LIBERTY IN SUFFERING
[p. 106] LIBERTY IN SUFFERING
2 Corinthians 12: 7 - 10; Acts 16: 19 - 25
I wish to speak about liberty, liberty wherewith Christ sets His people free. We may possess it and yet be hindered in it by external circumstances. If the enemy cannot rob us of the liberty in principle, he may rob us of the enjoyment of it. I wish to speak of the enjoyment of it, continuing even although there may be external pressure that the enemy would use to hinder us in it. It has cost the Lord much that we should have it. He died in order that we should have it. Many were in bondage because of fear of death, and it may be so now. All their lifetime, we read, they were subject to bondage through the fear of death, but Christ abolished death. It cost Him His life to do that, that through death He might destroy him who had the might of death to deliver those who all their lifetime were subject to bondage through fear of death. I just touch on that; doubtless most of us have had the experience of it, but not, surely, through the whole of our lives until now; that would not be characteristic of a Christian. It was characteristic of those who belonged to God before Christ died, but certainly not since; nor should any true believer in Christ have the fear of death nor any bondage connected with that fear.
As I said, it cost the Lord His life to liberate us from the fear of death, and it has cost the Spirit, too, something to liberate us; for our liberty is in the Spirit and we are to stand fast in it. It is only by the Spirit we can do so. We are to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free; He has set us free in freedom, a most precious designation of the great fact of our liberty. But as I was saying, it has cost Christ His life; and it has cost the Spirit [p. 107] something too to maintain us in liberty. Then it has cost us ourselves something, for there must be some correspondence in us, dear brethren, to what it cost divine Persons to secure any given thing for us; and that correspondence comes about through light as to the thing itself that causes fear, whatever it may be, whether death or bondage to the world or any other matter. Light comes to us and the Spirit operates in us in relation to that light. Without the Spirit light would fade. With the possession of the Spirit, light normally does not fade; it shines brighter and brighter until the day be fully come. That is through the Spirit operating in the believer.
And so I have undertaken tonight in the scriptures read to speak of liberty, preservation in liberty from any external circumstances; chiefly governmental ones, but also persecutional. The first scripture read, that is, 2 Corinthians 12, treats of governmental circumstances which cause bondage in those who should be in liberty. The apostle Paul serves us well in many respects, but in this respect especially, that he is a model for Christians. He is a model of Christianity in its varied forms. He became affected by governmental circumstances though he was an apostle, and these scriptures show that the circumstances would tend to rob him of his liberty, the liberty which he had in Christ and which he valued, and of which he has taught us much. In speaking of models, the Lord Jesus is, of course, the Model of everything that is of God in the Christian. It is so as to liberty. Thus we read in Matthew 12 that He went on the Sabbath day through the cornfields. We are not told just why He did it, but He did it. We know now why He did it: He wished to set an example to His disciples of liberty from legality, from worthless legality. He wished them to be free to use the creation of God as needed. He created everything; He made the [p. 108] corn to grow, and there was the field of corn growing; it was usable, and the Lord went into the field and walked through it. He did not eat the corn; He did not pluck it; He intended to liberate the disciples. They were hungry, and they were not to suffer from hunger because it was the Sabbath. The Lord tells us in that connection that the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath; therefore it is not intended to deprive those who are of faith; to rob them of the creation, of the blessing, of the fulness of the earth. The earth is the Lord’s, we are told, and the fulness thereof. So the Lord walked through the cornfield; He did not pluck the corn, but His disciples did. He did not tell them to do it; He did not tell them to walk through the cornfield, but He intended them to do it. Though He did not tell them to pluck the corn, they took the liberty of doing it and so did more than He did; they plucked the ears of corn and rubbed them in their hands and ate them. That is what the Lord intended. He intended that they should be in liberty to that extent; that is, He intended to indicate that the fruit of the earth may be availed of without legal restriction. There are those that do not eat meat on Friday; that is a legal restriction in which there is no value whatever; it robs a creature of God of what God has provided to support his life. There are many other illustrations of damaging legal bondage, but the Lord illustrates the liberty He would have us to enjoy.
