“IMITATORS OF GOD”
A. J. E. Welch
I verily believe that these two verses would suffice for our brief time together, because of the glorious matters that are referred to in them. There could be no greater thought as to our walk here below than being, imitators of God. It is a remarkable thing that one man in a Roman prison could write to persons in a city peculiarly marked by idolatry and enjoin them to be imitators of God. It reflects, the level of things, the level of resource, that is proper, to christianity; for no true lover of Christ will be content with a partial answer to what the rights and glory of God, known in Christ, would reach amongst us.
This letter, therefore, is normal christianity; what is set out in the epistle to the Ephesians is not exceptional christianity, but normal christianity. It is well for us to keep it in mind in that sense, because the Spirit is here that every feature normal to christianity, might find expression. This is, I suppose, the true glory attaching to this dispensation of God which we speak of as the time of the Spirit, that God reaches His own end in men. God reaches His own end in men—I reiterate the point because it is a vital point for us to cherish as the conclusion of things is upon us. God is glorified by reaching His own end in men.
I would like to interest you dear young people here in this letter. We might—have thought of it as being beyond us. We might have thought that perhaps this is for the older ones. Thank God for the older ones, the fathers that we have. We are proving the resource of fatherhood as many of us have never known it before; but the exercise of fatherhood will be to strengthen the younger ones to get into the epistle to the Ephesians. This is normal christianity, and how rich, dear brethren, it is.
I would like to engage you with one man (as we suppose, in a prison in Rome) with his mind and heart—and, by the Spirit, his pen too—held in relation to the great scope of divine thoughts. He was one man whom God took up; one man whom God plucked out of the most intense opposition against Christ; such was God’s work in this man, and such is God’s ability to work in men, that this same person became in his time the outstanding exponent of what was the prime thought in the mind of God. That has happened; we see it in Saul, in Paul, we cannot therefore question what God is able for in the sense of reaching His thoughts in persons. How quickly He can do it! You marvel at Saul of Tarsus—I suppose a short time after the Lord arrested him on the road to Damascus—preaching the Son of God. What happened in that man? Everything changed; it was not without depth of history; not without a great deal going on in his soul; not without, could I say, a severe sifting. Sometimes we are not ready for that—we try to side-track it. Paul’s case would encourage us greatly as to the quickness with which God arrived at something in him, and the way in which He developed it; it shows what God is able to do in a person.
You might say, Well, he is a very distinctive person. He was indeed an apostle, a singular apostle laid hold of, commissioned, and used by a glorified Christ. But the point stands; what God can do in a man! He changed all that needed to be changed, which was everything, I suppose, to bring that man to the full expression of His own thoughts, not only in teaching, but by way of experience and example. So the beloved writer sets a certain level, early in the teaching of this letter, by referring to our acceptance in the Beloved.
I would love to engage the young hearts here with that acceptance in the Beloved. Who is the Beloved? You can identify the Beloved. The writer of this letter does not need to explain or to define who he means. Nor do you. The Beloved is Christ. You might say, Who else could he be? Have you any other ideal before you than Christ? God has not. Christ is God’s ideal; His Son is His ideal, and being His ideal, as has often been said, He becomes of necessity the centre of God’s world. Is He the centre of yours? Can you identify Him as the Beloved? May I be plain and put the point. Have you any other beloved? I am not speaking in respect of human relationships, in which love according to God is proper; but have you any other object which eclipses Jesus, God’s Son, God’s ideal, the centre of God’s world? The writer of this letter would say, We are accepted in the Beloved. Our place in that sense is His place. We are accepted in Him.
I need not touch the details of the way the writer of this letter brings forward the whole basis of everything as to Christ and His worth. He says in one place, “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of offences, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1: 7). That is to say, the writer is taking up the real matters of truth and the real matters of state that affect persons. He is saying, This is for you; this is to link on with your experience, whoever you are. You know the Lord in this sense, “The Beloved; in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of offences, according to the riches of his grace”. This is not difficult to understand. This is not difficult to relate to your experience, is it? We have the blessedness of forgiveness of offences; but above all in this section, the blessedness of knowing our acceptance in the Beloved, that we have a place up there; we belong up there. Our relations stand with God as known in Christ; our relations stand with Christ as the Man in the glory, the One in whom God has caused all His thoughts to radiate in substantial expression.
