THE PRACTICAL WORKING OUT OF SONSHIP
[p. 91] THE PRACTICAL WORKING OUT OF SONSHIP
Galatians 3: 25; Romans 8: 14; Matthew 5:9; Matthew 5:44, 45; 2 Samuel 7:12; 2 Samuel 7:14; 2 Samuel 7:18
I have before me, dear brethren, to speak about sonship, often spoken about indeed, and yet I can hardly say well known. It is much spoken of in our holy conversations, and much sung about, included in our songs of praise, but I cannot say from observation that it is well known. I venture a few remarks on it, if possible to elucidate it and simplify it, without bringing it in any way within the level of our natural minds. The principle of ministry is faith, from faith to faith, so that we should be practically in the dispensation of God which is set up in faith. This subject of sonship brings in the sphere of faith in the most pointed manner. The apostle in writing to the Galatians occupies the whole of chapter 3 in enforcing the thought of faith. He treats of it as belonging to a certain era, as over against a previous era which was marked otherwise: hence the question of time enters into this chapter peculiarly. Indeed, dear brethren, when I speak of time, I may turn aside for a moment to point out that God does not just reckon it as we do, as men do, that is to say by the revolutions of the earth, as we understand it, or the sun. He has in mind His own work; He reckons time in relation to that. So that the first divisions of time are by God Himself, “And there was evening, and there was morning-the first day”; that is before we have any mention of the sun. So each day was a question of what God did, and that is how heaven is occupied with time; it is a question of what God has done, is doing, or will do. Hence we have the lives of men given so that we might reckon time. In Genesis 5 we have not the lives of the descendants of Cain, but of Seth; that is to say, it is the life line; and so from [p. 92] Abraham to Christ, it was a question of generations not years. In regard of sonship, which is also of faith, it must be a matter of the work of God. You will observe the expression in verse 23: “before faith came”, and then in verse 25, “faith having come”, the allusion being to time, but evidently not as we say A.D.-so-and-so, but as a question of the work of God, for faith is the work of God. God is occupied with what He is doing, and faith took form in man. I quite own that faith was in Jesus; but I should not call it the work of God there; Jesus is the Inaugurator of the great era of faith, He is said to be “the leader and completer of faith”, but in us, it is the work of God. So the division of time in this chapter is before faith came, and after faith came. Now we live in the era after faith came, a great and wonderful dispensation is the dispensation of faith. I mention all these things so that you may have in view the place time has at the moment, in regard of what I have in mind. Faith having come, sonship has come, for sonship belongs to this era. All who have faith are sons, “Ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”. It is a very great fact for everyone to take into his soul, that it is his privilege to live in sonship, faith having come; it may be very little known in some of our souls, but it is true. If faith be true, then you come in for what belongs to the era of faith and, above all things, for this great relationship and dignity called sonship. “Faith having come, we are no longer under a tutor; for ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”.
Now, that is the first thing I wanted to lay down, so that each may be able to follow intelligently as seeing that what I have to say is directly for him. The Lord would press upon you again, if He has done it before, this great fact that sonship is yours, and it is yours in that you have faith. It is not that faith was not a necessity in Old Testament times, far otherwise; it [p. 93] existed from the very beginning, but it is scarcely mentioned there, perhaps once or twice, for it was not the principle of God’s dealings with man. It was there, and as real then as it is now, and equally of God, but it was not His public way of dealing; He was operating on the principle of sight, to bring out that, given every advantage, nothing can be made of the man after the flesh. Even the law, perfect as it was, “holy, and just, and good”, perfected nothing, but faith having come, we have arrived at a period of perfection. Perfection is in the Son, finality is in the Son, and so the Son of God here upon earth, Jesus, inaugurated the great period marked by perfection and finality in which we have part. It is a period in which we have, as I say, perfection; we are enjoined to go on to perfection (Hebrews 6: 1).
The Holy Spirit here, the Son having gone to heaven, has inaugurated the period of faith in a peculiar way. He is out of sight but the Holy Spirit is here operating, so that faith is specially the era to which sonship belongs. The Holy Spirit has come in to maintain it in a practical and living way, so that the mind of God is answered to. There is nothing in the Old Testament that concurs with the truth of sons; it was a time of children, a nursery time. That is what the apostle says in Galatians 4, “We also, when we were children, were held in bondage ... but when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, come of woman, come under law, that he might redeem those under law, that we might receive sonship. But because ye are sons, God has sent out the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So thou art no longer bondman, but son; but if son, heir also through God”, Galatians 4: 3 - 7. The position is most clearly stated, so that is every believer’s relationship before God, however little his faith may be.
