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THE BELIEVER SECURED ENTIRELY FOR GOD

E. M. Walkinshaw

The glad tidings reach us, dear brethren, and

are intended to secure us—our whole spirit and soul and body—for God. I suppose we are all forgiven sinners here—I trust that each of us has received that blessing—and also the wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit, because we have all, many times, come under the preaching of the glad tidings.

I referred to this first passage because it brings in an exhortation from the apostle about our bodies. Man is made up of spirit, soul, and body. The spirit links him with God, his soul would be his inward feelings—life; then we also have bodies. Here the apostle is beseeching the saints to present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God “which is your intelligent service”. We must remember that it is in our bodies that we express ourselves, and it is in our bodies, of course, that we exercise our own wills. It is in our bodies that we move here or there. I fully agree that we may be in our spirits elsewhere, but it is in our bodies that we either do our own will or we do the will of God. The exhortation here is that our bodies should be a living sacrifice with a view to the will of God. I think most of us would recognise that it is through our bodies that we express ourselves. A man may be said to be kind—how do you know that? You know it because it finds some expression in the body; or he may be said to be unkind, and that also finds some expression in his body. Therefore God would impress us, I think, with the importance of our bodies and that He not only desires to have us with Him in our spirits, and that we should know what it is to have the forgiveness of sins, and the assurance of eternal security, but also that our bodies should be vessels here in which we prove His good and acceptable and perfect will.

Men generally in their bodies are expressing their own wills, living in the main as in the world

in self-indulgence. I go, so to speak, where I will; I have my own opinion and I hold to it. If I go to a football match, I go in my body; if I go to the theatre, or other such places, I go in my body. Now the glad tidings is intended to secure us, as I have already said, in our whole spirit and soul and body, so that we are not to be conformed to this world. Conformation to this world is very easy. We live and work in a certain environment and that affects us. We must all acknowledge, I think, that we are very susceptible to the environment in which we live. To take a simple example of it—our dress, our manners, our ways—we are always affected by the environment in which we live. Hence Paul says—and I think it is not put in the form of a commandment but rather an appeal—“be not conformed to this world”; that would be not conformed to this world in any of its characteristics at all—“but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. The mind of the believer is part of the body. The mind is the governing faculty. I think God would remind us of it. So that the mind is renewed and the body is presented as being presentable to God the believer’s intelligent service.

I would like to raise the exercise with everyone, and that includes myself, as to how far our bodies are held at the disposal of the will of God. Well, you say, I tend to shrink from that—

so do I. As I get older I find that when I think of a full committal to the will of God, it makes me hesitate. I am prepared to acknowledge it. I feel that hesitation more than I did when I was seventeen. When the Lord first aroused my interest in the truth at a fairly early age I had less hesitation than I have now. That is natural, because I have learned through some little experience that if I commit myself to the will of God, and to the truth, it involves that I must be prepared to take the moral process to reach that to which I am committed

and for which I have prayed. Nevertheless, the Spirit helps us, I think, so that there may be a decided committal from every one of us, young and old—that committal including, as I have said, the body. Now this comes in late in this epistle. It has often been said it comes in late and in the form of an appeal, because the body is the last thing a man is prepared to give up.

For salvation, I thank God; my spirit is relieved of pressure; but my body naturally is the vehicle for my own will. It is in my body I find my satisfaction and my pleasure, but the transformation comes about through the renewing of the mind by the Holy Spirit.

So this follows on, in the teaching of the epistle, what we have already looked at in Romans 8. There we come to a wonderful expression, as we have already said; we cry, “Abba, Father”. Then Paul proceeds through chapters 9, 10 and 11 until he comes to this great question of the renewing of the mind and of the presentation of our bodies. Now you will notice here that it is present your bodies (plural), a living sacrifice (singular), and I think it is intended to lead us on to the truth of one body in Christ. So that what God can take account of is a living sacrifice. Paul says we are all one body in Christ. Here it is not the body of Christ, but “one body in Christ” and members one of another. So, through the grace given to him, he says: “I say ... to every one that is among you, not to have high thoughts above what he should think”. We are members one of another, dear brethren, one body in Christ. Let us not think highly, above what we ought to think, but let us think, says the apostle, so as to be wise—wise in the use of our bodies, wise also, I judge, in our relations one with another, learning what our niche is in the body, what our service may be—how we stand in relation to one another but all functioning as one body in Christ.

