DIVINE CLOTHING
[p. 265] DIVINE CLOTHING
John 19:4,5; John 19:23, 24; 2 Corinthians 5: 3; Jonah 3: 3 - 10; Luke 15: 22
These scriptures speak about clothing, and it is in mind to speak of clothing as it enters into the truth of the gospel. It has a wider bearing, but the intent now is to confine what is to be said to the gospel. The short verse in 2 Corinthians warns us that, although we may be clothed from our own point of view, the judgment of God will bring to light that we may be naked, as it is said, “If indeed being also clothed we shall not be found naked”. I read in John 19 to call attention first to certain clothing that our Saviour wore, which was put on Him in derision, and then, secondly, to His own clothes, some of which were parted into four parts, but lots cast for the body-coat.
Now as to the first, you will observe that Pilate calls attention to Christ as garbed in a purple robe, crowned too with a crown of thorns. I dwell on this so as to make what I have in mind clear, believing that it foreshadowed what is now historical in the testimony of God, that many who call attention to Him clothe Him with garments of their own making. One could mention some of these garbs which were never intended by God to be worn by Christ. It was never intended that He should be presented to men with such clothes, a purple robe and a crown of thorns, both provided by His enemies. Pilate did not plait the crown of thorns, but he accepted Christ with it, and with the purple robe put on Him. He had Christ before Him with it and with the purple robe put on Him. He had already scourged Him, and then brought Him forth robed in this way.
Now I mention all this lest there may be those here who have been accustomed to hear of Christ as [p. 266] clothed with other garments than those that are properly His own. We may be sure that what is presented to us in this way will affect us, and the more we are affected by clothes put upon Christ, not His own, the more defective will our christianity be. Let it be-to make is very pronounced-a Mohammedan Christ; for that apostate system does not wholly repudiate Him; but what a Christ! What a misconception of Christ they present! The gospel is the gospel of God, beloved friends, “concerning his Son (come of David’s seed according to flesh, marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection of the dead)”. There can be no question as to His Person as presented in the gospel, no suggestion of human-made clothes being put on Him. It is the Christ of God, the Son of God, that is presented, as the apostle Paul says, “The Son of God ... has been preached by us among you (by me and Silvanus and Timotheus)”-a threefold witness, presented at Corinth, of His glorious Person!
How utterly foreign to Christ were the crown of thorns and the purple robe, put on Him derisively by His enemies! The apostle Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus would never robe Him thus; they would present the glorious Person free from all mere human thoughts. And then we see the Roman or the Anglican presentation of Christ, and so with many other denominations. Not that I am attacking any religious system, but we want the Christ of God in the gospel if we are to be rightly formed and rightly fitted for the divine purpose as to us. It must be the Christ of God as He is presented to us by the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures.
Now think of the incongruity of a man scourging the Saviour and then presenting Him in this garb! Think of what is behind it! He said, “Behold the man!” and yet he scourged Him. Is it not possible, beloved friends, that Christ is being presented in [p. 267] similar circumstances? Persons may scourge Him in the sense of persecuting and detracting from His Person or His doctrine. The Lord Jesus feels these things; and yet such men still stand up and present Christ. It is their own Christ, their own clothing they put on Him, and I am speaking thus so that everyone here may know that God has His Christ in the gospel. It is that Christ I seek to present; the “Son of God ... Jesus Christ our Lord”, marked out. It says, “marked out Son of God”; not only by the voice from heaven, which proclaimed Him at the Jordan and on the mount of transfiguration, but also marked out distinctly in power by the resurrection from among the dead. That is the Christ whom God presents in the gospel.
Then there is another thing. The persons who crucified Him, evidently four soldiers, parted His garments among them. These were not the garments put on Him derisively; they were His own garments, those He wore in the days of His flesh. That is another side, and there may be someone here who has clothed Him in his mind with some of those four parts. One of those parts can never present a whole Christ. Such persons can never have a whole Christ. No sect can rightly present the Christ of God. I am not saying that persons in it may not, but the very idea of a sect is incongruous in regard to the testimony of God. The suggestion here is that the very murderers of Christ, the crucifiers, those who officially put Him to death, divided His garments. What is the suggestion? It is that His garments are taken on, and yet they crucify Him; taking on the garments of One who is only thought worthy of a gibbet; think of the incongruity of that! There are four parts; to each soldier a part. Each soldier as he wore that part would present some little thought of Christ, but underneath that part there was the state in the man which would drive the nails into His hands! Will that [p. 268] garment suffice when God begins to reckon with men? No! It will not. Anyone trusting to a garment like that will be found naked.
