ENTRANCE INTO SPIRITUAL BLESSING
F.E.Raven
I would like to say a word as to the progress of the soul, and its entrance into the sense of spiritual blessing.
It is evident that we cannot at once enter into things in the measure in which God has presented them to us. If God speaks to us, He speaks of necessity from His own fulness; it is impossible that we can all at once take in all that God proposes to us; if that were the case we should in a sense be as great in understanding as God. I believe we are led on into the consciousness of blessing just in proportion as we are in the apprehension of Christ; that is, we enjoy it, the truth works within us just as there is the apprehension of what is true in Christ, for the Spirit in the believer answers to what Christ is at the right hand of God.
Now I have been struck with the sequence of the three chapters, 4, 5 and 6 of John. I believe they speak on the side of our apprehension of the truth. The Lord had revealed in chapter 3 the proposition or thought of God, and therefore to my mind John 3 is essentially a gospel chapter, it is the revelation of what God has proposed. Our entering into it I believe comes out in the succeeding chapters, 4, 5 and 6, and culminates in chapter 7.
I will just touch for a moment on the point of these chapters, especially on what comes out in chapter 5. I think there are three forms of pressure from which the Lord proposes to deliver man in the three chapters. In chapter 4, the deliverance is from sin, in chapter 5 the deliverance is from weakness, and in chapter 6, in the satisfying the soul, if I might use the expression, the deliverance is from want - these are three great things for God in His grace to effect for man down here in the very scene of sin, and weakness, and want. I assert that man is delivered from sin, raised up out of weakness, and every need of his heart is satisfied and more than satisfied. I think everybody would admit that that is a great thing to be effected for man down here, and in it is the fulfilment of the thought in chapter 3, "that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life". I get it carried out experimentally in that way. It is noticeable that there is but little reference to the future except in chapter 6, where the Lord says, "I will raise him up at the last day".
I want to touch, seriatim, on the points I have indicated. Jesus is presented in chapter 4 as the Christ, for although the Father's name occurs in the chapter in connection with worship, the name of the Son does not appear, and it is as the Christ that He communicates to the believer the living water. We read in Ephesians 1, "In whom having believed", that is, in the Christ, "ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise". It is a great thing to get hold of the truth of the Christ. In the Old Testament we find the thought of the anointed of God, the One who, rejected here of men, is to take the earth for His inheritance. I believe you have a larger range of thought opened out in Hebrews, that He is the heir of all things; that connects itself with what we have in Ephesians 1, the mystery of God's will. To gather up in one all things in the Christ He is the One who has to take all things, and in John 4 it is He who communicates the living water; the water that He would give was to be in the believer a well of water springing up into everlasting life. This is what I would call initial and introductory. Sin has met its judgment in Christ. He has fulfilled the type of the brazen serpent, the judgment of sin in the flesh, in order that the Spirit might dwell in the believer.
In connection with the truth of eternal life comes in the most important point of deliverance from sin. You will never gain deliverance from sin except by getting another object than self before the soul. You must of necessity be superseded in your own eyes, and this is only by the power of another object, another man before the soul. I know that plenty of people would tell me that you are dead to sin, but you will not die to it till you get another object before the soul, and that is the second Man, who has entered into the holiest for us, and in the apprehension of that really lies the secret of deliverance from sin.
In chapter 5 I get a point further; it is here more than the communication of the Spirit of life to be in the believer, for we get the man raised up. The Son quickens the body, but the point in the chapter is that He raises up the man, and a wonderful thing it is for a man to be raised up out of the weakness which sin has brought upon him. The point of the chapter is the raising of the man. I believe it is effected by the apprehension in the soul of the truth of the Son and what depends on this, for in this chapter it is not the Christ who is brought before us, but the Son - He reveals the Father. I get here the truth of the Person; He is the Son, and therefore He is competent to reveal the Father, that is the wonderful thing that comes out in this chapter. He knows the Father, lies in His bosom, knows all that is there. The Father loves the Son and shews Him all things that Himself doeth. You have got now to a grand point, you are raised up into a new scene altogether, and the new scene presented to us is an unfolding beyond all that was ever revealed before. None but the Son can reveal the Father, it is not any amount of language that could reveal the Father. He alone is competent here and therefore He says, "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life". You are really raised up by the introduction of the soul into a new scene. It is not only that the Christ has communicated unto me a great gift, but He is competent to reveal the Father. He says, "My Father worketh hitherto and I work". What things to open out to poor things like us; it is to me perfectly wonderful that down here He has raised man out of his weakness to enter into things that he never could have dreamt of - the Father revealed in the Son. The secret of all that God is has come out. It is not simply what the Father can do, but it is the Father's heart that has come to light. The Father loves the Son and shews Him all these works of grace. The Son is as man dependent, but He is none the less the Son. He is as truly a divine person as the Father, and can say, "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me"; and it is in this that we really enter into the place of children, are made conscious of being raised up in this very scene.