And so Paul enjoyed that liberty, as well as many other Christians. The Lord used Paul to unfold this matter in the epistle to the Galatians. But when we come to this governmental matter that I have read of in 2 Corinthians 12 the apostle is in danger of being inflated. He was, after all, a man like ourselves, as is said of Elijah, “a man of like passions to us”, James 5: 17. The Lord never was. He never sinned. “Which of you convinces me of sin?” He says. No one. He was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners”. That is Jesus, but that was not Paul. Paul was not made higher than the heavens, although he was made as high as the third heaven, and that is the point here. He was caught up into paradise, but caught up as far as the third heaven. What the measurement in literal altitude was, I cannot say. It is not given. The apostle said he could not even tell whether he was in the body or out of the body when he was caught up. Such are creature limitations. But still, he was in that elevation, and he said he heard unutterable things there, things that are not lawful for a man to utter. But he heard them. He does not tell us what he saw, it is what he heard; not that there are not things to be seen up there; of course there are, but the point is what he heard. He makes much of it in relation to his veracity; he says in verse 31 of the previous chapter, “The God and Father of the Lord Jesus knows — he who is blessed for ever — that I do not lie”. See how important it was to the apostle’s mind, so important that he says it as before God, that God knew that he did not lie. He was going to relate the actual truth and he relates it, and that is just what we get in the early verses of the next chapter. He says, “I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago, (whether in the body I know not, or out of the body I know not, God knows;) such a one caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man, (whether in the body or out of the body I know not, God knows;) that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable things said which it is not allowed to man to utter. Of such a one I will boast, but of myself I will not boast, unless in my weaknesses. For if I shall desire to boast, I shall not be a fool; for I will say the truth; but I forbear, lest any one should think as to me above what he sees [p. 110] me to be, or whatever he may hear of me. And that I might not be exalted by the exceeding greatness of the revelations...” (verses 2 - 7).
That is the point I had in mind in reading this whole section: “And that I might not be exalted”. You will notice, as I have already pointed out, the stress he lays on truth. What he said was the truth; he calls God to witness that it was the truth. Let no one quibble or question the verity of the statements here as to Paul’s exaltation; it was as high as the third heaven, and it was in paradise. Whether in the body or out of it he did not know, but it was so; personally he was there. So that now I come to my point: “And that I might not be exalted”. This is a governmental matter, and it is a most solemn matter, that such a man as Paul — the great apostle Paul — should be subject or made subject to governmental suffering: to a thorn for the flesh, a messenger of Satan, he calls it, an emissary of the devil. As one might say, God took this emissary out of Satan’s hand to use it against Paul for the moment, so that he might be saved from talking about himself or his exceptionalness in the service of God; about the fact that he, and only he, was caught up so high, caught up to the third heaven and into paradise. There are the two things: one is as far as the third heaven, and the other is into paradise. He was actually in the place called paradise.
