"JESUS... CROWNED WITH GLORY AND HONOUR" (SUMMARY OF A READING AT PAIGNTON 7 APRIL 1914)
“JESUS... CROWNED WITH GLORY AND HONOUR” (SUMMARY OF A READING AT PAIGNTON 7 APRIL 1914)
I thought it might be helpful to see what has come in in connection with Jesus as crowned with glory and honour. It is very interesting to keep in mind the psalm which is quoted. The Alpha and the Omega of Psalm 8 is that God’s name is to be excellent in all the earth. The psalm begins with that and ends with it, but before that is brought in publicly there are babes and sucklings in whose mouths God establishes His praise, and that is God’s present triumph over all His enemies. There is a circle where the blessedness of the world to come is anticipated. It will be anticipated in the blessing and testimony of the remnant before it is made manifest in the world to come, but at the present moment all blessing and testimony are found in the assembly; it is there that God’s name is excellent.
There are still adversaries within and the enemy and the avenger without, but how blessed it is to be babes and sucklings out of whose mouth God establishes His own praise! It is interesting that God gets the victory over all His enemies in this way. Tomorrow He will sweep every enemy off the scene, but today He triumphs over them in the praise of babes and sucklings. There was a little anticipation of it when the Lord was on the earth; there were babes who cried, “Hosanna to the Son of David”. They knew, as taught of God, what had come to pass in that blessed Man. It was a little picture of God’s present triumph; His name is excellent in the praise of babes.
All the excellence of God’s name comes out in connection with man. That is clearly shown in Psalm 8. The full height of God’s thoughts in regard to man is seen in Jesus crowned with glory and honour, but before we come to this we must consider two other things. Fallen man has been remembered by God, and the Son of man has been visited by Him. “What is man...?” (Psalm 8:4) is fallen man; it is the Hebrew word for man as fallen and mortal. That man has been remembered by God, and I think we may say that all the excellence of God’s name as a Saviour God comes out in the fact that He has remembered fallen man. J.N.D. says that the word ‘rememberest’ implies ‘an active recollection, because the object is cared for’ (see note to Hebrews 2: 6).
We do not need to go outside this chapter to see how God has remembered His fallen creature. Jesus has become a Man that by the grace of God He might taste death for every one of that fallen race. Then we think of Satan as having the power of death and holding men in bondage by it and we see that God has remembered that too. Jesus took part in blood and flesh “that through death he might annul him who has the might of death... and might set free all those who through fear of death... were subject to bondage”. Then again this chapter speaks of His making propitiation for sins. God has not forgotten any part of the need of His fallen creature; He has met it all by Jesus. Is not His name excellent as a Saviour God? Has He established the praise of it in our hearts? So that in spite of the adversary and the enemy and the avenger the praise of what God is is established in the mouths of babes and sucklings.
Then the Son of man has been visited by God. In this connection we learn not the grace but the good pleasure of God. He visits Man as the Object of His delight and love. This is not fallen man; it is Christ. God visited Him at His [p. 163] baptism, and that visit brought out that as to His Person He was God’s beloved Son, and that as to His whole course here for thirty years God had found His delight in Him. Then again He was visited on the holy mount, and I think we might say, too, that He was visited in the grave. The glory of the Father visited that grave and raised Him out of it. Every visit brings out more fully how delightful He was to God, and it all brings out the excellence of God’s name; He is the God and Father of that blessed Man. And we look at all this as being on the way to His being crowned with glory and honour. His moral suitability to be crowned with glory and honour has been manifested.
Now He is crowned with glory and honour; the full thought of God as to man has been reached, and His saints see the full light and splendour of it in Jesus and are brought into the light of it; the praise of it is established in their mouths. In that way the excellence of God’s name is known in the hearts that it may be told out in the praise of His people. What men did to Jesus brought out what men were, but what God has done to Jesus has brought out all that God is, and now the glory of God is in the face of Jesus. There are adversaries and the enemy and the avenger, but God has triumphed, and His triumph gives character to the testimony. When you see Jesus crowned with glory and honour you are in the light of heaven’s coronation day.
Now that Jesus is crowned with glory and honour God has a free hand to work, and He is doing wonderful things for Himself. God is spoken of here as the One “for whom are all things, and by whom are all things”. God is moving in blessed activity from the starting point of Jesus crowned with glory and honour.
