PRESERVATION FROM DECLINE AND DETERIORATION
G. C. McKay
Luke 14: 33–35; Mark 9: 49, 50; Ephesians 4: 17–32; 5: 25–27; 1 Thessalonians 5: 23
The concern, dear brethren, is how we might be preserved from decline and deterioration.
The tendency with us, with man, is in that direction always, and yet what God has in mind in Christianity is that what is formed in our souls should go on in freshness and power without corruption or decline. In human things and in nature that is not possible, sin having come in, but in the divine system there is power, virtue, provision for us to be preserved and kept living and faithful and pure until the coming of the Lord Jesus, the great terminus or climax that we are looking forward to. We know that outwardly we cannot look for a restoration of the church as it was, nor for the system of things here coming under God’s sway without judgment, but we are moving forward to perfection, moving forward to the moment when the Lord Jesus comes. Our most practical exercises should be forward-looking. The truth is forward-looking, looking to a time when Christ will present the assembly to Himself; when the Lord will come and we will be secured then for His pleasure eternally. The question then is, as we move on to that wonderful moment which is not far off. Shall we be preserved up till that time? Shall we go on in increasing freshness and power and faithfulness, or are we going to decline before the Lord comes? It lifts your heart and your thoughts if you think of the Lord coming, and we should be exercised to be preserved until that glorious moment.
In the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, there are allusions to the salt, and it is notable that in each of them the salt deteriorates. In Matthew, it says it may become
“insipid”, in Luke “savourless”, and in Mark even “saltless”. Salt is the preservative
element, as we know, and it is also marked by savour, by taste. It is therefore used by the Spirit of God as a figure, for an element that we are to have in ourselves. I think it relates to the reality of the work of God in our souls, to our faithfulness, to our knowledge of God and our spiritual vitality. So what has happened publicly is that Christianity has become savourless, saltless; you would hardly recognise it. When you read of what is said by dignitaries in public religious bodies, you can hardly recognise Christianity at all. The whole essence and power and savour of the matter is taken away; that is the day in which we live.
So our exercise should be this—Do I have salt in myself, am I to be preserved? Can I be characterised by what the salt speaks of and thus be kept until the coming of the Lord Jesus?
Luke makes clear in chapter 14 what is meant, because the Lord Jesus says (before He mentions the salt), “every one of you who forsakes not all that is his own cannot be my disciple”. So it is a self-sacrificing pathway of discipleship that the Lord is alluding to. He had just spoken of the great supper. God’s wonderful celebration of His grace in the glad tidings, to which many are invited, and to which persons are compelled to come in; but after that as the crowds went with Him He turned and He spoke to them and raised the exercise about discipleship. He mentions one hating his own father and mother, and wife, and children and so on, that is what is of nature should not have any place and not in any way supplant the Lord Jesus in our affections; He should have the first place. And then we should sit down and count the cost, for there is a cost in Christianity. The gospel comes to us free, without money and without price, but then as we take up the corresponding exercise to be faithful to the Lord Jesus here, we have to sit down and count the cost. If divine grace has come to me, and I have the Holy Spirit, a wonderful resource that is given to those who believe, then I can count the cost, and say, Yes, I am prepared to take up the path of discipleship. That gives character
to a believer, he is prepared for a self-sacrificing path. The idea of sacrifice is to be prominent with us, that is that we are prepared to give up everything indeed for the sake of the Lord Jesus. So we have to give up everything that is our own, that is the price. We do not make any apology, the Lord Jesus makes none; there is a price to be paid if we are going to be disciples and follow Him.
The Lord says in Matthew that the disciples are the salt of the earth (Matthew 5: 13), as if they are the preservative element. Believers themselves are preserving the world in that sense as existing in it, helping to hold back evil and corruption. I think that is evident even in a workplace where there are believers, where their language and deportment and honesty is a restraint to the development of evil around them. God has regard for that too. But then what if the salt becomes insipid, “wherewith shall it be salted?”, Matthew 5: 13? There is no other resource. If the salt becomes insipid, what can be done? It is to be cast out and trodden under foot of men. If we are not true to our Christianity, if we are not prepared to count the cost and pay the price, then our Christianity becomes savourless, and indeed it will actually be despised by men. They see that there is no reality in it. So dear brethren, we have to be real, there has to be savour with us, there has to be faithfulness with us. Luke, the gospel of grace, would demand discipleship from us, and that we should be faithful.