Well, he came back. It happened fourteen years before he wrote this; but the thorn for the flesh happened then too. It was not just when he was writing; it was immediately after the exaltation had happened. And so it is, dear brethren, that in our experiences as Christians we come under governmental restrictions and sometimes under governmental sufferings. I mean by that, or rather the Scripture means by it, that a thing happens to you, not because you have sinned, but because you may [p. 111] do so; you are in danger of it. It is a very precious thought that I am saved from it through a governmental action; as if God were to say, I cannot trust you with those revelations, for you are likely to talk about them and become inflated through them; and I do not want you to be inflated because I lose My servant if you do; I lose you temporarily at least, so I am not going to let you be inflated. To guard against that I am sending an emissary from the devil — a most terrible thought! David says, “Let me fall, I pray thee, into the hand of Jehovah” (1 Chronicles 21: 13); not into the hands of men, and certainly not into the hands of the devil, but into the hand of the Lord; and it was into the hand of the Lord, so to speak, that Paul fell. God took him in hand and He sent this emissary to him. How soon after I cannot just say, but I should say quite near the time of the revelation this emissary of the devil was sent to Paul to limit him so that he should not be inflated, that he should not be exalted above measure; that he should remain a valued servant, an honoured servant, a loved servant; that he should be in liberty, too, in the suffering. I cannot define just what the thorn for the flesh was; I cannot just explain to you physically what it was. Possibly it was something that he suffered from in his eyes, a very tender part. If God is going to afflict us — and He does not afflict willingly — but if He does, if He wishes to reach a man quickly, He touches his eyes. In fact He uses this matter as a picture of Himself in relation to His people, that they are the apple of His eye. Let nobody touch them with impunity! Nobody can! Very likely the devil was allowed to touch, indeed sent to touch his eye or eyes; I would say his eyes, going by the epistle to the Galatians; Paul says there, alluding to their regard for him, “that, if possible, plucking out your own eyes ye would have given them to me”. It is pretty safe to [p. 112] say, as others of reliable judgment have said, that this must have been what he is alluding to.
And so for this cause, he says, a messenger of Satan was sent to me. Why was it that a great preacher, a great teacher, a great lover of God and of His people, a most effective servant in every way should be suffering from a thorn? He says, I asked the Lord three times to remove it; a very good example in regard to prayer. If anything acute has happened you ask the Lord three times to remove it, and if He does not remove it you say, Lord, it is Your matter; I will wait for You. How safe you are then! “For this I thrice besought the Lord that it might depart from me”. Three times; the measure is set for us. The Lord in the garden prayed to the Father three times: “My Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me”. It is a governmental matter. If God has sent it in love, well, pray about it of course; the door is always open to us to pray, but at the same time the spiritual man will know that if the third time is not answered the Lord is going to leave it. He says, in effect, You will need it.
In saying this you will know what I am speaking of. I am just going over well-known ground, although it is often healthful to go over ground already covered and learn the lesson well. And so, as I said, this is governmental, and the apostle’s comment is, “For this I thrice besought the Lord that it might depart from me. And he said to me, My grace suffices thee; for my power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather boast in my weaknesses, that the power of the Christ may dwell upon me”. This is a transaction with the Lord Jesus, some day or some night, between Himself and the apostle. Well, you say, what is your point now? My point is that someone is suffering under the government of God, in some circumstance — business or family — whatever it be. It is governmental; and he is likely [p. 113] to lose his joy if he has not already lost it. He is likely to lose his liberty in prayer if he has not already lost it. He is likely to lose his power in ministry and service to the saints if he has not already lost it. The Lord says to Paul, You have asked Me three times about this: “My grace suffices thee; for my power is perfected in weakness”. Paul might have said, It is a hard experience, I have never had the like before; although he had had most severe experiences, as I need not tell you. If you look at the previous chapter to this, what a list he gives us of experiences in suffering! Remarkable! He has gone over the ground in suffering, and then he says, I come to visions and revelations; not now sufferings, but visions and revelations. But then, he would mean he had sufferings in it too — this thorn! That is what I am speaking of. It is a new experience. Five times he had forty stripes save one, he tells us earlier, yet he did not ask the Lord to reduce them at all. No; he left it and went through. But this time he is smarting from the thorn as he is in danger of being exalted by the greatness of the revelations. That is what I am speaking of. If you are in this case in any sense, suffering under the government of God through circumstances arising from household or personal or business matters, or whatever it be, get to the Lord about it. Do not lose your liberty; do not lose your usefulness. Continue in usefulness; increase in usefulness; and the Lord lays down the way. He says, as it were, It is a bitter experience, I know; it is a bitter experience, but “my grace suffices thee; for my power is perfected in weakness”. This is all the Lord says; a short explanation and the matter is settled.