I want to show you from the passage in the Old Testament how this typically affected a man who [p. 94] himself had faith. He nevertheless cannot be on the footing of Galatians, he was not. He belonged to the era of sight, when God was operating on that principle, yet he typified at least what I am saying. 2 Samuel 7 speaks of the desires of David to build a house for Jehovah, a most laudable thought. A thought which he poetically expresses in Psalm 132: 4, 5: “I will not give sleep to mine eyes, slumber to mine eyelids, until I find out a place for Jehovah, habitations for the Mighty One of Jacob”. That is one of the finest statements in the Scriptures! Nevertheless all David was able to do was to spread a tent in mount Zion for the ark. He deplored the accommodation offered to God, it was so mean, his own accommodation was much better. It happens often so with us, our personal accommodation is much better than what we offer to the Lord. David felt that, he said to Nathan, I would like to build a house for the Lord, and Nathan answers, “Go, do all that is in thy heart; for Jehovah is with thee”. But a message came that night to Nathan, that he was to tell David that he was not to build the house. It must have been a humbling thing for David that God had to tell him what was in his heart was a right thing in itself, but he was not the one to do it. It was a humbling but wholesome thing to be told this; it made nothing of him. Christianity is far from being a one-man affair as regards our service down here, it is a mutual matter, and a matter of variety. God loves to have variety; David had to accept the message and he did so with the most beautiful grace. Instead of retiring to his house sulking like Ahab, as a disappointed man defeated in his great purpose, he does the very opposite to that. This is a thing every one of us should understand “King David went in and sat before Jehovah”. He grasped the thought in the message sent him from the Lord by Nathan, the thought of sonship. He did not understand it as we do, but the Holy Spirit presents [p. 95] facts to us in Scripture to elucidate a certain thought. There is a thought conveyed here in the message sent to David which inspired in his heart the sense of liberty with God. God tells him, “Thy seed ... it is he who shall build a house for my name”; if David’s seed was to be a son, there was some encouragement for him in that. The Holy Spirit tells us in Psalm 89 that David was a son. God says, “He shall call unto me, Thou art my father, ... I will make him firstborn”, of course the allusion is to Christ, but nevertheless in principle it referred also to David. So he gathered up the promise; it is a great principle in the things of God to be able to gather up things, to get impressions and move in them. A divine impression is calculated to move me, what I do immediately after receiving it proves where I have got. So it tells us that David went in and sat before the Lord. It is the only place where we are told that he did this. Speaking is stressed here, and I call attention to it as the first feature of sonship characteristically. As the light of it comes into my soul by the Spirit I am adjusted, and the next thing is liberty; I have liberty with God. Many of us are bound in our souls, unable to speak to God in the assembly. I do not mean we are ashamed, but we are unable to speak to God as He should be spoken to, in the power of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is down here in order to serve us in every possible way, and one way is that we might learn to speak to God, to cry “Abba, Father”. That is in principle what comes out in David. He “went in and sat before Jehovah”. It does not say that Jehovah sent for him; that would be another matter; if Jehovah had sent for him as His servant, he would go in and stand and await orders, that is what properly belongs to the servant: he awaits orders standing. We are not told what David entered into here, the point is he went in; it is the inwardness of the thing. That is to say, dear brethren, we have got to learn to [p. 96] be spiritual and to leave aside material thoughts. David is the great representative of inwardness; he built inwardly. So here, David went in. How good it is to go in, to retire in the power of the Spirit into the presence of God in the light of sonship. As David sat, the light shone over him; would that we might experience this! The word ‘sat’ is used in the sense of ‘tarried’. How delightful it was to God! David had accepted the will of God, although it had cut athwart his thoughts and ambitions to build the house; he accepts it and humbly enters in and sits before the Lord and speaks thus beautifully to Him.