Now Mark, as you will notice, speaks in a most pungent way, more strongly than any of the other gospel writers, “For every one shall be salted with fire”—that is, I suppose, a reference to the fact that there is a test applied against evil in any one of us. God is not going to tolerate that. If I am going on with evil, even as a believer, going on in a kind of mixed situation, then God can bring in the means of testing. “Every one”, it says, “shall be salted with fire”, because God tries His own
work, and He also has a right to raise questions with us as to what we are going on with and what we are allowing. That is possibly the strongest statement as to salt. Then it says, “and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt”. We were speaking about sacrifice. You find that in the Old Testament, there was something that was to be in no offering, and that was honey, and there was something that was to be in every offering, and that was salt. Honey would speak, I suppose, of what is purely of nature and does not of itself yield anything for God, but might indeed tend to corruption. Salt involves the reality, the corresponding faithfulness and holiness of the person making the offering.
So that ought to enter into ourselves, as persons whose bodies, according to chapter 12 of Romans, have been placed at divine disposal, placed on the altar. These would be sacrifices salted with salt. All these painful exercises of Romans would lie behind them; and out of them emerge faithfulness of heart, something real and true, an appreciation of God’s mercy and grace, an appreciation of the Holy Spirit, and the lesson learned as to how to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit in self-judgment. So, “every sacrifice shall be salted with salt”. It is a very testing thing, but then, it is a very preservative thing. We surely want to be preserved as believers and in relation to God’s people. We want to look forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus, we want to be preserved right through; this element of reality has to be with us.
Mark also speaks of salt becoming saltless, having no evidence of its original character at all.
Let us seek to be preserved, “Have salt in yourselves”, and then it says, “be at peace with one another”. I suppose if there is any lack of peace, any dissension between believers, it is because of not having salt in themselves. The preservative element in some way has been lacking and the flesh allowed to work.
Having said so much as to salt, I turn to Ephesians. You might think it is rather a jump to go from these
testing considerations to the most exalted epistle in the New Testament, but Ephesians has this in mind too. It is an extraordinary epistle in one sense. The great, glorious and heavenly truths are stated in their fullest degree in the first three chapters. Our heavenly portion, sonship, the place believers have in Christ seated in the heavenlies, and the glory of the assembly, glory to God in the assembly; these things are brought out to the fullest extent and then there come a series of exhortations. You might say, Why? Why exhortations to thieves?
“Let the stealer steal no more”. Why to such exalted believers, persons in the gain of the most wonderful heavenly truth, should there be the word not to tell lies? You can see what is in the Spirit of God’s mind. The thought really is that what is worked into the texture of our lives is to be in keeping with the heavenly truth which we have come into the joy and gain of. Thus there is a copious amount of water of cleansing in the epistle to the Ephesians, with the object of preserving us in regard to these things.
We have light. We cannot say that boastfully, because many of us feel that we should have laid hold of the truth that has come out in the recovery more fully, but nevertheless the light is there. The light brings with it, not only great joy and blessing, but also a responsibility that we might be in keeping with that light. Mr. Stoney said as to what a Laodicean is, that a Laodicean has Philadelphian light, the greatest light, but he has not got the power that goes with it (New Series Vol. 3, page 209). So we could have all the light of Philadelphia, all the light of the recovery of the truth, but if we do not have the power that goes with it we become Laodicean. That is one example in Scripture of what is savourless. The Lord Jesus speaks indeed of spewing that assembly out of His mouth, as finding it distasteful. The Lord has tastes. We want to think of what is to His taste, what pleases Him in our lives and all that we do. He is watching. He sees what goes on in our lives, in our houses, in our workplace, in our spare
time, He sees and hears. He is not looking to condemn, He is looking for what is good among us, and He is valuing it greatly, but He does not miss the other things either.
So in the epistle to the Ephesians there is the suggestion that what has been ministered in heavenly light and taken on by the saints, should not be contaminated or reduced in any way.
These nations that are alluded to in Ephesians 4 would no doubt refer to unregenerate men, under the power of pagan darkness and idolatry, “having cast off all feeling”, and “estranged from the life of God”. What a picture it is! But when the apostle proceeds from Ephesians 4: 20, “But ye”, what he is saying is that in the midst of all that darkness and corruption and wickedness there is something different, and that has to be preserved and is to shine, “But ye have not thus learnt the Christ, if ye have heard him and been instructed in him”. How direct it is, to hear from Him Himself! Think of the Christ instructing us, think of hearing Him.