And now, what is Paul saying about it? Is he just saying, as we sometimes say, Well, that is a short or rather curt answer to me in a most serious prayer, in regard to what I have prayed about most seriously [p. 114] and feelingly? But that is all the Lord says; He says, so to speak, The matter is settled from My point of view. And Paul says, It is settled from mine! That is victory. Let the thorn be severe or otherwise, he says, it is settled for me. “My grace suffices thee”, are the Lord’s words, “for my power is perfected in weakness”. And Paul responds, “Most gladly therefore will I rather boast in my weaknesses, that the power of the Christ may dwell upon me”. What an issue and what a conclusion! How it points to the reality and power of Christianity and what Christ can be to us; what He is to thousands of the brethren in their present sufferings! How many prayers have gone up for the cessation of these terrible things that are happening! The Lord says to any one of us suffering in such a way, “My grace suffices thee; for my power is perfected in weakness”. And I answer, “Most gladly therefore will I rather boast in my weaknesses, that the power of the Christ may dwell upon me”. One might enlarge on the power of Christ resting on him; surely it is something that is visible. If we had been accustomed to meeting the apostle as he moved about among the saints in these circumstances, we should have seen him suffering. There must have been the evidence of suffering every day and night and at every meeting, doubtless; but then there would be more than that. The power of Christ would be visible. What victory! What a recompense! it is like what Peter says, “For the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of God rests upon you”. The idea is that the Spirit of Christ rests on you under certain circumstances; when one suffers as a Christian one is glorified externally in a moral way. So Peter says further, “But if as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but glorify God in this name”. And so here, “Most gladly therefore will I rather boast in my weaknesses, that the power of the Christ may dwell upon me”. So that if we had seen Paul at any meeting or met him on the road we should have noticed his suffering, but also seen the power of Christ resting there; a victorious man, suffering under the government of God, but the glory of Christ resting upon him in the support he gets from the priestly grace of Christ. “My grace suffices thee”.
Well, now, that is the first part of my subject. The next is a matter of persecutional sufferings. Someone may be saying, We do not know anything of these now; but I am not one of those who would say that. They are quite current. Secret persecution, if not open, is quite current in word or phrase or look. There are many ways of expressing persecution toward another, and the persecution carries with it suffering. And so I have read from Paul again. I have read about him in Acts 16 where he had the most intense sufferings, as you will remember. It is the incident of the jailor, well known to many of us. Myriads have found blessing in the gospel from this section, but what I am going to speak about now is the liberty this persecuted man, or these persecuted men, had in spite of their sufferings. The Spirit of God enlarges on the incident. It is said in the chapter which I read, “And her masters, seeing that the hope of their gains was gone, having seized Paul and Silas, dragged them into the market before the magistrates; and having brought them up to the praetors, said, These men utterly trouble our city, being Jews, and announce customs which it is not lawful for us to receive nor practise, being Romans” (verses 19 - 21). I might observe here, dear brethren, that the word “Romans” denotes a class of people who have had to do with the people of God adversely; they have also had to do thus with Christ Himself personally. They have had to do with the people of God for twenty centuries and here is another example of their persecution, that continues [p. 116] and will continue until the time comes when retribution will come down from heaven for it. There is no other such celebration seen in the book of Revelation as that which arises from the destruction of the harlot, the Roman harlot described in that book whose existence has run on for centuries. I mention it because the word “Roman” comes in here. Philippi was a sort of Roman colony; the inhabitants of such colonies had the distinction of being Roman citizens. There are many who have distinctions of that kind now, religious distinctions, Roman distinctions. No true spiritual man wants any such distinction: “being Romans”. That is what they say here. They say, “These men... being Jews announce customs”. Paul is regarded as a Jew here, and so is Silas. They are, of course, Christians and are persecuted by the Romans. Pilate would have spared the Lord, would have released Him, but he did not. He is not therefore immune from penalty because he would have wished to release Him; he put Him to death; he crucified the Lord of glory. Whatever his inward motives were, or feelings, he did that. In his mind the Lord was a Jew.