The next feature I would dwell upon is in Romans 8: 14. If I get the light of sonship in the period in which I am, the next thing is that I move in it in the spirit of adoption, and then I am to be led. The movements of David are not suggestive of the movements of the Spirit, they are his own movements; he moves of himself. But then there is such a thing exemplified in Scripture as a person moving by the Spirit. We have it in the Lord Jesus Himself, He was “led by the Spirit in the wilderness”, according to Luke 4. It concurs exactly with what comes out in the types; according to Numbers 21 when Israel recognised the well, they sang, “Rise up, well! sing unto it”, and after that they moved. The type answering to what I am speaking of is divinely fulfilled by the Lord Himself, and now by ourselves, in the measure in which we understand being led of the Spirit. So Israel went from point to point, pursuing a straight course until they reached mount Pisgah. There is nothing said about the ark, or the tabernacle, or the cloud; they had reached new ground, that is to say, the ground of inward acknowledgment of the presence of the Spirit of God. They moved on until they reached the top of Pisgah, which as it says, “looks over the surface of the waste”, Numbers 21: 20. On the other hand, it looks outward on the land,
[p. 97] though it does not say so in this place. The Holy Spirit would say, ‘You must learn to let Me lead you and I will bring you to this point. The outlook from this point is on the land. Moses saw it from this point. I want you to look backwards, to take a retrospective view and see what God has been to you all these years, that you might love God’. The Holy Spirit does not make Himself a point in it, He is God, but He is here in a wonderfully lowly way to serve us, to bring God and Christ before us, so that we might love God. So the top of Pisgah looks over the surface of the waste.
We have the corresponding thought in Christ according to Luke, He was led in the wilderness for forty days. It would appear from Luke’s presentation of the temptation that it lasted forty days, and afterwards He hungered. But the point is to see a Man led in the wilderness by the Spirit, not merely for Himself; no, beloved, it was for us. He was an example for us in everything. It says in Romans 8: 14, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”. Do we want to be like Jesus in the wilderness, led of the Spirit? We shall not be tempted of the devil; He was, in order to bring out His perfection. But there is the great principle of being led of the Spirit in the wilderness, so that we are marked off as sons of God. One could say much more about this matter of being led of the Spirit; it is one that deserves the greatest consideration, for the sons of God, and how they move, is not only for the wilderness, but goes on to eternity. The Holy Spirit is in them; He can lead them; they are entirely amenable to His manipulations, that is what enters into the assembly. What I have been speaking about is the wilderness and being led in it, but the assembly is Godward, it is not simply Pisgah. It is not what God has been to me in the wilderness, but God as known in heaven. This is one of the greatest suggestions conceivable to [p. 98] the relation; how can I know such a relation save by the Spirit? He alone can give me interest, feelings and affections suited to that. What you get in the assembly would be a question of the Lord, He has to do with the approaches to the assembly, and to the assembly proper. You know how in the types, the approaches were presented both in the tabernacle and the temple; the temple proper was by itself, it was always an inner thing. We must not stop with the mere approaches, or even with the porch; we must get inside. The great thought of the Spirit is to lead us in, like David going in and sitting before the Lord. So when one says, ‘Lord Jesus’, that resounds in the precincts of the house. No one can say, Lord Jesus, but by the Spirit, and in the spirit of adoption, and that makes me recognise the authority of the Lord.
Then the next thing is, I can say, ‘Abba, Father’. How do we do that? The word ‘Abba’ is not an English word, it is an Aramaic word meaning ‘Father’. It is the very word the Lord Jesus used (Mark 14: 36). It is to be treasured in that sense. The word ‘Abba’ brings into the scene the very voice of Jesus; the assembly will resound with that utterance, “Abba, Father”. That is the thought the Spirit is leading me to; according to Galatians 4 “God has sent out the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father”, which is in accord with Romans 8: 15, “Whereby we cry, Abba, Father”. Now, dear brethren, you will, I am sure, agree that this deserves our most profound consideration and attention, so that we may be in the assembly according to God, that our voices may resound in the approaches, and in the inner place; the very heaven itself is affected by the voices of the saints.