Think of the divine speaking on the part of Christ who does everything for God, and secures everything for God’s pleasure. He instructs us and we can learn from Him. It says, “according as the truth is in Jesus”. Now that is a very precious thought; in the midst of the surrounding darkness and corruption there is something shining. When Jesus was here personally it was so. In the midst of all that existed in the world that was displeasing to God, there was Jesus and everything was shining in Him for God’s heart; everything He was looking for in man, every grace, every virtue, every beauty, everything that God had ever desired in a man was shining in Jesus. Now we have been instructed according to that, “according as the truth is in Jesus”. That blessed Man went into death, and rose again, and He is still the same Jesus on high. All these wondrous features that were seen in Him in the days of His flesh are shining now, and because He has gone into death and risen again something else has been brought about, that could not have been brought about had He not gone into
death, that is that these same features are shining in others. It is a wonderful thing that in the midst of this dark world, features of Jesus are shining the truth as it is in Jesus. That is what we have been instructed in.
Then the Scripture will explain for us a little how we might move in this direction that this might shine. It says, “namely your having put off according to the former conversation the old man which corrupts itself”. Think of that! The old man can only go on in corruption, actually corrupts itself, the very opposite to the thought of salt and what is preservative. So you put that man off. He has been removed from God’s sight in the death of Jesus, but then he is not to appear in our lives, we are to put him off. We have to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, our whole outlook is to be fresh and different. We are to think differently. We possibly think the same way as worldly people think more than we realise. Because a thing is current in the world, when people express themselves in certain ways, and behave in certain ways, we might tend to think in that way (it is only natural to our own hearts), but we have to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, a far reaching and searching thing. The whole attitude of the believer’s mind is different from that of a natural man, there is a virtue of power of renewal in the believer as having the Holy Spirit. So we are renewed in the spirit of the mind, and then it says, “and your having put on the new man”.
The new man does not allude to Jesus personally, as we know, but to what appears in the saints, in the aggregate of the saints, features of Jesus characteristically. The old man is marked by deterioration and corruption. Over the centuries he has not got any better, there has been no improvement, but I suppose you would say he has rather got worse. Indeed it says, in another scripture, our old man; showing how we feel he has been attached to us and that we have shown his features. But now God has created a new
man, and He does it in “truthful righteousness and holiness”. Therefore, as this instruction is taken on and we are renewed in the spirit of our minds, we put on the features of Jesus, there is truthful righteousness and holiness. It is a creation, so it involves God’s work in your heart and mine. God actually brings something about in us that is stable and cannot be destroyed, existing in truthful righteousness and holiness, and our exercise, therefore, should be that we are in keeping with that in the midst of all that is around. Hence these very practical exhortations to put off falsehood. A believer should not be marked in any sense by what is false, by what is unreal and pretence. It says, “speak truth every one with his neighbour”.
These are all preservative things, that we are open with one another, and truthful with one another. Then, even if there is cause for indignation, we have not to give room for the devil; he is always ready. Do not make room for him; our anger could make room for him; features of the first man however occasioned could make room for the devil, and surely if you make room for him he will take that room, and he will drive you further than you ever thought; he will make capital of it. Then as to the stealer, “Let the stealer steal no more”. It is not a question here of him being dealt with for being a stealer, it is the transforming power of God’s grace that the man who was a stealer is not stealing any more. He is willing to take on him toil, he has changed his character; in fact he has reversed his character, because not only is he not stealing, but he is giving to others, he has to distribute to him that has need. It is the power in grace of Christianity. It relates to the virtue of God’s work in us, and the energy of it, and the definite character of it, the savour of it. It relates to the salt that preserves us from the flesh and from what is corrupt, so that we might in ourselves have the means to preserve the work of God and let it be furthered. Then “Let no corrupt word go out of your mouth”. If something comes to your mind to say that is not going to
have a good result, to those standing round you had better not say it; but if it is a good one let it come out—“but if there be any good one for needful edification, that it may give grace to those that hear it”.