It may be there is someone here who is trusting to a part of Christ. You need a whole Christ. The whole Christ of God is the subject of testimony, and no less than that. Anyone trusting in less than that, I warn you, will be found naked although you may think you are clothed. There are those who believe in Christ, and talk about Him, who do not believe in His deity. No one can be saved who does not believe in the deity of Christ. There are those who do not believe in the necessity for the blood as in the atonement. Such a Christ will not save you; without blood-shedding there is no remission.
Well, you say, what about the body-coat? It was woven throughout, it was not parted. Surely they have a whole Christ! But have they? There is a system that, professedly, accepts every word in the Bible as inspired. They believe in every doctrine of Scripture professedly. There is a system like that, the greatest system numerically and influentially; but what is underneath this whole Christ that they talk about? Is it love for Christ? I do not think so. I think it suits them to take the whole matter on, as if to be exclusive. It is just man; it is just the same sort of spirit as the one who has got a fourth part of the clothing. It suits that system to make much of the clothing of Christ, according to what He was here, and to profess to have a whole Christ and a whole christianity, to have God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and yet there is the absence of all that characterises true christianity.
If there is anyone here in such a system I warn you: do not trust in that. The gospel presents righteousness, not a mere profession; it is not mere external garments, however seemingly they are like Christ; the gospel brings righteousness. “Righteousness [p. 269] of God is manifested ... towards all, and upon all those who believe”. It is not a question of a mere outward garment, there must be righteousness. And then not only that, it is Christ in heaven that is presented in the gospel. It is not simply Christ as He was here after the flesh, but Christ who died for our sins and who was raised again by the power of God for our justification who now is seated at God’s right hand in heaven. It is the Christ of God in heaven that is presented in the gospel, and that is what the best robe means-the only garment that will stand and will prevent us from being naked.
Now that is what I want to come to. In Corinthians the solemn question is raised, “If indeed being also clothed we shall not be found naked”. This word is for anyone here who may have been trusting in any one of these four parts of the Lord’s clothing, or even in the whole body-coat, without righteousness. You will be found naked. You may be able to say to the Lord, “Thou hast taught in our streets” and “Have we not ... through thy name cast out demons ... ?”. But He will have to say, “I never knew you”. Could anything be more terrible at the last moment, at the final assize, when the judge will have to say that to you? For with all your mere religious clothing you have not the righteousness of God which is by faith; you have not appropriated the blood of Jesus; you have not really repented towards God. How terrible it will be to hear Him say to you, “I never knew you”! How urgent it is, beloved friends, that you should get the right kind of clothing! The divinely-provided clothing for salvation, and for eternal glory, too. For the present time is peculiarly the time of salvation: that the elect “may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory”. That is a wonderful touch for the last days; it is found in 2 Timothy 2: 10.
Jonah is to call attention to repentance. That is [p. 270] the crucial matter; that is what we shrink from. What a sorrowful reflection, dear friends, that with the myriads of nominal christians, how little the idea of repentance towards God is understood. There are those going about in christendom in groups, who are enlarging on repentance and confession to men, but the gospel carries with it the idea of repentance towards God. That is the first thing; it is repentance towards God. No other repentance, no other confession has any moral virtue in it. Not that confession to one another is not right, but confession towards God is the first thing, as the man who smote upon his breast began his spiritual career saying, “God, have compassion on me”. It is no question of sharing, as they call it, with a fellow man. The first thing is repentance towards God, getting alone with God, and having matters out with God who knows you. “O God, have compassion on me, the sinner”, not a sinner, but the sinner, as if there were not another; and in truth that is how you feel when the Spirit of God brings home to you the sense of sin.