“The Beloved”—what a field for our thoughts to move in under the Spirit’s touch! How God loves Christ! These are lines of thought which we can, as we were saying earlier, ponder in contemplation. Have we any impression of how God loves Christ? Have we any impression of how the Father loves the Son? Let us ponder that; as we ponder it we find that the Spirit, brings in one point, and then another point, and then another point, and then another point.
Do you find it that way? May I say just suggestively, and I trust to attract everyone into it, it is normal christianity that you should find it that way. The Spirit brings an impression, and then He adds to it, and then He adds to it a bit more; you turn to the Scriptures and you get an impression from the Scriptures, and the Spirit adds to it, and adds to it still more. And you read ministry that the Spirit Himself, thank God, has given in this remarkable time of revival.
May I say to the beloved younger brethren here. Never get far from that ministry. The Scriptures have their own unique place; but never get far from the ministry that the Spirit has brought into this remarkable time of revival, because the great effort of the foe at the present time is to detach you from that revival. Get into the life-stream of it and you will find that all is working in this same way. You get an impression and the Spirit expands it. You get a view of Christ you never had before, and as you get that view of Christ the Spirit expands it and you get a still more glorious view of Christ. That is normal christianity. You can see the spirit and character of it in this letter. Then Paul goes on to speak of “the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the earnest of our inheritance” (Ephesians 1: 14); the experience of this is normal christianity.
Divine thoughts are wonderful, in the sense that God gives us now an appreciation of what yet belongs in actuality to a future day. The land of Canaan in Scripture, skilfully used of the Spirit in the type, really relates to that side of things; that is, the present entrance upon what is heavenly in the presence of the adversity and currents of evil. Do we know it? It is normal christianity that we should. It is not an advanced state of things that we should enter into the heavenly; it is normal christianity that we should. Did you get a sense of the glory of Christ as He came at the Supper on Lord’s day? That is normal christianity. Did you know the blessedness of coming under His touch, with a fresh impression of His love, and entering into what it is, as in the assembly, to be united to Him? That is normal christianity, no less blessed because it is so; these experiences as we have them are beyond description in human words.
Paul himself gives us an instance of that (2 Corinthians 12: 1–4). We might be able to say very little about it. It would be normal for us to be able to say something about it, but we might not touch the full depths of what is known in the reality of experience; such experience belongs in this time of the Spirit as a normal thing. We may have what is distinctive; thank God we know it, these distinctive touches in the way the Lord presents Himself, and distinctive touches of the Spirit that often come into the prophetic word. Go on with the prophetic word, dear brethren. Let not the prophetic word and its possibilities be lost sight of amongst us. These Tuesday prophetic meetings are of immense possibility for the taking on quickly of what God has in mind for His saints. But the distinctive touch of the blessed Spirit is something we are to know. As the end approaches, the distinctiveness of the Spirit’s service will be proven by us more and more, leading up to what is said, “The Spirit and the bride say, Come” (Revelation 22: 17).
The bride is a distinctive product with which the Spirit peculiarly has had to do; but the close affinity between the Spirit and the bride is something which surely enters into the history of the present time. The acquaintance of saints with the Spirit is to be deepened and enriched, leading to the precious simplicity and complete identity of thought that is seen there—“The Spirit and the bride say, Come”. How quickly He is working! I am impressed with that. Not that we are to be self-satisfied about it not that our desires are to be any less keen for yet further growth; but the Spirit of God is working quickly. It is a matter of divine wisdom to provide conditions in which the Spirit of God can work quickly against all the seeming restrictions of the governmental situation. There was Paul in prison in Rome. He had laboured in Ephesus; uniquely, I suppose, he had personally laboured in Ephesus. Now he is in prison in Rome, so he writes to the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus in Ephesus, showing that divine wisdom is making a way through so that all these great thoughts, these normal thoughts, might come into expression and take their course. Does this not comfort us in a time of public limitation?