Then we have not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God. It is an appeal that goes to your heart,
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God”. How graciously He is with us! He does not diminish His holiness in coming into this scene to indwell believers. He comes into cleansed hearts purified by faith. He comes into that area in wondrous grace and we have not to grieve Him. He comes into the position where He could be grieved by our behaviour and our words.
We have been sealed by Him, we have been marked out for divine ownership for the day of redemption. That is what is in view. I am struck with that “for the day of redemption”. The truth is forward looking; everything is going to come about absolutely according to God’s thoughts. God’s great proposals are going to be realised in the saints and established in His presence eternally. Our present exercises then should all have a forward look. You might say, Am I going to be preserved on this line in view of the Lord coming? That is what He has in mind, and that is what the apostle Paul had in mind, the time of presentation. What if the Lord Jesus comes today, or if He comes tomorrow. What will I be like? Will I be on a course of preservation, pursuing holiness? Will I be pursuing what is right? Will I be going on in the energy of affection? Will I be free in the service of God? Will I be bright when the Lord comes? That is the test because He will come, and He will find us as we are. Thank God we shall be transformed and our bodies changed. Think of the power of God that will be expressed towards us, wonderful matter! But having such a hope in us, surely we ought to be exercised to be in the good of these things.
In regard to this thought of what is preserved in Ephesians, the very last verse of the epistle speaks of
those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption, that is, they are kept in the purity of what we have been speaking. All that is valuable in the truth is to be preserved in incorruption, in a love that is unalloyed. You might say, How can it be in these mixed conditions? I know my failure, my weaknesses and history all too well. Well, you have to take up Scripture, and the divine provision, so that we might be preserved in holiness and in purity and in faithfulness until the Lord comes.
I read in Ephesians 5, because the scripture there alludes to the Lord Jesus in His present activity of love. Again there is the idea in it that the assembly will appear in the end in perfection, “having no spot, or wrinkle, or any of such things”. Spot would speak of contamination or possibly of inward impurity, and the wrinkle would mean decline and age.
The assembly is not going to be marked by any of these things, because the service of the Lord Jesus will prevent these things from giving character to His assembly. So it says, “the Christ also loved the assembly, and has delivered himself up for it”. If you read the footnote you see that all these things are really put together. The same love that led Him to deliver Himself up for the assembly is leading to His actions now, the sanctifying and the purifying by the washing of water by the word. That is what proceeds in our meetings by ministry, the truth being brought out, the washing of water by the word, the word entering into our minds and hearts and affecting us. The Lord Jesus, the Christ, is constantly doing that. What He has in mind is to present the assembly to Himself glorious. In the present time we are much taken up by failure, but the future is glorious, and perfect, and blessed. Let us be kept in love and affection for Christ, and in energy in our Christianity until the Lord Jesus comes. How dreadful if He came and found us otherwise. Indeed, Paul, at the end of the first epistle to the Corinthians, mentions even a curse if persons do not love the Lord Jesus, “If any one love not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be Anathema Maranatha” (1 Corinthians 16: 22), meaning ‘Accursed—the Lord cometh’. How terrible it would be if the Lord Jesus came and I was not a lover of His! How blessed to be among those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption!
The scripture in Thessalonians brings out the apostle’s concern that we should be “preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”. He says, “the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly”. That is, we are sanctified in the knowledge of the God of peace. How much enters into that, how much experience of the gospel, how much knowledge of the love of God, how much knowledge of the sacrifice of Christ! Our peace has been made by the blood of His cross; everything has been accomplished through the glad tidings, and thus we have the peace of God, and then we have the God of peace. We know what it is to be in the presence of the God of peace. That is the most sanctifying thing there could be, I suppose, to be in communion with the God of peace. Thus we are to be sanctified, spirit, soul and body.
Every part of us is to be kept and preserved. There is to be no lack, no defect, no omission.
Our spirit is the part of our being in which we are in touch with God for He gave us our spirits; and our souls involve our deeper feelings, and then there are our bodies too.
Christianity involves that our bodies are affected, that there is purity. The body is a vessel for the Lord Jesus and for the Holy Spirit. It is a vessel in the assembly, a vessel that is used in the praise of God. Did you ever think of that? Do you ever think that you use your body in the service of God? You use your tongue, you use your voice, you use your body in the service of God. So it is to be preserved wholly, and it should be devoted to the service of God. May we be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ for His name’s sake.
Address at Dundee
2 December 1995