There is only a word more as to the third point, i.e. deliverance from want. We have seen that there is the well of water springing up in the believer into eternal life, and that he has a revelation of new things to his soul.
Now there is another thing; he has to be formed constitutionally; that is what I get in chapter 6, the effect of the living bread. The constitution of a child is formed by its food. The Bread from heaven is the believer's food, and there is another character of food to that, eating the flesh of the Son of man and drinking His blood; that is, that I have to appropriate death to that system in which the flesh lives. But I am fed with living bread, "he that eateth me shall live because of me". My spiritual constitution is formed as surely by the food on which I live as is that of a child. The believer apprehends in Christ the Man that is the object of heaven's delight. It is a great thing not only to be brought into these things, but to be in them constitutionally; we are, I fear, very small constitutionally, and I think it is because we are not fully nourished. "He that eateth me shall live because of me". The whole idea of the chapter is, I think, satisfaction. The blessed Son of God has become man, entered into that state that He might be everything to the believer, as He is everything to heaven; thus his soul is fed, and he is independent of all beside.
I only add that all this depends on the apprehension of what Christ is, and we have seen the order in which the soul has to apprehend it. You do not begin at the top, though God speaks from the top. I do not think that a soul in the first place takes in what are called in a familiar hymn, "the higher mysteries of Thy fame". When God begins to work in the teaching of the Spirit we are led on in the apprehension of Christ so as to become more deeply conscious of the blessing which God has purposed for us; and anything to surpass what is presented to us in this chapter I cannot conceive. You are brought into all the light of heaven in what is presented in the Father and the Son, and in chapter 6 it is not only, as we have seen, that we are to be in it as under the power of the Spirit but also constitutionally.
I do not want to add more, I would rather others would seek to open it out for themselves. I believe that God intends to bring us into all that He has revealed to us, but it is another thing how far we have taken it in. I think I can see the wonderful grace of God and the power of the Spirit in the way in which our souls are led on.
CHRIST DISPLACES THE OLD "I"
F.H.B.
Galatians 1: 15,16; 2: 19,20; 4: 19-31; 5: 1
What I wish to bring out from these scriptures is this, how as in the dealings of God with men, so in His work in individual souls His way is to displace the first man by bringing in the Second; that is by the ministry of the gospel so to put Christ into our hearts as to displace self. This is of all importance in order that we may understand the ways of God, and that our souls may enter into the thoughts of God towards us, His grace to us in Christ.
It is of all importance that our thoughts should be connected with the right Man, that is Christ; not the Adam man. In the ways of God what has taken place is, that God has set aside the first man, and has brought in a second. What I mean is this, that up to the time of the cross the first man was on the scene, he was under the eye of God, and the ways of God were connected with that man as of Adam; and that man was under testing in various ways, the object of the testing being to bring out the utter wickedness, worthlessness, and unprofitableness of that man, with a view to setting him aside and bringing in another. What we see in the cross are two things: one, the full and perfect exhibition of the utter wickedness of the first man; and on the other hand, the declaration of God's judgment on him. When God is presented to him in the Person of Christ he will have nothing of God, he rejected God and Christ "They have seen and hated both me and my Father". At last he took the Christ of God, and by wicked hands crucified and slew Him. It was utterly hopeless to expect anything from that man, only one thing remained, and that was for God to pronounce His judgment on him. The cross is the expression of what he is worthy of in the sight of God. The end of all flesh morally had come before God at the cross, so that the cross in that way is the end of man's history, as connected with the first Adam, and the end of God's trial of that man; and from that time onward the whole scene is changed, as to the ways of God. That man disappears and another has come on the scene - the Lord Jesus Christ comes in and takes His full and proper place as man; and now all the thoughts and purposes of God are brought out, because that Man is in glory who was the central object of all the counsels and ways of God. No purpose or promise or counsel of God was ever connected with the first man; the first man was only a trial man, one in whom man was tried; but the whole counsel of God from eternity was all centred in and connected with another man, the Lord Jesus Christ; and now that He has taken His place and is exalted to glory, God is able to reveal all the hidden counsels of His own heart in connection with that Man, and our place before Him in that Man. That is what has taken place in the ways of God.