And so this remarkable book of Jonah fits in here in a striking way, and we can understand how the enemy in what is called modernism seeks to get rid of this book of Jonah. I have seen a large volume, giving an account of the research of certain great leaders in religion in which they triumphantly say that they have found the truth of the death and resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ to be established by fact; and alongside of that they deny the authenticity of the book of Jonah. They would seek to get rid of a wonderful part of scripture wherein God has given us an illustration and foreshadowing of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ; and not only so, but it is a wonderful witness to the power of the testimony of God in bringing down the great king of Nineveh and the Ninevites, even down to the dust of repentance. It is one of the finest pieces of scripture [p. 271] for these latter days. The enemy of our souls, through modernism, would endeavour to get rid of this precious little book of four short chapters.
I am speaking of the third chapter particularly, and what comes out is that this servant of God, after being raised from the dead, as it were, is sent to Nineveh, and we are told he spoke the word of Jehovah. He entered into this great city Nineveh and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”. Jonah preached. That was enough; the Spirit of God was there to make the word effective. We have prayed for this meeting, the brethren and myself, that the Spirit of God might be with us. The Spirit of God is down here, a divine Person on earth, who particularly is present at such meetings as this, and as the preaching proceeds, He operates in consciences and hearts, and that is what happened at Nineveh. Men were going about their business, as usual, in that great city, but they were arrested by this remarkable testimony of Jonah, and men generally began to move in repentance, and the king began to move. What a visitation for that city of Nineveh, when God sent His servant to it! His Spirit also was present with the preacher to effect conviction of sin in the Ninevites. It was a general matter, the wind was blowing, the wind of conviction, the irresistible power of the Spirit of God was operating, and men were brought down. It was a real thing, a real feeling of conviction of sin before God, and not only so, but they turned from their wicked works.
Let no one think that if he gets light into his soul he can go on as before; that is not conversion. Do not talk about yourself as a convert if you only believe the terms of the gospel, without any change in your life. That is not conversion. These men gave up their wicked deeds, we are told, and put on sackcloth. Nineveh was a large city; think of the amount of sackcloth needed! The infidel might say, Impossible!
[p. 272] But nothing is impossible with God, and certainly not spiritually; sackcloth represents the inward repentant attitude of mind of the sinner, and there might be sackcloth therefore to cover every man in Nineveh. But one has marvelled at it, that we should have this remarkable kind of material called sackcloth in such quantity in Nineveh, so that every man could clothe himself in it. What does it mean? It means that every person, to a man, turned to God and if there is anybody here like the Ninevites going on in sin, will they not come to God? It is a terrible time of sin in this present day; the world is seething in it. The wicked woman that flatters with her mouth is ready to entice you into sin; it is a wicked world.
There may be some here who are going on in it, and you have turned in here for some reason, and God would turn your attention to the sackcloth here, right by you. It is as if God would say, ‘I will allow you to wear it’. It is said of the Lamb’s wife that “it was given to her that she should be clothed in fine linen, bright and pure”! God has granted to men now that they can wear this sackcloth. It is available to them spiritually. God has opened the door of repentance to the gentiles. The time will come when there will be none: I mean to say, none that God recognises. For instance, Esau did not find any; he found no place for repentance. How terrible it will be if the day of judgment comes before you have taken on this garb of sackcloth, when there will be no moral value in it. God will shut the door for ever, when instead of the gospel He will send a strong delusion to men that they should believe a lie. Why? Because they have not received the love of the truth! Oh, I do appeal to you-”the love of the truth”! Because a lie is so prevalent, and men are believing it, God is going to send it to them. Do not wait for that time, embrace the truth now, repent, and believe the gospel.
[p. 273] That is the first word the Lord Jesus said in His preaching according to Mark. The Lord stands up and says, “The time is fulfilled ... repent and believe in the glad tidings”. It is not simply believe it, but believe in it; that is, take it on, and search it out, and see how much there is in it. If you believe in it, you will find that you love the truth more and more. A lover of truth is a person who looks into the great gospel epistle, Romans; it is the truth set out in the most orderly way to meet the conscience and heart of a repentant sinner, and every page of it induces love of the truth.