Christ is viewed in four positions in which, as the result of God working, His saints are in relation to Him. He is Leader of salvation to a company of many sons who are [p. 164] being brought to glory; then He is the Sanctifier of a company for the sanctuary; then He is seen as in the path of dependence, and finally in the place of testimony. All must be of God and for God eventually, but at the present time His thought is to have Christ in relation with men, or men in relation with Christ, in these four positions. That is what God is doing today for His own pleasure and delight, and as material for His work He takes up babes and sucklings. If there is self-importance with us, if we have the idea we are somebody, that is not the sort of material that God can use. He “sets himself against the proud but gives grace to the lowly”. We do not read anything here about people being converted or believing the gospel; all that is necessary, but here the work of God is looked at in its result.
God is bringing many sons to glory, but He is bringing them there along the road of sufferings. Sufferings and glory are very often linked together in Scripture. I do not think the Lord ever proposed to bring people to glory by any other road, and you must not expect anything else. If you take the path of God’s will — the only path that leads to glory — you will find that it is paved with sufferings, but there is not a step in that road which has not been trodden by the feet of Jesus. The Leader of our salvation has been made perfect through sufferings, and if the Leader has been perfected by sufferings it indicates the character of the path in which He leads. When there were those who came to the Lord and asked for glory He said, ‘Are you prepared for the path that leads there?’ It may be asked, ‘Why does Christ lead the sons that way?’ Well it is morally impossible that we could be set free from all the evil influences here without suffering. Wrestling against sin involves suffering; Christ resisted unto blood in doing it. His feet were ever found in the path of sufferings, for He was ever set for God’s will and [p. 165] everything contrary to that will brought suffering upon Him.
But then there is another thing. The company of many sons will be a wonderful company when they reach glory, such a company as heaven has never seen, and, one might add, such a company as heaven could never have produced. God’s purpose is to have a company in glory with tender hearts and with deep sympathies; that is with hearts like Him who is there now. He will have a people there with intelligence and affections suited to sons so that they may be all that He would have sons to be, and I have no doubt that these sympathies and affections are very largely developed in a path of sufferings.
Sufferings are looked at in Romans 8 as the portion of children but the end is that the company which has suffered here is revealed in glory as the sons of God. They come out to display, it seems to me, the moral result of the way by which they have been led to glory. It is in this way that “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to purpose”; everything works along the line of effecting conformity to the image of His Son. God is forming sons for glory, and He is doing it very largely by sufferings (see 2 Corinthians 4: 16 - 18).
It is said of Christ that though He were Son He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. In Hebrews 12 the Father in His discipline deals with us as sons.
Sonship is set forth in the Son of God in heaven. We receive sonship as a gift, and the Holy Spirit is the spirit of it, but then it is essential that we should be formed in the sympathies and affections that are proper to sons, and I believe we get that very largely through exercise in the path of sufferings.
Sufferings come in many different ways — suffering for righteousness’ sake, and for Christ’s sake, and suffering with Christ. The Father uses all these as discipline that we [p. 166] may be partakers of His holiness, and that sympathies and affections might be developed in us that we could not acquire in any other circumstances. But there is not a bit of that road that the Leader of salvation has not trodden. His was a path of sufferings all through, and in His death all sufferings centred. I do not see that He can lead us in any other way than the way He went Himself. There is no kind of suffering that can come upon man in a godly way that He has not known, and that is the way that He leads. I am sure the company of many sons will be a wonderfully developed company.
If God brings us into the light of His purpose, the light of sonship, we come into a very distinct character of sufferings. It involves a path of separation, and peculiar sufferings in that path. Romans 8 speaks of suffering with Christ, and this epistle speaks of the reproach of Christ. These are very distinct characters of suffering. He suffered at every sight of evil around Him; the misery of man, the sorrow, darkness and death which lay on man were the cause of profound suffering to Him. Now God is forming us by contact with these things, and the result is that we are formed in sympathies and affections such as could not be formed in heaven. The many sons are led by this road so that when they get to glory they will be formed in a character that is perfectly suited to God.