Now the other thing is, that the same thing takes place in God's dealing with souls individually. The object of God's dealing with the individual soul is to displace self, the first man, by bringing in the Second; and just as in the ways of God there was a time of testing, man's testing, so with the individual soul there is a period of testing under the hand of God; each one has to go through the testing process - and I believe the object of that testing is to bring me experimentally to the end of myself, to realise that I can have no confidence in the flesh, so to know myself and to realise what I really am in the sight of God, to see myself in all my sinfulness, vileness, worthlessness, and hopelessness, so that I become sick of myself. That is a very great point. I fear that a great many of those who are partakers of the Lord's table have never reached that point, they have never had such a sight of themselves as to be sick of themselves, to be willing to drop themselves altogether. When a man does see himself in that way he is made to say, with Job, "Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes". Then there is an end to all conceit and pride in man. That is the nature of the testing; it was a very hard thing to bring Job to that, and the more of human goodness and morality a man has the harder it is to bring him to see himself as he really is in the sight of God.
To such an one I would ask the question, "Would you like to get rid of yourself, would you like to see the end of that self?" Where is it to be found? In yourself? No; but in the cross. What God sets before the soul is the cross, as the place where He has condemned man in the flesh; all that I am as a child of Adam has passed under judgment in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was there for me, as representing me before God; He who knew no sin was made sin for us, and all the judgment that was upon me passed upon Him; all that I was by nature met its judgment there at the hand of God; that is the end of me as a child of Adam. God has done with it there, and the soul that accepts that really, in true faith, can say, as the apostle in Gal 2: "I am crucified with Christ". What relief to one who has been brought to realise what that old "I" is in the sight of God. Have we each one been thus brought to bow to God's judgment upon us to see it executed and passed in the cross of Christ, and thankfully to say, "I am crucified with Christ"? There is an end of my history as connected with the first Adam - man in sin, away from God, subject to His judgment, for such was my condition as in Adam and I see the end of my history in that relation altogether in the cross of the Lord Jesus.
What do I get on the other side? Christ risen, exalted to God's own right hand. I now behold the glory of the Lord. The Spirit's work is to set before me the preciousness and glory of Christ as the Man of God's purpose, so that now instead of being occupied with myself I am occupied with Christ - with another Man. This we see in Stephen, a man filled with the Holy Ghost. He had practically dropped himself, he looked up into heaven and he saw the glory of God; and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, his eye was turned outside himself , away from man and this world, and now he saw the glory of God and Jesus. I can understand now how God has set me before Himself in that man. All that was in Adam has been condemned in the death of Christ, and Christ risen is my life. Christ lives in me, and in that life I live to God. This is new ground altogether, outside of Adam entirely, entirely free from the first man and all that came in by him. The work of the Spirit of God is so to put Christ in our hearts as to displace self; not to better or develop or add to anything of the first man, but to displace him. What is brought out in the allegory of Ishmael and Isaac is, that when the new man gets His place the old man must go out. When Isaac was weaned, when he got his full and proper place in the house of Abraham, then Ishmael was cast out: "Cast out the bondwoman and her son". Ishmael was never the man of God's promise; it was never connected with Ishmael, and therefore He says, Cast out the bondwoman and her son; God's eye was upon Isaac, and all His purpose was connected with him. The great difference between Christianity and the religion of Christians all around is just this - Christianity is the doctrine of Christ, the antitype of Isaac, and does not in any way recognise Ishmael, or the man born after the flesh. The current religion of professing Christians generally is occupied with Ishmael, it retains the fleshly man, and seeks to improve and cultivate that man; it therefore occupies souls with themselves, instead of displacing self and occupying the soul with Christ. In Christianity we have the introduction of another Man of an entirely new order, and the revelation of God's purposes in connection with Him, and His grace to us in Him. There can be only disappointment, and no rest or abiding joy, as long as souls are occupied with themselves. You must drop the old man entirely in order to find everything in Christ. Many may know deliverance from guilt and from the judgment of sin, but the greatest deliverance of all is deliverance from self. This is accomplished when God puts Christ into your heart by the revelation of His excellence and glory, engages the heart and mind with Himself, so that you are glad to drop self altogether, and to say, with Paul, what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. He then becomes the centre of your life, so that everything revolves around this new centre, it is now "Not I, but Christ". Naturally self is the centre around which everything revolves.