Think of Paul in a prison in Rome. We might say in unbelief, ‘Has God allowed this, that His chosen servant should just be kept in a Roman prison?’ God is greater than the Roman prison and all man’s arrangements, and He brings out of it something which, right down this time of the Spirit, has set the divine standards in relation to the truth; there is an opening out in this very letter of the heavenly side of things in a way which we get nowhere else. God is greater than man. God is greater than our thoughts. We may wonder that, there are so few people in a place who seem concerned in love for Christ to go on in His truth. Well, let us go on; let us go on! I was noticing in the week how beloved Mr. Taylor in one address particularly emphasised the need to accept the governmental circumstances in which God leaves us, to accept them and to go on in them, and go on in them in the light of the greatness of His thoughts. That is what Paul really stands for in these circumstances. He goes on in chapter 2 to the great thought of a habitation of God in the Spirit, reminding us of the blessedness of the presence of the Spirit and that God, in that sense, has His habitation in the Spirit. Are we in the realisation of that—what God has in the assembly—that in the Spirit He has a habitation?
Then in the third chapter we get unfoldings as to the mystery, coming from a man who was particularly taken up of God to receive and to minister, in so far as it could be ministered, the truth of the mystery. God is working out His thoughts in men. He has His own way of doing it. He is not taking up accepted religious dignitaries. God is outside of all that. We do well to remain outside of all that, while standing firm in the testimony that is due to the Lord in any place. God is not taking up that side. He has Paul, He sovereignly elects to minister things to Paul and to use Paul to minister things to the saints; that is His way. But He has the greatest ends in mind. It may seem a paradox to the human mind that one in whom God had invested so much, in taking him up and in leading him on as He did, should be allowed to spend any appreciable span of time in a Roman prison. But God says, ‘This is of Me’. Let us not chafe at restrictions, dear brethren, but seek to have the gain of them and to be in the current of God’s mind in respect of them. Let us seek to be in the current of what the Spirit is doing, so that the circumstances in which we are may not fail to turn out for the glory of the God whose wisdom it is that we are in them. God is to be glorified in everything.
So the third chapter runs on to the great thought, “To him be glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages. Amen”. I marvel at that verse of Scripture.
Every time we come back to it it seems to have fresh depth in regard of what assembly service is in its true, full, Godward character. Paul is leading us to it in this remarkable prayer of his—he is awakening the affections of the saints that they may come into what normally and properly belongs to the present time—that God is before us as an Object of worship, and is responded to in the assembly in the way that becomes the glory of the God to whom we speak. Let us cherish the service of God! It is the great matter of our time, to which the course of things in the revival, under the Spirit’s hand, has peculiarly led, developing wealth in what enters into that service. Dear brethren, let us hold to these things; let us reject any denial that the Spirit is rightly to be worshipped. There are errors in certain quarters about matters that bear on the service, of God. Let us cherish the greatness of the God who has brought us to Himself, that we may serve Him; let us enter, as delighting in it, the service of God in the assembly which He clearly indicates to be so precious to Himself.
Just ponder the place that that service has in the Scriptures. Think of what developed under Solomon, reaching its climax in the dedication of the house: Think of the great span of Scripture that stands connected with the prime point of the service of God. All this is to bring lustre and distinctiveness into what is properly in the assembly. The responsive side is surely to have a greater place in our normal occasions. The Supper stands unique, and what follows in the service of God stands unique; but even in other occasions why not a note of praise?
Why not a note of worship in spontaneity in the Spirit in any occasion in which the saints are gathered? God delights to receive such touches for Himself. The main purpose of the meeting may be something else, but the spirit of responsiveness is something which I believe is to appear in our various local gatherings, however small they may be, in these closing moments. “To Him be glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages”. Paul is looking right on, but seeing where the service of the assembly Godward fits, both now and right on to eternity. You say that is a wonderful scope. It is, but it is normal to christianity. Christianity is not a matter of limitation as to what it leads us into. It may involve limitation as to the present and passing circumstances. It is not a matter of limitation in what it leads us into. It is a matter of immense expansion, and that with the glory of God Himself in view.
Then in Ephesians 4 we have the One that descended and the same One that has ascended, pointing to Christ in His present place up there and the great system of things working in relation to Him for the upbuilding of saints down here. A great system of supply is disclosed to us, and it leads to exhortations of a practical kind, touching our relationships of life—children, parents, servants, masters, husbands, wives—all these, things are touched upon.
That is to say, everything can be adjusted in relation to the divine thoughts as Christ has His place, as the Spirit has His place, as any evidences of gift have their right place. Everything can be brought into adjustment in relation to the divine thoughts. We have to submit ourselves to the divine thoughts in that way, to see that there is what is proper to us in relation to God in our practical relationships, husbands, wives, fathers, children, masters and servants. Ephesians 5 and 6 bring us all in, in our several relationships, and enjoin upon us what, according to God, is proper to them.
