GOD’S STANDARD AND THE ANSWER TO IT
It has often been remarked that in the epistle to the Ephesians God is the standard and in the epistle to the Colossians Christ is the standard. I need scarcely say that there is no moral disparity between what is presented in Ephesians and what is presented in Colossians. At the same time it is a good thing to see that in Ephesians God is the standard and we are to take character from God; then that has in view that there should be an answer to it in men, and Christ is the standard of that answer to it in men. So we need to take account of the way God is presented in Ephesians and the way Christ is presented in Colossians. I think we shall find that there is no moral disparity, as I say, between the one and the other, only it is a different point of view, and I think you can see it is a great triumph for God, having had the desire to come out to man and make Himself known, that there should be an answer to it that is morally in correspondence with the way in which He has come out.
Before there was any creation, God committed Himself to wisdom, according to what we are told in Proverbs 8, and in that chapter wisdom is personified as speaking, and saying, “When he established the skies above ... when he appointed the foundations of the earth, then I was by him his nursling”, the nursling of His love, or according to the alternative reading, ‘his artificer’. That is very striking because it seems to me it shows that the way God has come out to men, and the way He has secured an answer in men, involves on the one hand the coming in of Christ in holy manhood, who was, of course, the particular object of the Father’s affections, and then on the other hand, the bringing in of the Spirit, the Artificer, the One who can work things skilfully and bring about a result for God according to His thoughts. We get, I think, these two thoughts in connection with Proverbs 8 and we do well to pay attention to them, that on the one hand it involved the bringing in, in manhood in Christ, of not only all that God desired to secure for His pleasure in man, but also the perfect presentation of Himself to men in a Man. God has not been pleased to establish His thoughts in connection with angels, although He has myriads of them—we do not know how many. It says they are all sent forth to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation, that is, ourselves. Wonderful thing that we are of such interest, of such value in the sight of God that all the angels, all of them, are sent forth. They are under commission to serve the saints, to serve or to wait upon us, and to see that things are according as God would have them in the world around us, and so on, with a view to the prosperity of the saints! That shows, I think, of what value men are, the sons of men, in the mind of God. Wisdom’s delights were with the sons of men; that is, that men are specially in the mind of God, but men in sonship.
Well now, I have only said that by way of introduction, and where we started to read in Ephesians 4 it says, “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which ye have been sealed for the day of redemption”. How important that is, beloved brethren! Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Think of the Holy Spirit of God having taken His abode in us, in each one of us as well as in the assembly. He dwells in the assembly, but He has taken His abode in each one, that is, if we have received the Holy Spirit. It is contemplated that we should receive the Holy Spirit on believing the glad tidings. You remember that on the day of Pentecost, when a large number were convicted and said, “What shall we do, brethren?” Peter said, “Repent, and be baptised, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for remission of sins, and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”. That was the predominant thought in the gospel, the predominant blessing in the gospel, that we should receive the Holy Spirit, which means that we are capable of living here and expressing what God is; we are capable of that. Do not let us think that we are not equal to it, because we are equal to it. There is no value in lowering divine standards and saying, Yes, but we cannot expect perfection in men. The great point is that God expects to reach perfection in men. He has it in Christ, and He intends to reach it in men. He intends to reach it in us and we must not lower the standard in our minds and say, These divine thoughts are all right in eternity, but they cannot be reached now. We might not say so in so many words, but we might secretly be thinking it. The point is, dear brethren, that we are to grow up to Christ in all things now, and every day of our lives should really result in some increase of spiritual formation for the pleasure of God.
In Ephesians, as I say, God Himself is the standard, and we come to this point where the apostle says, “Be ... imitators of God, as beloved children”. What a wonderful thing that it is possible in such a world as this to be imitators of God! And yet we are to be that as beloved children—we are not under law. It is not a legal requirement of us, but it is that we are capable, as born of God, to be imitators of God, to come out like God. What greater dignity could there be, what greater privilege could be conferred upon us than to come out like God? God Himself is the standard and so at the end of the previous chapter it says that certain things are not to be amongst us, they are to be removed from us, “with all malice; and be to one another kind, compassionate, forgiving one another, so as God also in Christ has forgiven you”. That is a very practical matter, dear brethren, for us as brothers and sisters in our mutual relations with one another in the local assembly where God has set us and then elsewhere in our relations with one another. ls there any trace of feeling in the heart of any one brother or any one sister against any other brother or sister, anything at all? If so, we are falling short of the divine standard of forgiveness, “as God also in Christ has forgiven you”. Is God retaining anything against us? If we have received the glad tidings and believe in Christ and rejoice in Him and are united to Him by the Spirit, is God retaining anything at all against us? Has He some secret thoughts, a kind of grudge in His mind, if one may say so without irreverence? Nothing is to lower this wonderful standard—“as God also in Christ has forgiven you”. That is the standard which the Spirit of God brings forward here and He says, “Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children”. Children in a family, where it is well ordered, usually imitate their father, or it may be their mother, and that is a right principle. Now we are children of God, so we are to be imitators of God as beloved children, and then walk in love; this is not theory, it is practical; “walk in love”. Walk is a practical thing, it is movement. Things are not static and life shows itself in activity and movement and development, so we are to walk, walk in love.