But before this is reached how long souls are seeking to find some good in the old man, practically retaining Ishmael in the house; yet if Ishmael could be ever so cultivated, it would not be Isaac. Men can go a long way in cultivating and developing what is humanly good, and repressing what is evil in themselves; but after all it is but cultivated flesh, it is not Christ formed in them, it is the wrong man, it only proves that they have not learned that the old man, instead of being retained and cultivated, must be dropped altogether. This is what took place for the apostle when, as he says in chapter 1, "It pleased God to reveal his Son in me". That did not happen at his conversion, but at some subsequent time. There was the testing process to go on first, by which he must learn experimentally the sinfulness and unprofitableness of the old I. There was a special work of the Spirit of God by which the Son of God was revealed in his heart in such a way as to displace everything of self. Then he could say, what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.
It is by the Spirit's ministry of Christ that Christ is formed in us, and as a practical result Christ shines out in our ways. The Spirit of God will not in any way recognise Ishmael; but He seeks to install Isaac in His full place in our hearts, and it is a joyful day when the believer can say: "I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me".
May God by His Spirit lead us to know the blessedness of having our eyes fixed on the Man of His counsel, the true Isaac, and then we shall be able to enter more fully into all that He has revealed of His ways, and the grace of God given to us in Christ Jesus.
The following poem has appeared previously in various publications other than this and has been attributed to Mr Darby, inferred to be by him from its style, or described as "Lines found in Mr Darby's Bible." It was in fact published in Things New and Old, (then edited by Mr Mackintosh), Volume XV, April 1872 and the author's or authoress's initials given as C.H.I.
Mr Darby's hymn "And shall we see Thy face?" which in the third verse has the expression "in fellowship divine" was written in 1881.
THE BELIEVER'S PRIVILEGE
To walk with God! O fellowship divine!
Man's highest state on earth - Lord, be it mine!
With thee may I a close communion hold,
To thee the deep recesses of my heart unfold:
Yes, tell thee all - each weary care and grief
Into thy bosom pour, till there I find relief.
Oh! let me walk with thee, thou mighty One!
Lean on thine arm, and trust thy love alone;
With thee hold converse sweet where'er I go;
Thy smile of love my highest bliss below:
With thee transact life's business, doing all
With single aim for thee, as thou dost call:
My every comfort at thy hand receive,
My every talent to thy glory give.
Thy counsel seek in every trying hour,
In all my weakness trust thy mighty power:
Oh! may this high companionship be mine,
And all my life by its reflection shine,
My great, my wise, my never-failing Friend,
Whose love no change can know, no turn, no end!
My Saviour-God! who gav'st thy life for me,
Let nothing come between my heart and thee!
From thee no thought, no secret would I keep,
But on thy breast my tears of anguish weep,
My every wound to thee I take to heal,
For thou art touched with every pang I feel.
In thee and thee alone, I now confide,
And thee I'd follow, as my Lord and guide.
Earth's 'broken cisterns' - ah! they all have prov'd
Unsatisfying, vain, however lov'd;
The false will fail, the fondest they must go!
Oh! thus it is with all we love below.
From things of earth then let my heart be free,
And find its happiness, my Lord, in thee.
Thy Holy Spirit for my guide and guest,
Whate'er my lot, I must be safe and blest;
Wash'd in thy blood, from all my guilt made clean,
I in thy righteousness alone am seen:
Thy home, my home - thy God and Father mine!
Dead to the world - my life is hid with thine:
Its highest honours fade before my view -
Its pleasures, I can trample on them too.
With thee by faith I walk, in crowds, alone,
Making to thee my wants and wishes known:
Drawing from thee my daily strength in prayer,
Finding thine arm sustain me everywhere:
While through the clouds of sin and woe, the light
Of coming glory shines more sweetly bright;
And this my daily boast, my aim, my end,
That my Redeemer is my God - my Friend!
C.H.I.