You say, That is exactly what I want, that fits me, and I love it. The gospel implies the truth about myself, and the truth about God. And what is the truth about myself? Romans points out in a most convincing way the truth about man. The first chapter is the human race: the whole human race is under review, and the chapter shows, too, what it was from the outset. The second chapter is the Greek and the Jew, and the third chapter is that all are brought in guilty before God. Guilty! It is like a court; God being infinitely fair, it says in the psalm, “Jehovah looked down from the heavens upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God”, and He did not find any, so that all are brought in guilty.
Do you love the truth? If you are an honest man or woman you do. We accept it as the divine judgment about ourselves, and we say we are utterly hopeless without redemption, and so God introduces redemption, and how beautiful it is in the end of chapter 3. He says the righteousness of God is revealed on the principle of faith, and he speaks of “the redemption which is in Christ Jesus ... that he should be just, and justify him that is of the faith of Jesus”, Romans 3: 24 - 26. Do you not love that truth? Is there anyone here that does not love the truth? The day is [p. 274] shortly coming when men will believe a he; a lie will be sent and they will believe it. It is a question of the love of the truth now, and I appeal to you as to the truth. And so these Ninevites all acknowledged the truth; the sackcloth was there and they all wore it; that is the garment to wear in drawing near to God. It is the garment that faith loves, it is repentance towards God; you hold nothing back.
Now I come to Luke 15. What appears there is not simply a repentant sinner who repents historically once and for all, it is the repenting sinner. The more spiritual you are as a believer in Christ the more you repent. It is a continuous thing, and history is made in heaven every moment by repenting sinners. There is a joy made there. Heaven has delight in repentance as a moral quality down here where sin is. And the more we repent the more we come into the light and the blessedness of the gospel, and love it. So I read that well-known verse telling us of how the father of the prodigal received his returning son, and how he directed his bondmen in regard of him. He does not ask the son to put on the best robe. There are robes that we must provide ourselves, and put on, but in regard to this great robe that the gospel proposes, it is put on by others. It is but a figure, I know; but a figure is a figure, and suggests something; and one thing this figure certainly suggests is that it is the very best of the wardrobe of God and really means how heaven regards you.
Would you not like to know as you sit there how heaven regards you? What does it matter how others regard you? How does heaven regard you? I look up to heaven, and I know how heaven regards me, as one clothed with Christ; not the Christ that was here only, it is the Christ that is up there. That is how heaven regards the Christian. The bondmen are told to put that on the prodigal. It is the divine thought, the mind of heaven, brought forth, and put [p. 275] on the returning prodigal. If there is one here tonight who will stand and say, ‘I am a repenting sinner’; if there is one like that man who went into the temple and said, “God, have compassion on me, the sinner”, heaven is thinking about him. There is history being made there as he stands and makes his confession; he is now regarded in a new light before God; and we would clothe you with the very best thoughts we know of, and these are Christ as He is now in heaven. The Holy Spirit is here to bring out what is there and to clothe you with it. If you make a confession this instant heaven changes its mind about you; it looks on you differently, and so do we.
Perhaps we Christians do not know very much about the best robe, and we may not, in our thoughts, robe you as well as you should be robed; but heaven knows. One of the finest thoughts that you can take into your soul is the attitude of heaven towards you as a repenting sinner. The prodigal returned and said, “I have sinned against heaven and before thee. I am no longer worthy to be called thy son”, but the father said, “Bring out the best robe”. If there is anyone ready to confess his guilt and to believe in Christ, let us Christians be ready to put the best thoughts on him, and give him to understand that we are taking account of him, and clothe him according to heaven’s best thoughts. That is the idea. It is no question of a literal robe, these things are spiritual, and it is bringing forth what is spiritual; it is putting upon the returning sinner the very best thoughts of heaven, so that you go up there as ennobled, entirely suitable to the place. The thief on the cross illustrates it. The Lord said, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”. As if the Lord says, ‘I will not be ashamed of you up there’, for the best thoughts of heaven enshroud the returning prodigal. It is a question of what he takes in, what he understands, what he is capable of. He is a son in the house, where the music and the [p. 276] dancing are, he is clothed with the best robe, and he will never be found naked; it is the best robe of heaven.
May God help you to receive “the implanted word, which is able to save your souls”, James 1: 21.