Many of these exhortations cause considerable exercise to us, I believe, nevertheless the Lord would help us in it. Paul says: “For, as in one body we have many members, but all the members have not the same office; thus we, being many, are one body in Christ, and each one members one of the other”. I cannot fill your place in the body, and you cannot fill mine. I believe an apprehension of this would preserve us from any kind of rivalry. How could I fill the place of another brother in my locality? How can he fill mine? If we apprehended the simple basic truth of the one body and being members one of another, I think we would understand what it is to fill out each his or her place. Any idea of rivalry or jealousy would be completely eliminated. This is what the apostle is desiring for those at Rome.

Now it is fundamental, and I believe we need to understand it, that the Head is in heaven, and unless we have some knowledge of the body here, and the working of the body, we can hardly come into the appreciation or understanding of Christ as Head. So what is emphasized in the main in this epistle is the Lord—our Lord Jesus Christ—and the will of God. Well, brethren, let each of us here—and the brethren wherever they are as set together in their localities—be exercised to find what our niche is in the body and fill it out. Let us therefore think so as to be wise; each is to know what his place is but primarily, I believe, it will depend on our presenting our bodies a living sacrifice. Now let me ask each one of us here, Are you prepared to present your body to God? You have forgiveness; you have the gift of the Holy Spirit; you are breaking bread—all of us here are breaking bread, as far as I know.

Now the question arises. Are you prepared to present your body to God on the altar, shall we say presented never to be recalled?

I remember hearing of a simple incident which might illustrate the point, when a servant of the Lord was preaching and a footballer was converted. However he was asked to play one last match. He went to the servant and said, ‘Can I play in this last match?’ To that the godly man replied, ‘Have you been converted?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Does your spirit belong to God?’ ‘Yes’.

‘What about your soul?’ ‘Yes’. ‘And what about your body?’ The young man replied, ‘Yes’.

The servant’s reply was, ‘If you want to play this last game of football the best thing you can do is to go to the Lord and ask Him if you can borrow your body back for an hour or so’. You see, that illustrates the point. The body is presented never to be recalled. That young man would be affected by the simple answer to his question which the godly man gave him, and I understand that it did so affect him that he did not play that last football match at all; he gave it up. His spirit, his soul, and his body were entirely God’s as secured by the glad tidings.

Now I would like that to be true of me. I would like that to be true of me so that I might prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Instead of my will and my body, it is now the will of God. Well, you say, that is a very great sacrifice. Well, I feel the same thing, and of course we must all acknowledge our frequent weakness; nevertheless, let us keep the divine standard before us; let us listen to the divine appeal as to presenting our bodies.

Now the next passage refers to the kingdom of God. It says the kingdom of God “is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit”. I think you will see a very clear link between the will of God and the kingdom of God. What a wonderful thing it is to be in the kingdom of God! As far as I understand it the kingdom of God functions in the assembly at the

present moment, and in a certain sense they are what we call co-extensive. The day will come when the kingdom will be set up, of course; the will of God will be supreme in the whole of the universe; but at the present moment, the apostle says, “The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking”—not a question of what you eat or drink, or what you may not eat or drink, because it is in the setting of the weak brother—but he says it is righteousness—doing what is right. I wonder if we have considered that—righteousness. This is not righteousness reckoned to us through faith, though we thank God for that; but if God reckons us righteous through faith, if He has cleared us from every charge of guilt on the ground of the precious work of Christ, surely He would expect us to be righteous in our practical lives. So the first feature is righteousness. As far as I can see, apart from righteousness and peace there is no joy.

I think it was Mr. Darby who said that he thought peace was more important than joy, important as joy is. But in any case the kingdom of God is “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit”. Now I think the force of it is this—it is righteousness “in the Holy Spirit”.

You can only practise righteousness in the power of the Spirit. That raises a very practical question as to how much room I give to Him. I suppose I could ask every person here, Did you receive the Holy Spirit? It would be a more personal question to ask every one here as to what room you give to the Spirit. We spoke this morning of the scripture that refers to the Spirit dwelling (Romans 8: 9). That means He is at home. It is a great exercise to me; is the Spirit at home in me? I claim that I have received Him, and I have no doubt about that fact; but is He unquenched, ungrieved in me? I am sure the more He is unquenched, the more He is ungrieved, the more there is the sway of God in my soul, the more I shall be practising righteousness, the more I shall know peace, and the more I shall know joy. One man of God said he noticed an absence of joy amongst the saints. Why is it? I admit quite frankly there is often an absence of joy in me. Is it because there is a lack of righteousness? “The work of righteousness shall be peace”, and there will be “quietness and assurance for ever”, in a day to come (Isaiah 32: 17), but we should be enjoying it now. And I think we enjoy it as the Holy Spirit is increasingly given room in our lives.