You remember how in the beginning of John’s gospel two of John the baptist’s disciples looked on Jesus as He walked. The first one recorded in Scripture as walking is God Himself. He walked in the garden in the cool of the day, as though He would come out into the creation and say’, I am going to set a standard before you all of a walk that is pleasing to Me; you look at the standard’. He walked in the garden in the cool of the day and He called to Adam and said, “Where art thou?” Alas! he was hiding. He did respond, however, but said, “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I feared, because I am naked; and I hid myself”. God wanted His creature to be in line with Himself, to learn from Himself how to walk; God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. Now God has come out in complete and perfect expression in Christ, and it says, “He that says he abides in him ought, even as he walked, himself also so to walk”, 1 John 2: 6. You see, God has the idea of walking and sets out a certain standard of it in Himself, and then it is brought home to us in a tangible way, if one may so say, in Christ. “Walk in love”, it says, “even as the Christ loved us”. Has there been any reserve in the love of Christ, any impossible conditions laid down to be answered to? “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”. That is a most wonderful thing: the love of Christ to us was so perfect that it went up to God as a sweetsmelling savour, as though God says, ‘I see in that sacrifice of Christ what is a perfect setting forth of what I am in My nature’; and it went up to Him as a sweet-smelling savour, because love shows itself in serving and self-sacrifice.
Well, that is all one had to say on that passage. The great thought in Ephesians is that God Himself is the standard and we are to learn from Him and take character from Him. But then you might say, is not Christ the standard? He is; I think Christ is the standard of the answer which God is looking for. God has come out perfectly towards us in Christ; now He expects an answer to it in us and I think Christ is presented from that standpoint: He is the answer in manhood to the way God has come out. As I said before, there is no moral disparity between the one and the other; there could not be. I think it is an immense thing to see that in order that God might secure an answer in man to all that He desired, One of the Godhead Himself has come into manhood and sets it forth. That is a wonderful thing to my mind. I think I can see more and more that the way God has met what has come into this world through sin, is by entering into the position Himself in wondrous grace, first in the Person of the Son and then in the Person of the Spirit; and by those two means, by means of the Son on the one hand and the Spirit on the other hand, God has not only come out in perfect expression to us in a way that we can bear, but He has secured a perfect answer to it in a way that is according to His heart. And so we get that in Christ.
We find in this epistle to the Colossians that it says, “Do not lie to one another, having put off the old man with his deeds, and having put on the new”. Has every brother and sister here put off the old man and put on the new? It is very much a question, dear brethren, of our attitude of mind. You see that God has rejected one order of things and you say, I am going to reject it, too; why should I retain what God rejects? That is the whole point; that is what God Himself had to raise with Samuel. Why was he mourning for Saul, He says, “seeing I have rejected him”? We want to come into line with God; if God has rejected one order of things, let us reject it. That means that you put off the old man in your mind and you keep to it; it is not theoretical, it is not unreal. You take it up in your mind and you keep to it by the grace of God, that one line of things is rejected in order that there might be room made for what is acceptable to God. That is to work out in men; as you remember, when Jesus was born the multitude of the heavenly hosts said—“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men”. So that is what God is looking for in us, dear brethren. You may say to me, Are you expressive of these things? I admit I should be; I do not pretend I am to the full extent that I should be, but the important thing is to get the divine thought before our minds and then the Spirit of God will help us as to the realisation of it.
So in this epistle to the Colossians it says, “having put off the old man with his deeds”. I say again, Have we done it? “And having put on the new”—have we done it?—“renewed into full knowledge according to the image of him that has created him”. I have often thought of this verse 11. Think of going into the local meeting. You find brethren there who perhaps are well off, as people say (I mean materially), and you find some who are poor, speaking materially. You find that some work with their hands and some work with their brains; some live in a pretty good house and others live in a poor house, and so on. What do you look for, what do you see? The great point according to this scripture is that you do not see Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman. You do not see all these natural differences; what you do see is Christ everything, and in all. That is what God is looking for and that is what we can all contribute to. It is the only right answer to God in regard to the way He has come out in Christ, that there should be an answer in manhood that takes character from Christ, seen in the local assemblies. That, I believe, is what the Spirit of God is labouring for at the present time, that there should be a substantial answer to the truth in formation according to Christ with every one of us. God grant that it may be so!
RICHMOND
19th May 1967
From Ministry of the Word, 1967
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