JESUS CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD
[p. 231] JESUS CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD
2 Corinthians 1: 19 - 22; 1 John 5: 19 - 21
The anointing, the sealing, and the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts are all concurrent; they all refer to the Spirit, and receiving them is not successive.
The Son of God must supersede everything. Adam might be called the son of God in a figurative way, but when we get the One who is really the Son of God there must of necessity be a new start. There were promises given before, but all awaited the coming of the Son of God. He did not come in as a remedy, but to fulfil all that was in the purpose of God. We have attached too much importance to the thought of a remedy; I admit there was recovery, but we must remember He was the Man of God’s purpose. The idea of anointing is intelligence, and this becomes characteristic of saints. The anointing oil “ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard; that went down to the skirts of his garments”; but it is connected with knowledge. “The same anointing teaches you of all things”, and “ye need not that any man teach you” (1 John 2: 27). No one can add to the Spirit of God, and in principle one who has the Spirit knows all things. How far one may come under the anointing so as to be in the virtue of it is another matter; but you cannot go outside the anointing; there is no truth outside the anointing. All truth came out by the Son of God; He left nothing unrevealed; and the believer has now in himself the answer to the complete revelation which came out in the Son of God. Growth goes on by the teaching of the Spirit, and as you grow you understand; you cannot understand divine things save as you grow. Many a one has things in the Spirit who has them not in himself by the Spirit. Christ Himself was anointed for His service. “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; who [p. 232] went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil: for God was with him”. Christ’s anointing was connected with His service.
Ques What does “justified in the Spirit” mean?
I think it is by His miracles; His miracles justified Him. All His acts of power were done by the Spirit of God, and were a witness and attestation of what He said; He said that He was the Son of God.
It is a great point to apprehend Christ as the beginning, not simply as from the beginning, but as the beginning. The Son of God comes in on the one hand as revealing God, being competent to do so, and on the other He is Head to man. The Son of God is God’s thought for every man; God has no other thought for man at this moment but Christ in glory; He is the expression of the mind of God for man. Hence the apostle says, “God was pleased to reveal his Son in me, that I may announce him as glad tidings among the nations” (Galatians 1: 16). God has but one mind in regard of man, and that mind is expressed in the Son of God, and that was the gospel committed to Paul. Being in the Son of God carries you up to the Source; the Son of God has come out to reveal God, but being in the Son of God carries you up to the Source. The great world system around us, which exercises such power over the minds of men, is nothing at all for God. The only thing for God now is the Son of God, which means the introduction of a completely new order of things. The world to come means the coming habitable earth in contrast to the Roman earth, and it is put under the Son of Man, and all based on redemption. The thought of the Son of God carries us on to the new heaven and the new earth, but the coming age is more the seventh day. The kingdom is the climax in regard to creation order and God being glorified in this order, and this fulfils the idea of the seventh day. But the first day is brought in in connection with the Son of God and resurrection; it is a new beginning. In the millennium they overlap; there [p. 233] is the seventh day, and a first day which is really the eighth day; we get the two in the feast of tabernacles. The two ideas are different; the seventh day is the climax to God’s government here on earth, but the first day sets forth the beginning of an entirely new and eternal order of things. The world to come is the time of God’s rest; it is a kind of sabbath. While the seventh and eighth days overlap in the millennium, the ideas are still quite distinct; one is a climax, the other is a new beginning, and that in connection with the Son of God.
God has a rest, He rests in Christ; rest has reference to the created order of things. The day of God is the day of which the Son of God is the beginning.
“The Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus”. If you think of the Son of God, you must not think of Him as He was here, as having entered on the state of flesh and blood, but as He is in glory. He has reached humanity now according to the purpose of God; He entered a condition of humanity which was not final in order to accomplish redemption. But the Spirit of God’s Son refers to the Son of God in the glorious condition in which He now is, not that of humiliation. Christ in glory is the expression of God’s thought for man; He has no other thought for man.
People have to come to Christ to get living water. I should announce in the name of the Head (who is Head of every man) repentance and forgiveness, that men might he attracted to Christ, to receive from Him living water. Forgiveness is an announcement on the part of God that men may come to the Head. Mr. Darby said that he could go to any man in the street and ask him if he answered to the Head.
Living water is life in a man, and that is what man needs; men feel a total incapability in regard to having to do with God, and living water is what meets it. When God’s testimony is accepted man has forgiveness, but forgiveness is not the end of God’s mind in regard of [p. 234] man, but life. Christ came that we might have life. I speak of the thing from the divine side, and from the point of view of the love of God. God sees that what man needs is living water that he may live; but the responsible man needs forgiveness, and God announces that, so that men may come to Christ and receive from Him living water. You can never understand anything which does not already exist in yourself by the Spirit.
Forgiveness is the last word that God has to say to the man forgiven; henceforward he is to live in the Son of God. Before you can understand life with God you must be clear of your liability before God. Before Christ took up the place in resurrection of a life-giving Spirit He went into death to bear the liabilities which lay on man. When a man has received forgiveness he is clear as regards responsibility in the flesh. When forgiveness of sins is presented in Christ’s name it ought to bring a man to Christ. God has brought a new Man on the scene, a new Head, the Christ. The apostles took care to make the name of Christ prominent; that name presents One who is living, One who died and rose again; and those who accepted the testimony were put in contact with the living Head. The fact that God has revealed Himself proves Him to be the true God; He has come out in love to man. What is true and genuine can bear to reveal itself. A devil has to keep in the background, and put forward idols; if he revealed himself it would expose that he was a devil, and the enemy of man. But God is the true God. Wisdom and the strange woman are really Christ and the world; they are viewed as both bidding for man. The world offers gratification for man’s lusts.
John takes up the question of man’s state, and begins the new thing. The gospel of John brings out in general what is true in the Father and the Son; in the epistle we get what is true in Christ and in the christian. There are two things in regard of Christ in John’s gospel — the Son of Man who is in heaven, a new kind of Man, the Man of God’s purpose, and then we get the Son of Man lifted up, for a door had to be opened for man to leave the world. God rested from the outset; there is a suspension of it, man having fallen, but the rest of God is there, for all His purposes were hid in Christ, although not manifested. The seventh day remains for God, and those who believe do enter into rest. The real subject of God’s testimony is the Son of God; there is no gospel short of that now. The Son of God is to be preached as glad tidings among the heathen.
In the death of Christ — the cross — is a real demonstration of God’s thought of man, but it was also the end of that man before God; the death of Christ was both declarative and judicial. It is as much the former as the latter, although that point has been overlooked. The death of Christ is the declaration of God’s righteousness and love. If all that was of God was to come out, God took care to demonstrate the true condition of man before Him. “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. That is the declaration of the love of God. Man, in hanging Christ on the tree, only demonstrated his own wickedness, and man’s true place in regard of God, but there was also in it the declaration of the love of God.
The earnest of the Spirit is, I suppose, the earnest of the liberty which will characterise the pouring out of the Spirit upon all flesh, when creation will come into liberty.