THE FULL LIGHT OF GOD
[p. 275] THE FULL LIGHT OF GOD
Chapter 3 gives us what one might call the first principles of eternal life. It brings Christ in, “He has been manifested that he might take away our sins; and in him sin is not” (verses 5); you get the outlet from sin, for we abide in Him, and in the latter part of the chapter you get the outlet from death. There is an outlet from the state of sin and death into righteousness and life — they are the two salient features of eternal life. The first principle one properly knows is righteousness, then there is love to the brethren, and then he comes into the full light of God, and that you get in chapter 4. When you come to consider the position of man as he is down here in the world, the first thing which he must come to is righteousness, then love. It is set forth in that order in Romans. In the end of Romans 6 you get “righteousness” and “holiness”. What is the difference?
Righteousness is your relative position, holiness is what you are, so to speak, in nature. Righteousness is what is right, and the real seat of what is right lies in the nature of God, because the nature is the standard by which everything is judged. Every principle must take its colour from the nature of God.
Will you again tell us the difference between righteousness and holiness?
Holiness lies in nature — God’s nature is characterised by holiness. Righteousness is very much more an attribute. Righteousness on our side is in our relation to Christ. He is the Sun of righteousness and there is nothing that is righteous according to God except as it stands in relation to the Sun of righteousness. What stands in relation to Christ is righteous, “He that practises righteousness is righteous,
even as he is righteous”. Righteousness has existed as long as God has existed, and judgment of evil is only a detail. Righteousness does not always suppose the presence of what is unrighteous.
You must have someone in relation to God to get the thought?
Yes. Men or angels or any company — yet the principle is there. Perhaps the time was when there were not exactly the conditions in which that principle came into operation. Righteousness came out in the fact of God forbidding to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the righteousness of Adam and Eve was to remain where they were in the place where God had set them. What the serpent said to the woman was assailing the rights of God, and was in order to detach the man and woman and to bring them into lawlessness. Holiness would not be so much the question of rights as a nature abhorrent of all evil that comes in — a nature which repels it.
How do you connect it (righteousness) with the new heavens and new earth?
Everything will be in its place, just as in the solar system every planet moves in its ordained orbit in relation to the sun, so in the new heavens and the new earth every family is in its just orbit in relation to Christ. But then, that has already begun, “He has been manifested ... whoever abides in him, does not sin”. “He that practises righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous”, 1 John 3:5-7. If we abide in relation to Christ, we are righteous even as He is righteous.
In what sense does it say in Romans 3, “that he should be just” (righteous)?
The rights of redemption were with God and have come in in Christ, and God is justified in all His ways. The point is “to declare his righteousness”. The moment you apprehend that redemption [p. 277] was the right of God, and that God has brought His right into effect in Christ, then you see God vindicated in all His ways. “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus”. The greatest possible maintenance of rights is in redemption.
Do you make a distinction between redemption and salvation?
Yes. I think God took up His rights as Redeemer, and exercised them in relation to Christ, so that man might get salvation. It is for all men, because Christ is Head for every man — He is available to every man and really the test of every man. If men refuse Christ it is at their peril. The thought of God in regard of salvation is that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. When it is evident that man would not have Christ, however, then you get the apostle labouring on the part of the elect, but the thought of the elect did not come out until Christ was rejected by gentiles. The thought comes out in Timothy.
I do not think we lose anything by seeing the broad platform on which God has placed everything by redemption. I think we get a very much better standing-ground for the gospel — “the grace of God which carries with it salvation for all men has appeared”.
In chapter 4 the Spirit is introduced. The great point is light, and you want the Spirit to detect the false lights. The point of the Spirit is to lead you into the true light. You could not detect all the false lights in the world except by the Spirit of God — “Believe not every spirit” the apostle says, and that is especially applicable at the present day. A man who was once in fellowship wrote to me only a few days ago stating that he thought the solution of every difficulty in Scripture would be found by seeing that Christ was not God, but was born of God, and [p. 278] brought numbers of scriptures to prove it. I think he was a very false light. The real solution of every difficulty lies in the fact that Christ is God.
Does the word ‘spirit’ here go so far as to take in demons?
Yes. No doubt all kinds of agnostic thought came in the church in early days, and I should think there was a good bit of the devil mixed up with it.
What would be unfolded in the confession of “Jesus Christ come in flesh”?
