divine Person, but then He [p. 365] has inherited a name which is more excellent than that of angels, and then you get quoted certain statements from Psalm 2:7 where the title Son of God comes in. “Thou art my Son; I this day have begotten thee”, and so on. I thought you got there first of all a statement of the glory of His Person, the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His being; and then that He has inherited a name as coming into manhood which is more excellent than that of angels.
JT The speaking was in a divine Person, of course, the title “Son” conveys that, but nevertheless, what is alluded to right through is mediatorial, God speaking as in Christ become Man. But God Himself was speaking — not as in the prophets, mere creatures, but in One His equal — “in Son”, as you say.
Ques So would you say that in Hebrews 1 it is what He is in manhood that is spoken of in that unique way?
JT Yes. What He is personally is there. He is “the effulgence of his glory and the expression of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power”, (Hebrews 1:3). Unquestionably the Person who is alluded to in John 1 is before us; the title “Son”, marking Him off from all creatures, however honoured some were, denotes this.
Rem I was wondering if Scripture would bear out that He is the Son in Deity, and the same Person Son of God in time and humanity.
JT But you will run across difficulties if you begin to analyse things like that, because the Son, without any modification, is said not to know certain things; (Mark 13:32). You have to bear in mind that Scripture is dealing with a mediatorial system of things. Christ has come within the range of men to speak to men, but to attempt to give Him a name before He became Man is going beyond Scripture, it seems to me. Because of His taking up a mediatorial [p. 366] position as Son we can understand the references to subjection, obedience, etc.
WRP You would not carry the title “Word” into what He was in Deity.
JT No. He had acquired that name among the saints. So in Hebrews 1 you get a variety of the glories of Christ mentioned, but they are all taken from the statements of saints, that is, they are all taken from the Psalms, as if God loves to bring in the saints to establish the great truth of the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. But like “Son”, “the Word” implies His deity, for only a divine Person could reveal — it is a question of speaking the mind of God.
EuR Is the great thought here to establish the heart of the servant in the stability of Christ as the Son?
JT That is what is in view, so you go back to Genesis, where you have the idea of the promises. The promises were made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and what you get in Genesis is the knowledge that Abraham is first brought into as to the faithfulness of God. As God blessed Abraham and he became great, the Philistine king began to take notice of him and came to him with his captain. Abraham gives him cattle and sets seven ewe lambs apart before he gave them to the king, implying that that is Abraham’s spirit — not an aggressive spirit, not a self-assertive spirit, but as blessed of God he has that spirit, the spirit of a ewe lamb, fruitful, but not combative. That is the attitude he takes up. The Philistine king is aggressive, he is sure to assert himself, but Abraham points out that is not his spirit at all. So he makes a covenant there, and Abraham reproves Abimelech on account of the well, that is, while Abraham has a peaceful disposition he asserted the rights of God in regard of the well, and there it is that the principle of Beer-sheba, the ‘well of the oath’, comes in; it refers to God’s engagements. Isaac comes back to it in a more striking manner. He also enters into a covenant with the Philistine at Beer-sheba; and now we have a city — the city is called Beer-sheba. And then Jacob comes to it (Genesis 46:1), and in leaving Canaan he offers sacrifices to the “God of his father Isaac”, saying nothing about Abraham; that signifies that it is a question now of the servant apprehending Christ risen. Though there was nothing to show outwardly, Jacob was going out of the land under divine orders, and in the light of God’s faithfulness. He offers sacrifices to the “God of his father Isaac”. God appears to him as “the God of thy father” and assures him that every promise made would be fulfilled. All is secured in Isaac, that is, in Christ risen from the dead — the Son of God.
MWB Do you link those thoughts with the preaching of the Son of God here?
JT I do. It is a question of the promises, of the saints understanding the divine engagements and their fulfilment. That is the level on which God is moving now and every divine engagement is yea and amen in Christ.
EuR We need that when the outlook publicly is not hopeful.
JT That is the point. You apprehend God in the Son of God and that nothing can fall to the ground. There is not only the yea, but the amen. It says in Psalm 106:48, “Let all the people say, Amen!”
FSM Does the preaching of the Son of God involve the presentation of a divine Person, the perfect representation of God as He is, and the establishment of all the promises?
JT That is what I thought. You apprehend God in a mediatorial way, but in One who is none less than God Himself that is, He is the Son, but the [p. 368] Son come in in subjection. No evangelist is more pronounced on subjection than John, and it is set forth in One who was absolutely at the divine bidding.
