CHRIST'S WORK FOR THE FATHER
CHRIST’S WORK FOR THE FATHER
On previous occasions we have seen, I trust, that everything is of the Father, that is to say, He is the source of all that is eternal and abiding. We were looking last time at what the saints are to the Father.
I desire now to take up Christ’s work in reference to the Father. All His work had reference to the Father. He says, “I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me”; “The works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness of me”. These and other passages bear out this thought. Christ’s work was for the Father. He came to gather a flock, and to place them consciously in the Father’s hand. “I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand”. This is the nature of the work effected by Christ. It is to me a very solemn consideration that the Jew was left practically darker as the effect of Christ’s being here; but Christ had gathered out a flock for the Father, and the flock is made conscious of being in the hand of the Father, out of which no man can pluck them.
The Lord did not contemplate any change outwardly in the world. Christ had no confidence in the world. The platform, if I may so speak, of the chapter before us is the world; it is not merely the Jewish fold that is in view, but the Lord says, “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold”. The fold was an enclosure in the world, but there were sheep outside of the fold, Gentiles really. Morally speaking, the Jew was no better than the rest of the world, although he had more light. We see this from the beginning of their history, for they were idolaters in Egypt — they were in that sense no [p. 272] better than the Egyptians — and, again, in the wilderness and in Canaan they became idolaters. When Christ was here He found greater faith in a Gentile than in Israel. Such was the history of the Jews; morally they formed part of the world.
As has been said, the effect of Christ’s work was to leave the world outwardly as it was. The sheep were to be led out of the fold, but the fold remained as it was, only darker. We are familiar with the fact that when a light is brought into a dark room and taken out again, the darkness seems greater than ever. Well, it was like that with the Jews. But other sheep were to be brought to the sheep of the Jewish fold, and there was to be one flock and one shepherd. To put it in Paul’s language, the Gentiles were to become, “fellow-citizens of the saints, and of the household of God”. (Ephesians 2: 19). The point with Christ was to place the flock consciously in the hand of the Father. Christ came from the Father as light into the world, and in a sense the light abides in His people, but His work has placed the flock in the hand of the Father. When the Lord comes again He will take the saints into the Father’s house, but that is future, and I do not think people are very much affected by what is future, but they are affected by what is present, and being in the Father’s hand is present.
Now I want to look a little in detail at how the work of Christ is carried out. The foregoing is the general idea of the chapter.
In coming into the fold the first thing the Lord did was to gain the confidence of the sheep. It was to this end that He opened blind eyes — He brought light from God. The same thing takes place now when a man is converted — he gets light from God. Hence a converted person is not moved by scoffing, because he is conscious that he has light. I value the Scriptures because they bring me light from God. There may be difficulties in the Scriptures which I cannot explain, but the Scriptures bring me into the light of God, and that is a very great [p. 273] thing. You see this illustrated in the case of the blind man in John 9. I do not doubt that that man had the eyes of his soul opened, and the effect of it was that he came to the conclusion that Christ and His work were entirely exceptional. He began with an orthodox statement about the Lord, namely, that He was a prophet and then he got further light, until he discovered that Christ was exceptional. “Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind”. That was something beyond the idea of a prophet. It is the same now with people when they get their eyes opened. They realise that the Scriptures are exceptional, and they do not begin to compare them with other books. It is the voice of the living God which speaks in Scripture, and His voice is totally different from any other voice. I may say that in Christ God became His own testimony. He had spoken by prophets, but prophets were not themselves the Word, they had the Word; but Christ was the Word, and thus God became His own testimony. God spake in the Son. This is the character of Scripture, it is the living God speaking. If a man’s eyes are opened he will see a character about Scripture wholly exceptional; the Scriptures cannot be ranked with any other book in the world. This is the effect of having the eyes opened. It is in this way that the Lord gains man’s confidence, and be is then ready to follow Christ out of the world. This is really what baptism means. You are prepared to leave Egypt, to pass through the Red Sea to come into the house of God, into the circle of christian fellowship. Thus the Word of God, or Christ who is the Word, gains the confidence of man. The Lord put the question to the man, “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” He replies that he believes, and then he worships Him, and is ready to follow the Lord. This is how grace works. Scripture is to me the voice of the living God. The Lord says of the Scriptures, “They are they which testify of me”. (John 5: 39.) He is the spirit of Scripture,
[p. 274] and we follow Him out of the world into the christian circle.
The first thing I would note in the chapter is that Christ is spoken of as the door of the sheep. The idea I get from the door is that it leads you into what you have not been in before. Now there is very great gain in that, and I would like to dwell upon it a little in detail.
The first gain is that you are saved. There is security, and I believe you get this security by being brought into the kingdom of God. Any foreigner in coming to England soon feels that he is secure, because there is a stable government. So also the first effect of entering in by Christ as the door is that you come into the security of the kingdom of God. I believe that anyone who really confesses Christ as Lord is not afraid of anything; he is not afraid of the devil, because Christ will take care of him. There is light and good government where He is.
The second point is, “And shall go in and out, and find pasture”. You come into the liberty of the Spirit. You have left the world and the fold; you have left the world at its best — for the fold was the best thing in the world, for it was of God — or at its worst, and are come to Christ; you are in the kingdom and get liberty; you are admonished to “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free”.
And then, thirdly, you come into pasture, that is, divine teaching. Your soul is instructed and nurtured in the love of God.