I think what is before the mind of the Spirit is the reality of the incarnation. Christ has become a real man so that He can become the centre of the divine system and that men can be in relation to Him. You have no real expression of grace except in the living bread come down from heaven, and if the incarnation is not real, so that He could give His flesh for the life of the world, everything must fall to the ground. I think the worst form of error in the present day is that Christ took human nature with a limitation of knowledge. It was put forward by a leading man, a bishop in the English church.
If you get the genuine confession of Jesus Christ come in flesh, I think it would prove to be of God — there must be a divine foundation there. You get the entire breakdown of christianity if you have not the incarnation. Righteousness and salvation could not be in the first man and if you have not another man you have nothing. All the wisdom of God is bound up with the introduction of another man, who has been placed in connection with men as Head of all men. It breaks down from top to bottom if you have not another man. If He is not God redemption is gone because God had the right of redemption, and it was only in Himself that He could give effect to redemption. Therefore if Christ be not God, redemption is gone. He must carry out the right of redemption [p. 279] Himself. He could not exercise the right of redemption with another — He must exercise it Himself.
Will you please explain a little what you mean by the right of redemption?
I think it is to take up all the encumbrances and liabilities under which His inheritance was. Man had come under liabilities by sin — death and curse and judgment — and God Himself takes them up by Christ. The result is that living water is imparted to those who are His.
Verses 2 and 3. I strongly suspect that these tests have reference to the apostate Jew. The spirit of antichrist comes out, and it is rather striking that antichrist sets himself up to be God. Antichrist is really man in his lawlessness, in the hands of Satan, setting up a rival to Christ. I do not think that people were far out when they spoke of the pope as antichrist; I think you see almost every feature of antichrist in the pope.
I have thought that the difference between the gospel and the epistle of John is that the gospel takes up man where he is, and shows the quickening power of God in regard to him and then he finds good — the living bread; whilst the epistle shows what the eternal life is into which he is to enter. Take for instance a new-born child, it must not only have food and nourishment, but the life of the child is dependent upon certain conditions into which the child is born, that is, there must be light, warmth, air and so on — they are necessary conditions of life. So in the gospel of John you get all that is necessary for the state of the persons and in the epistle you get all the conditions of life.
If you go back into all time, there is a something which led men after God — what name have we to call that something — it is ‘life’, and if so what is the difference between that and the condition in which life is spoken of in the New Testament?
[p. 280] If Scripture called it life we might, and if not we need not.
I suppose that was life in the soul?
Well, it was not death.
If you talk about life, it is the person, and I do not think you could get that far in the Old Testament. There was the fear of God, which was the great characteristic feature of Old Testament saints. They had a certain knowledge of God but in a very limited way, because God had not come out. Until God came out, I do not think you could talk much about life. J.N.D. said, ‘Life is power to enjoy the position in which I am placed’ — that is what life is. Life is dependent upon God having come out. We cannot enter relationship with God until God has come out. What makes all the difference in regard to christianity is that the “darkness is passing and the true light already shines”. The gift of the Spirit was the fruit and result of God having been revealed. One great object of the Spirit in coming was really to maintain the revelation which came with Christ, but it does not add to the revelation. The Spirit is life, because the presence of the Spirit in the believer keeps the heart in the full love of God — it keeps the heart in the sense of divine love and enables you to respond to that love.
Would you not connect life first of all objectively in Christ with faith?
Yes, because life is in Christ, but you are only in Christ by the Spirit. Life is in Christ because He is the last Adam — a life-giving spirit.
I think it would be helpful if the mind would make the distinction between the state of the believer as wrought of God, and alive unto God; and the conditions into which the believer is brought as being alive. I think one is the gospel and the other is the epistle — you must have both. Life is the ability to enjoy what God is — the ability to live.
[p. 281] What did you mean when you referred to the light of God in connection with this chapter?
God having come out fully in every bearing in His love (see verse 7).
Do you think there is a shade of difference between life and eternal life?
Yes. Life is undoubtedly used in Scripture as the state of the believer. We live in the Spirit, and the Spirit is life; but I think you must admit that there must be certain things which practically constitute life to us. Supposing there were no atmosphere, no sun or rain, all life would expire. You are dependent upon conditions which really are your life. So you cannot speak of a person having eternal life unless they are out of death in spirit. You pass out of death into life and I cannot imagine a person doing that except in fellowship of the death of Christ. You do not do it as an actual thing, and you can only pass out of death into life in the spirit of your mind, and so it is “he that eats my flesh and drinks my blood” all along the way. Chapters 5 and 6 of John deal, I think, entirely with the state of the persons who have eternal life. John 5: 24 is a characteristic condition, and describes the kind of person who has eternal life.