MWB There was been a difficulty in the minds of some as to the preaching of the Son of God, and yet the Son not being the subject of revelation. What would you say, bearing in mind Matthew 11?
JT The Son as to His Person is known to the Father only; but as to what He is in that relation with God as Man, He is to be known by us, as taught in Ephesians 4. He is the subject of declaration, and the preaching is based on this: He is declared — marked out — Son of God. There is no question about it. In this way the Son of God is known, and ministry is to this end. What He is in the relation of Son to God in manhood is known; thus the “full-grown man” is what we are to arrive at. “The measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ”, (verse 13).
MWB What do you understand by the expression in Matthew 11:27: “No one knows the Son but the Father”?
JT That is His Person as to His eternal relation; that is inscrutable.
MWB That has not been revealed.
JT No. You cannot give names to, or define relations between, divine Persons before incarnation. You have to go by Scripture.
HD'AC You do not deny the relationship, but Scripture speaks of it as it came out in Him when in the mediatorial position.
FHB I remember F.E.R. saying that we have no testimony in Scripture of the relationship of divine Persons in the past eternity.
JT I think that is just. You are careful as to what you say, but the way in which Scripture presents the thing, as said already, is that the Person was there. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. I was [p. 369] helped by remarks made by F.E.R. in America on this subject.
HH Do you not think it is suggestive in John 9 that before the blind man came to know the Son of God, you have the spittle and the clay, the thought of being sent?
JT It is a most touching reference, because the spittle undoubtedly alludes to what the Lord was essentially, that is, all that He is personally has entered into His humanity. He is not less God; He is absolutely personally God, but I have no doubt the spittle is a touching way of reminding us that all He is essentially has come into manhood.
HH It is the way we are privileged to know the Son of God.
JT Think of the humiliation attaching to it! He “made mud of the spittle” (verse 6), it says. It is the humiliation of it, that love would go to that length in order to place Himself within man’s range. If that is applied to the man, what will happen? It will make him worse, but the moral application is at once introduced: “Go, wash”, and the man “went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing”. That is the moral element; he obeyed.
AHW Would you say a word on why it says, “If then ye see the Son of man ascending up where he was before” (John 6:62)? Why the Son of man in that connection?
JT That alludes to the grace of heaven taking that form and coming down — all that heaven could devise, as one has said, taking that form. John 6 is what He was as coming down to be within our range, but it is the same Person who goes up. The “He” is the Person. So in manhood He is the same Person, unchanged and unchangeable.
ASL Manhood is the condition into which He has graciously descended.
JT That is right. And John emphasises that He did it Himself. “The Word became flesh”. That is like the spittle; all He was essentially as become Man.
JJ Paul had that in mind in what he says; the unchangeability of what he preached, and he virtually says, ‘I am not changed’.
JT Exactly. The Son is the object of God’s love and delight, a divine Person in that relation here; and He is preached. How attractive He is! It is what He is declared to be, “Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness”, (Romans 1:4).
Rem ‘Word’ implies declaration.
JT Yes; He speaks the mind of God.
ASL How far does “for glory to God by us” go (2 Corinthians 1:20)? Is that the apostle’s service?
JT I think it is a general statement that may be carried through. It is worked out again later, where the messengers of the assemblies are said to be Christ’s glory, and you have glory to God in the assembly in Christ Jesus throughout all generations.
Rem That is Ephesians 3. That would carry the thought further.
JT I thought so. It is the complete thought. Glory being in the assembly refers to the way we reflect God. We reflect God as He is in Christ, and so, “glory to God by us”. It is as saints of God in service that we reflect what He is in Christ.
WRP Do you not think that what is mediatorial will go beyond dispensation?
JT I think it does. We shall be dependent upon it in eternity.
EuR The apostle himself says to the Corinthians, “He that establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, is God”, (chapter 1:21).
JT That is what God is doing. It is God who has anointed us. It says, “he that ... has anointed us, is God, who also has sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts”.
PW Is not the Son of man really the Son of God [p. 371] become Man, and because He has become Man He brings in all the blessing of the Son of man? Is it not all bound up with the fact that the Son of God was the One found here as Man — in whom God found His delight?
JT The Son of God is what He is on God’s side, and the Son of man what He is on our side.