Next the Lord says, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”. I believe life in that verse to mean that the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. It is life morally, life in me. Now it is one thing for life to be in me and another thing for me to be in life. The point in Romans 8 is life in you. The idea connected with “eternal life”
[p. 275] is, to my mind, that you are in life, in the scene of it. Here the Lord says “that they might have life”, that is, that the Spirit might be life in the sheep. I think you get this illustrated in the paralytic who lay helpless, and of whom it might be said that his bed carried him, but when the Lord speaks he is able to carry his bed. This was the object of Christ coming then, that the sheep might have life abundantly.
Now I would like to challenge all as to whether all this is fulfilled in us. Security is a great thing, the kingdom is great gain. Then liberty comes in. Very, very many christians are in great bondage, but liberty is secured for them, and whether you are rich or poor, whatever your circumstances may be, it is there for all alike, but I think the poor man is much more likely to enter into liberty than the rich. I believe it is to this end that you are brought into the kingdom, and it is there that you are instructed in the love of God. You get holiness and intelligence. I believe you get remarkable intelligence when you are instructed in the love of God. You are “able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height”; as it is put in Ephesians 3: 18. The grace of Christ is to me wonderful. He went to the cross a ransom for all, and now He has sent the Spirit, the promise of the Father, that we might have life abundantly in the scene of death.
In verses 11 - 15 we are carried a point further. The instruction goes on. We get a change of title as to Christ. He is now the Good Shepherd, and of the Good Shepherd there are two points to notice. First He gives His life for the sheep, and then He says “[p. 276] and know my sheep, and am known of mine”. It is not that we know Christ as the Father knows Him, but He knows His sheep and they know Him, as the Father knows Him and He knows the Father. The Father and the Son are divine Persons, and divine Persons can fully know divine Persons; but Christ gives us an understanding; He says,
“and know my sheep, and am known of mine”.
Then we get a point further in the “other sheep”. “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring ... and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd”. The great end of Christ’s work was the one flock and one shepherd. That is to say, there was to be one where two had been. In the place of Jew and Gentile, there was to be one flock and one Shepherd. The two became one in the one Shepherd, and the whole flock depends upon the one Shepherd. We read in Ephesians 2: 15, “Having abolished in his flesh the enmity ... for to make in himself of twain one new man”. This was the end for which Christ came into the world, that there might be one flock morally outside of the world, and this is very important to apprehend. We live in a day when the world has for its own ends taken up christianity, and therefore we need to go back to what was from the beginning. Christ came into the world to take out of it the one flock for the one Shepherd. First He is the Shepherd of the sheep (verse 2), then He is the Good Shepherd (verse 11), and then the One Shepherd (verse 16).
There is a principle which runs through John’s gospel to which I would like to call attention, that is that the teaching of Christ is always progressive. He pursues His instruction, so that each successive statement is an advance on something that went before. Now what comes out is that the Jews are proved not to be the sheep of Christ. The coming of Christ tested the world, and “men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil”. The world was tested by the presence of God Himself in Christ. It is to me terrible that the effect of testing the world was to bring out the enmity of man to God. Men would not have Him. Thus the Jew was proved to be outside of the flock. The Lord says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me”. There is good reason that the sheep should know His voice, for He [p. 277] has given us light. He went into death to make God known to us, and then He goes to the right hand of God and imparts the Holy Spirit; that is, He gives us a witness of God’s love in His death, and then gives us the Spirit to shed abroad that love in our hearts, and the Spirit turns us back to the witness: “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. I think it was a great moment for Peter when he said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”. This was different from all he had seen before. Christ was entirely exceptional; He came to make God known, and His death is the perfect witness of God’s love. I think that is enough to make us say we know Him. The sheep know Him.
He says further in verse 28, “I give unto them eternal life”, which is the next step. This is for the sheep down here. The sheep have a title to enter into it now, but they have to do so. It is one thing to have life in you, and another thing to enter into life. The former has to do with christian life in the wilderness, and affects all of us. “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you”. This is life for the wilderness, and the requirements of the law are fulfilled in us. In type you see this in Israel after the brazen serpent, and while still in the wilderness; they had life, but then they did not enter into life in type until they got to the land and ate the old corn. In the wilderness they had life, like many christians of today in their individual pathway, but they go on with many things which come to an end. But when you come to eternal life you enter into what is beyond death, the other side of Jordan. You are then in priestly position, and enter into eternal life, into what is placed on the other side of death. I think these two things have been very much mixed up in our minds, and need to be disentangled. You get life abundantly, but there is also, “I give unto them eternal life”. Now God has placed this beyond Jordan. By faith you are risen with Christ,
[p. 278] and must be in association with Him thus. I think that few christians apprehend this. It is really for the assembly, in which Christ leads the praise. You have passed out of the death scene into what is eternal.
Then the sheep are kept, they shall never perish; that is, I take it, they will be kept and never apostatise, and they are placed in the Father’s hand. It is a wonderful thing to be consciously in the Father’s hand. And the instruction closes with, “I and my Father are one” — one in counsel and purpose, there is no possible divergence of mind. Christ is the Shepherd, the Leader, who gathers the sheep and places them in the Father’s hand. The sheep were given to Him of the Father, and He places them in the Father’s hand. You have to begin by coming in at the door, and then you find security, liberty, pasture, life, and eventually eternal life, and thus you are in assembly privilege in association with Christ on the resurrection side. This is the work of Christ for the Father as presented in the chapter before us, as far as I understand it.