So instead of our wills coming into exercise it is the will of God, which is always the same, in the power and grace of the Holy Spirit. Think of the greatness of such a gift! Have you considered the immensity of such a gift? Think of the greatness and magnificence of God in forgiving my sins. Think of the greatness of the sacrifice of Christ. Someone referred earlier to Him bearing our sins in His body on the tree. I think of the beneficence of that and then of the greatness of the presence of the Spirit, privileges that we but little realise and little value as we should do. I believe that if we understood the kingdom of God—that is, as we say, the moral sway of God in the soul—it would lead to peace and joy. How necessary this is for us, beloved brethren. And yet the fact is that man naturally prefers his own will. If I am to be in the kingdom, if I am to be secured in my whole spirit, soul, and body, it—necessarily means that my own will is set aside. Now that is exactly what I object to as a natural man, that my will should be set aside and the will of God obeyed.

Now I want to go on briefly to the last scripture—I come to this word establish, “to him that is able to establish you”. Paul’s desire was that they should be established, and now he comes to the last part of his epistle where he brings in this doxology to God, “Him that is able to establish you, according to my glad tidings”, the glad tidings of the glory of the blessed God—“my glad tidings”, he says. That is not what we call popular preaching. Any preaching of Jesus and any conversion of any soul anywhere we would rejoice in, but we are to be established according to Paul’s glad tidings, and I think this epistle gives us the teaching of those glad tidings. What is it in preparation for? I think it is in preparation for the mystery.

Do you know anything about it? When did you last hear someone refer to it in the preaching? What is it? I suppose when he presented this to these believers in Rome they would have questioned what it meant. He just leaves it though. He says, “my glad tidings and the preaching of Jesus Christ”; that is the distinctiveness of what was delivered to Paul.

The preaching of Jesus Christ relates to the only Man, and order of Man, that is before God, and then, “according to the revelation of the mystery”. Oh that we were more interested, dear brethren! The mystery is that which was hidden; he says, “as to which silence has been kept in the times of the ages, but which has now been made manifest, and by prophetic scriptures, according to the commandment of the eternal God, made known for obedience of faith to all the nations”. Think of what God has kept reserved throughout all the ages until the present one, which has now been made known, he says, through prophetic Scriptures. I am sure these believers in Rome would have had their affections and minds exercised as to what this meant.

I might almost say that Paul would have used this at the end of the epistle to whet their appetite as to what it really was. How little any believer really understands the mystery. Paul speaks elsewhere of his intelligence in the mystery. We

have to go to other epistles to have it opened up for us, but I would like to speak so as to excite, or whet, our appetites as to the mystery. This is one of the things that the ministry of beloved Mr. Stoney touches a good deal. So few believers understand it. When I say so few believers, I am not just speaking of those with whom we walk, but I am speaking of the majority; the saints have little understanding or intelligence in the mystery. We are all limited, nevertheless, dear brethren, let us understand what God has for us, what has been revealed in this time to His holy apostles and prophets so that we may be established by God according to the glad tidings of the apostle Paul, the preaching of Jesus Christ, and the revelation of the mystery. It is this in which God would have us to be established.

Well now, let us enquire into it, what is this mystery? I have no intention of trying, even if I could, to open it up at this juncture but just to leave us with this impression that such a thing exists, and I think persons divinely taught will enter into the truth of the mystery. We use the word ‘initiated’ and I say this, that if you have no exercise about it, if you have no interest in it, then you will not come into the knowledge of it at all. Oh, if I could impress you with the greatness of what God has brought to light in this dispensation, so that there might be exercise of heart—exercise of conscience, too—but primarily exercise of heart, to be divinely taught as to the mystery which has been revealed in this dispensation. May the Lord bless us and may we get some impression, not only of the desire of Paul that we should be established, but an impression of the greatness of the God who is able to establish us.

Then may we enter into this wonderful doxology at the end of the teaching of the gospel, “The only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever. Amen”. Would you not like to come into that doxology? I would like to come into it I must confess. But I believe the way into it is by means of our being secured entirely for God in our whole spirit, and soul, and body. May the Lord bless the word, for His name’s sake.

Address in Auckland
7 November 1981

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