This scripture supposes that we are in the light of Jesus crowned with glory and honour; this is the work of God consequent upon that; it is christianity; it is what God is doing at the present time. Personally I may not be very much in it, but this is what God is doing. God is working to free His people from everything that is inconsistent with the character of sons, and He does so as we follow in the path where the Leader of salvation went. There is no way to glory but to follow that blessed Leader; He was made perfect through sufferings. With the Lord every quality [p. 167] was inherent in Himself, and the sufferings brought out what He was in all His perfection. But with us everything that is suited to God has to be formed in us by the work of God. Hence the importance of starting with “We see Jesus ...”, and taking all up as following Him; there must be that lever in the soul.
Now we get another thought — not the Leader and followers, but the Sanctifier and the sanctified. It is not now the road to glory that is in view but, as I understand it, our present relations with God in the sanctuary. Those who are really on the way to glory appreciate the sanctuary, and I question very much whether any one else can. The sanctuary is where you take up your relations with God according to the full light of your calling, and that in christianity is in the assembly. It is not explained here how the sanctified company is produced; it is without doubt the product of the work of God. What marks the assembly is that it is in the full light of the love of God, for His name has been declared by Him who said, “Go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”. And on the other hand Christ sings God’s praises in the midst of the assembly. These two things seem to me to connect themselves with the sanctuary; the saints are viewed as for the time outside the path of suffering and in the sanctuary where there is nothing to interfere with the enjoyment of the revelation which Christ has made of His Father and God, and nothing to jar on His song of praise.
When the Lord said to Mary, “Go to my brethren”, she knew very well the persons He referred to. It was not an abstract thought; He referred to an actual company of persons. And the message was not sent by an apostle; it was sent by a woman who represented, as I suppose, the affections of the company. It is only in divinely formed affections that we are capable of taking up the declaration of God’s name. The message, as J.N.D. said, brought the saints together, and that will always be the effect of coming into the light of that blessed declaration, and then you have the conditions of the sanctuary.
In Israel obedience and piety and love had place at home and all the year round, but when they took up their relations with God according to the full privilege of their calling it was in the place where He set His name. We are always to be marked by obedience, piety and love but to take up the full privilege of our calling we must be together. Hence the Lord left His Supper that we might be constrained in affection to come together. The affections must be touched.
Then Christ says, “In the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praises”. It is very blessed to see the greatness of the divine thought whatever may have come in to hinder its practical realisation. The Lord is ever seeking to lead us on in our souls so that we may come in our affections to be in accord with Himself. We must be quickened in our affections for this. Many get light in a mental way, but nothing really moves souls but the work of God, and He always works in the affections.
Then when He says, “I will trust in him”, it suggests another position — that we are here in the place of dependence. Christ has been here in that spirit, and therefore it must be our place. It comes out in Psalm 16. There never was anyone so dependent as the Lord; He was cast upon God from His birth. We do many things because we have the power to do them, but the Lord was cast upon God for every thing.
If you know your place on the road to glory you will value your place in the sanctuary, and if you value your place in the sanctuary you cannot walk in any other state or spirit here than that of dependence. In every position [p. 169] Christ stands in relation with us and we stand in relation with Him.
Then lastly “Behold, I and the children which God has given me”. This is for testimony. They are “for signs and for wonders”, Isaiah 8: 18. There is nothing so astonishing in the world as true christians; half a dozen christians would shake a town. I mean people in whom there was nothing seen but the qualities of Christ. God gives Him a company of little ones that His qualities and character may come out in them. Look at the apostles! Men could not understand what they saw in them; they had to take knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. There never was a greater sign and wonder than was seen on the day of Pentecost and the days that followed — a great company in which not one person was thinking of himself, all acting in love one to another, all acting and speaking and thinking in the spirit of Christ. Being like Christ is the greatest sign and wonder that was ever seen in this world, and that is the testimony. What effect is the consideration of it going to have upon us? It must humble us very much. We cannot look at these things lightly, but still we may encourage ourselves in God. The testimony of God is of such a character that when in power it shook everything here. In the hands of men it has been spoilt, and it is a good thing for us to own that it has been spoilt, and that we are the people who have spoilt it. We need to repent, to get back in spirit to what existed at the beginning, and to do the first works.