So that we are being tested out in these chapters. A great extent of heavenly truth has been opened up, but now we are being tested out as to our walk. Our walk is to be right. Our walk is to be such that God is glorified in it. Our walk is to be such that the testimony is fitly in expression in it. But what I have in view in speaking of this is the immensity of what God is able for—to bring persons, to bring families, to bring local gatherings of saints into accord with what is in His mind. And He is still able to do it. He did it with Saul of Tarsus, the writer of this letter. He showed Himself able to do it in the company of saints, in Ephesus, to whom Paul was writing; and He is showing Himself able to do it still, to bring His beloved people into full answer to what relates to His own thoughts, even in the practical relationships of their lives.
That is a wonderful thing. It involves a work of formation. I have spoken of it a few times before, but it is a great matter at the present time, the work of formation that is going on in saints. God is working out something in you; working out something in me; that involves that there may be adversities, there may be elements of discipline. There are tests of different kinds, but God is working out something which is peculiarly precious to Himself and affords the answer that He seeks in a time when departure in a public sense is increasingly grievous.
Then we come to this verse read in Ephesians 5, much intervening as I need scarcely say—“Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children”. You might say, How can we imitate God? Notice first the way the verse is “Be ye therefore imitators of God”. That is, persons of a particular kind are in mind. It is not exactly the idea just of imitation, but of persons who characteristically take character from what is brought out, as to God Himself. That is the highest point, I take it, in relation to our walk here, to be imitators of God; and yet there is resource for it. All that has preceded shows how God has wrought; God has come in in Christ; God has secured us in full acceptance; God has given us the earnest of the Spirit that we may look on into what His portion in His love for us is. He has brought us into the realisation of what the assembly is in the proper relationships that mark it, fellow-citizens of the saints, and of the household of God. He has brought us into our proper sphere of occupation in the mystery and led us on into the service of God in the assembly. He has brought us to the appreciation of an exalted Christ and the Spirit here in relation to Him, leading us forward into the full application of the truth so that in every relationship God finds an answer in His saints. How wonderful all this is!
Let us seek to take this on fully, to be imitators of God. See what God has brought out as to Himself; see how all His attributes are brought into relief in the way He has moved in Christ and in the gift of the Spirit; see what relates to His own nature, finding its answer in His lovers, “beloved children”. Notice the word “beloved”; it is not just children, but “beloved children”. That is, in the experience of divine love in all its depth and sweetness, we are called upon to take on that which is brought out in God Himself. I cannot say much about it, but the point is here in remarkable relief in the course of this letter, “As beloved children … walk in love, even as the Christ loved us, and delivered himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour”. How quickly the Spirit turns to Christ, to engage us with Him, to bring out how this great point of being imitators of God is quickly to find an answer. Take account of how God has moved in Christ. See how glory has come into expression in Christ, in manhood. See how things according to God have been brought out in a Man; take account of that and let it fashion, let it form in us immediately, the way in which we seek to walk.
The walk is practical; it is a day-by-day matter and in the assembly a week-by-week matter that we walk in the practical relationships and realities of life here. It is a wonderful point reached, presented alongside of the extent of heavenly truth and of what has opened up as to the service of God, that God has in view to reach, here and now, an end in His saints that can be referred to in likeness to Himself. This is a verse of Scripture which no comment of mine could in any sense adorn. It stands by itself, bringing Christ into view, and the peculiar fruitfulness and fragrance Godward of all that came out in that glorious Man; yet God is to have the evidence of this fragrance in the saints as they follow in the steps of Jesus and follow this injunction, “Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children”.
The activity of the love of God, I venture to say, enters into such an occasion as this to bring to bear upon us all that is proper to Himself, that God may have a present answer in what is due to Him—due to Him in the assembly, due to Him in man. He will bring us to this because the end is very close, and God would assure to Himself the full answer in man that His heart seeks. He finds it in the assembly; we have to come back to that increasingly. We see that the assembly affords the sphere of things, even in the practical course of the testimony here, where God reaches His thoughts in respect of men. May we be in the gain of them, and move into them in greater distinctiveness and power, that God Himself may have His place and portion among His own, for His name’s sake.
Address at Bournemouth
24 February 1973