So that is just the issue today. They say, “These men utterly trouble our city, being Jews, and announce customs which it is not lawful for us to receive nor practise, being Romans”. That is the position. As I say, there are those who are dignified in this sense, not because they are Roman citizens, but because they are Roman religionists. There are only a few Roman citizens literally, but religiously there are three hundred millions of them on the earth according to the statistics. This is a most serious matter, dear brethren, as to how things are today. It is said they refused the customs of Paul; they were the customs of heavenly ones, because Paul and Silas, his companion in service, were representatives [p. 117] of heaven upon earth. And this is what happened to them: “And the crowd rose up too against them; and the praetors, having torn off their clothes, commanded to scourge them”; that is the first thing, that they commanded to scourge them. “And having laid many stripes upon them” (we are not told how many) “they cast them into prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely; who, having received such a charge, cast them into the inner prison, and secured their feet to the stocks”. This is what happened to the two most heavenly men on the earth. Certainly Paul was the most heavenly, the most representative of God and of Christ on the earth, and this is what these Roman citizens, so-called by themselves, did to them. But it says, “And at midnight Paul and Silas, in praying, were praising God with singing, and the prisoners listened to them”. Can I say anything more noble or dignified or more glorious of any Christian? They are suffering peculiarly, in the bitterest way, but they are not hindered in their souls. They are not deprived of their liberty. They are not allowing their sufferings to hinder or interfere with their spiritual liberty. They are in suffering, indeed, but they are in liberty. They are heavenly men, they belong to the heavenly choir, whatever their persecution may be. How they have spread abroad in the earth! That is what I wanted just to leave with us all. Whatever we are suffering from governmentally from God, let us not lose our liberty. Let us be out and out. Our liberty cost Christ too much for us to lose it, or to allow it to be lost or damaged, or to allow the service of God to be damaged. And then, if I have been persecuted for the Lord’s sake in any sense, let me not lose my liberty from this either. I am likely to be revengeful. If a person persecutes me and I have more power than he, I am likely to be revengeful. But “Vengeance is mine”, God says, Deuteronomy 32: 35. Do not attempt vengeance; do not attempt revenge against any act of persecution; you will lose your liberty if you do. “The Spirit of glory and the Spirit of God” rests upon us in the persecution. But then, there is more than that; the position that belongs to God is secured to Him as we are maintained in liberty. And so these two dear men — one never tires of speaking of them: “At midnight Paul and Silas, in praying, were praising God with singing, and the prisoners listened to them”. Wonderful servants! Did any greater strains of music ever pierce heaven than from those two dear men from that prison in Philippi? The Lord Jesus uttered from the cross such words: He says to His Father, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? ...And thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel”, Psalm 22: 1, 3. That is where God dwells. If you want to know where He dwells, that is where He dwells; dwelling too, of course, amid a suffering people, but it is in grace He does that. If you want to know where He dwells, it is in the praises of His people. He was dwelling in the praises of Paul and in the praises of Silas as they sang from the prison in Philippi on that night never to be forgotten.
And so, dear brethren, the Spirit of God would put it on us, whatever it is that is causing the suffering; if I am persecuted in any degree, let me be victorious. Let me sing; let me sing praises. Let us be victorious in feelings. Let the feelings of sufferings be drowned by the songs of praise that issue from the hearts of the lovers of Christ and the lovers of God. So that this is what comes out in this remarkable passage. It is a question of sufferings from persecution, but liberty is there; the liberty of the servants is there in good measure. The prisoners heard, but heaven also heard. That was [p. 119] the victory. We are not told that the prisoners heard the groans of the sufferers at all, but the praises of the sufferers — they heard those in the prison.
May God bless His word!