Now I come to the practical side in Matthew s, where the Lord is dealing with the darkness that came in through the tradition of the elders. The disciples were found among these things: the thoughts of [p. 99] God handed down from Moses and the prophets had become darkness. I want you to understand this section; the Lord is speaking authoritatively on the mountain, glorifying the whole environment for faith. He stands out in it as the great Inaugurator of the new order of things, giving the word of authority which settles everything. What a great thing that is! Among the things He speaks of here, we have what we are to be called on a given occasion. The people of God are to be called “the sons of God”. I may tell people I am a son of God, but if they are unregenerate it would be like casting pearls before swine; that knowledge does not belong to them; sonship belongs to another world. But there is to be a testimony here; the Lord says, “Blessed are the peace-makers”. It is one thing to be a son of peace, and an important thing, too. There is no local meeting without a son of peace. The Lord says, ‘If you find a son of peace, stay in that house, let your peace be on it, do not leave it, do not go from house to house, make it your headquarters in the place’. That is what it means, there is a place known, a peace-tent, and you stay there. The local assembly enters into that thought of a son of peace. But the son of peace is not necessarily a peace-maker; a maker of peace is a very great personage, one cannot be that who is not a son of peace. But one may be a son of peace, and not a peacemaker; that is to say, one to bring brethren together, to work with them. How can one do that, save as one gets down below them? In Judges 8 the Ephraimites say to Gideon, ‘Why have you not called us? We are a great people’. There is often that kind of thing in large meetings, and meetings where there is a gifted brother, but gift is not the idea for a local meeting; it is not intended for that, it is for the whole assembly-a gift has a general setting. Well, the Ephraimites disputed sharply with Gideon; they told him they were a great people and could do great things. Gideon says to them, “What have I done now in comparison with you?”. That is a peacemaker! Gideon had not broken the peace; he had got a great victory for Israel, yet he had to submit to these men who thought they were greater than he! Gideon became a peace-maker, he was a son of peace, but he was a peace-maker too. He appeased the brethren and established peace where there might have been war. A peace-maker is a man of immense importance; the Lord Jesus says of such in Matthew 5, “They shall be called sons of God”. God is a God of peace, He made peace Himself, and imparted it to us, and would bring us alongside Himself to teach us how to be peace-makers, that we might become repairers of the breach, able to bring brethren together, to help them judge themselves and get together. Moses attempted to do that at the beginning of his career and failed. He said, “Sirs, ye are brethren”, which was a good remark for a prince in Israel to make about slaves. But the one who did wrong was a very hard man and Moses could not do anything with him, so Moses fled. It is very humbling to find brethren you cannot do anything with. Gideon succeeded; he was a peace-maker. “Blessed the peace-makers, for they shall be called sons of God”. In 1 John 3: 1 it says, “That we should be called the children of God”, but here it is sons of God; we are marked off in this practical way as sons in the sense that we have taken on the character of God as the great peace-maker and thus help to establish peace among our brethren.
The last point is at the end of Matthew 5, “I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who insult you and persecute you, that ye may be the sons of your Father who is in the heavens”. In the early verse it is, “They shall be called”, now it is, “That ye may be the sons of your Father who is in the heavens”; it is a thing held out to you as characterising [p. 101] you in an entirely new relationship. What a God He is! Look up at the sun in the morning as it rises-one often thanks God for it!-it is God’s sun, and He makes it rise on evil and good. What a God He is! He is our great example; think of His bounty and beneficence! Ecclesiastes 1: 5 says, “The sun also riseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to its place where it ariseth”; God is with every movement of the sun, with every blade of grass that grows, and with every seed planted on the earth. God brings up the sun and makes it to shine too, “He makes his sun rise on evil and good, and sends rain on just and unjust”. I want to be like that God. It is a great aspiration which is set before us here, “That ye may be the sons of your Father”. The Lord in Matthew stresses our relation with the Father, John says He is our Father only once in his gospel, but Matthew does very often. Think of God in heaven being my Father, how I should desire to be like that God! He makes His sun to rise on evil and good, and sends rain on just and unjust. What am I to do now? The Lord says, “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who insult you and persecute you, that ye may be the sons of your Father who is in the heavens”. Well, dear brethren, the Lord has put this great thought within our reach; He has given us the light of sonship in our souls and hearts, so that we might accept the characteristics of our Father who is in the heavens, in regard to our enemies. The point here is in regard of those who hate and persecute us; they are not wanting, alas! but God turns circumstances into an occasion for the manifestation of Himself in His sons, “that ye may be the sons of your Father who is in the heavens”.
It is thus we see what sonship means, and how it works out in a practical way here, so that we may really be the sons of our Father who is in the heavens.