Ques Is it the Son of God in Hebrews 1, that Person in manhood who is addressed as God Himself?
JT Yes. He is such in John. “Before Abraham was, I am”, (John 8:58). That is His Godhead. In Psalm 102:27 He is addressed in manhood as “the Same”, the existing One, who does not change.
DLH In Hebrews 1 the incarnation is supposed; it assumes the incarnation in a way.
JT It does. Just as the prophets were available to God to speak to man, so the Son has become available, but the speaking is by a divine Person, not by a creature.
DLH I recollect how many times J.N.D. used to say that Scripture is wiser than we are, and he deprecated any kind of deduction from scriptural statements as likely to go beyond what Scripture actually says.
JT Then we see here (verse 22), how God, working on this high level of the Son, establishes us, and anoints us, and seals us, and gives us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts, that is, the Spirit of God is here operating to bring the saints on to this level, to lift us out of the level of man in the flesh, because anointing means that I am taken out of that altogether. Whatever dignity I may have had, it is worthless, but God has set me up in dignity by anointing me. Here it is in the plural, the saints are anointed. God does it; just as He anointed Christ and sealed Him, so He anoints us and gives us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts, so that we should not be on the level of this world. The earnest of the Spirit is a kind [p. 372] of income whereby we are rendered independent of this world.
PL So one must be at the top on the high level of God’s operations to come down in love.
JT Yes; and all is maintained in dignity.
Ques Do we serve in the light of that dignity?
JT That is it. I am sure God would have us to get out of current religious ways, so as to reach the level of His operations.
HES Is your thought that God has before Him that all service is to be in the dignity of sonship?
JT That is exactly what God has before Him.
RB Are you connecting that with what you referred to as personality?
JT That is just what it is, and hence what underlies the levitical position is that each Levite is a first-born — not only as a son but a first-born, as if to enhance his dignity. You cannot get anything greater in a family than that.
HH It is really Paul’s first impression of Christ. He preached Christ as the Son of God at the outset.
JT He says: “God ... was pleased to reveal his Son in me, that I may announce him as glad tidings”, (Galatians 1:16). So he is the first to announce Him as Son of God.
Ques Is it not a remarkable statement in Romans that we are sons of the living God?
JT It is indeed; it is taken from Hosea.
ASL It shows what a unique and incomparable thought the family of God is. You cannot conceive of a family made up of ‘first-born ones’.
JT Not in ordinary affairs. Christ is first-born among many brethren, He is anointed with the oil of gladness above His companions. Although we are all first-born ones as related to one another, He is the only One, as in relation to us, who has that title.
Ques Would you say a word as to John 17:24, “that they may behold my glory which [p. 373] thou hast given me, for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world”?
JT There is the glory which He had with the Father before the world was (John 17:5) — He does not say the disciples were to see that. They were to see the given glory (verse 24); then He says, “For thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world”. These statements lift us into the great thoughts of divine love. We shall see them fully as with Christ in heaven. What has come to one lately is the thought of God’s best. We want to get into that — God’s best thoughts, and for that we have to see what His relations are with Christ, that He had a glory given Him of the Father and was loved by Him before the foundation of the world. It requires spirituality for that, but there it is. John 17 is marvellous as taking us into the greatest, the best thoughts of divine love, we, with Christ, being the objects of it.
Ques Scripture says, “We have seen, and testify, that the Father has sent the Son as Saviour of the world”, (1 John 4:14). Was He the Son as He was sent, or did He become the Son?
JT It is the Person, I think, that is in view. “A body hast thou prepared me, ... Lo, I come to do thy will”. It is the Person come into manhood. But I do not see that we should make ‘sent’ allude to His birth simply; morally it was there before and so entered into incarnation, but the bearing of it is toward His actual entrance into service. The Father had sanctified Him and sent Him into the world. I do not apprehend this to mean that He was sent before He became Man, but sent as in manhood. The same may be said of “Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent”, (John 17:3). He did not bear the name “Jesus Christ” before incarnation. Being sent into the world does not necessarily mean that it is from another place literally, but that the Father does it. Hence the Lord says, “As thou hast sent me into the [p. 374] world, I also have sent them into the world”. It is a question of being sent by a Person; the disciples as not of or in the world morally, were sent into it for testimony. We may thus see that while it is said the Father sent the Son, we cannot fairly deduce from this that He was actually in that relation with God as “in the form of God”.