SERVICE – THE DIVINE STANDARD

D. J. Hutson

John 8: 28; 13: 13–15; Acts 20: 18, 19, 35; Hebrews 13: 7, 8

I have read these scriptures with a view to continuing what we have been considering as to having the absolute standard before us in Jesus. The reference in John 8 is indeed profound.

In speaking as He does, Jesus brings together in such a wonderful way the glory of His Person, who He is, and the perfection of His humanity, speaking of Himself as the One taught of the Father—not exactly what the Father taught Him, although it would be that, but as the Father had taught Him. He could say in John 20: 21, ‘ As the Father sent me forth, I also send you’. So here He brings in the glory of who He is in His eternal Person, the I AM, and yet along with it, “I do nothing of myself”. Think of what it says in Hebrews 1: 3 as to who He is—“the effulgence of his glory and the expression of his substance”, the One by whom God made the worlds, “upholding all things by the word of his power”, and yet the same glorious Person, the One whom they will have to recognise as the I AM, saying, “I do nothing of myself”. How glorious, how perfect, the humanity of Jesus! We can understand how the apostle Paul could say, “The mystery of piety is great. God has been manifested in flesh”, 1 Timothy 3: 16. God has come into these circumstances, come into these conditions, apart from sin, in all the perfection and glory of Jesus. “Ye shall know that I am”—God Himself—yet He could say, with only a comma between, “I do nothing of myself”; then there is the standard—‘ As the Father has taught me’.

I believe this would underlie what He says later, “He that has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14: 9). So perfectly did Jesus do and say things, not only what the Father did and said, but as He did and said them; what was seen in Jesus was the Father Himself.

These are matters which I feel we can say little about. How unique are the words of Jesus, more even than the inspired word, for they are the words of One who is God Himself. The prophets spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, by divine inspiration, but this is God Himself speaking in the Person of Jesus. “… ye shall know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself”. What can we say about it? but let us contemplate, for our souls, our affections, are moved by this glorious Person in the place into which He has come in this wonderful arrangement of love in which we are taught, and know by experience, that God is in the light: and “if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another”, 1 John 1: 7. Beloved, these things are to be the subject of our communion together in the holy fellowship—the glories of Jesus, the wonderful blend, may I say, of His Person and His humanity brought together by Himself, one might almost say two extremes—“I AM”, and then the dependence of His manhood, “I do nothing of myself”.

Now in John 13 we again have Him moving here

and we have portrayed before us not only what He did but how He did it, always remembering who it was that did it. John writes his gospel as having had the experience of this chapter, in the light of the present position of Christ in glory, and also in the gain of the presence of the Holy Spirit here. So as he wrote the first verse of his gospel it could well be that he would pause in the contemplation of this experience in John 13, thinking of who was there. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”

—John would pause and say to himself, ‘And He washed my feet!’. That is who was there in the glory of His Person, in the perfection of His humanity, “knowing that the Father had given him all things into his hands” (John 13: 3)—into those hands which Jesus employed in service to His own. But then it adds, “He came out from God and was going to God”. Of whom else could this be said but of this Person who is Himself God? He came out alone, but He has suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, and here He is serving that, as returning. He might not return alone but that there might be those of whom He could say that they might have part with Him. So He rises from supper, you might say He divests Himself of all that was official, and having taken a linen towel girds Himself, and pouring water into the wash-hand basin begins to wash the feet of His disciples and to wipe them with the linen towel with which He was girded. How complete is the service of Jesus!

What refreshment it would bring. He says, “He that is washed all over needs not to wash save his feet, but is wholly clean”—fitted thus to have part with Himself—by His serving them in love. And when He had washed their feet He says, “Do ye know what I have done to you? Ye call me the Teacher and the Lord”—but then as Servant He had laid aside the garment of the Teacher and the garment of the Lord for the moment, that He might serve them in love. So He says, “If I therefore, the Lord and the Teacher”—never ceasing to be what He was on account of what He became—“have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet”. Much has been said about it, nor will I say much in enlargement on 7

the scripture, because I think it should remain in our minds freshly in its own beauty and power and effectiveness as simply going over it together.

Then He says, “As I have done to you, ye should do also”—not what I have done to you, but

‘ as I have done to you’. This is the divine standard of service. This is the level on which we should serve one another, rather than the official side. John does not here give us the official side, but he gives us this aspect, service in lowly grace in the infinite perfection of Jesus as He was here in service to His own that they might have part with Him. What can we say about it? What can I say about it, as to myself? but then it is here; what we may refer to as being abstract, as the standard, but concrete in this glorious Person—‘ As I have done to you’.

It is there, beloved brethren, that we might lay hold of it, that we might let the words of Jesus, the example of Jesus, by the Spirit have its own way in our hearts, that we might thus serve to refresh one another, to liberate one another, that we might have part together. He could say,

“Part with me”; for us it would be that we might serve one another in such a way that we would liberate one another, so that we can enter together into that of which we have been speaking together, that we may have fellowship together, in the precious knowledge that the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses from every sin. That was how far He went to serve us. That was

what it involved for Him. John knew what He had done, for he witnessed the precious blood of Jesus coming from His pierced side.

I read in Acts 20 because there we have, not now the Lord Jesus, but the beloved apostle, a man of like passions to ourselves, and yet apprehended by the Lord from the glory that he might serve Him, that he might be a delineation. So we see in Paul one who could draw attention to himself; he says, ‘Ye know how I was with you’. Oh, dear brethren, how he would give an impression of Jesus as he moved amongst the saints. That is what Paul did. So what he leaves with this company is not just an impression of himself; the last words they hear from Paul are, “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that he himself said, It is more blessed to give than to receive”. Mr. Taylor drew attention to the importance of every word of Scripture and how important each one is. I would commend it to the young, that if ever you are arrested by a word of Scripture that is not strictly necessary to the giving of the sense, then get to God and seek the help of the Spirit to understand why it is there. So it is not simply ‘He said’, but ‘He Himself said’—that is, that there should be no doubt. Paul is not drawing attention to himself; as he says, “We do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus Lord, and ourselves your bondmen for Jesus’ sake”, 2 Corinthians 4: 5. So the lasting impression that they would have would be of Jesus Himself, and any of us who have any little part in service—and all of us have some part, dear brethren, serving one another in obscurity it may be—should always serve in a way that leaves an impression of that glorious Person in all His perfection.

“It is more blessed to give than to receive”. Oh, how that was seen in Jesus! He could not have given more, and He would not give less, for He came to serve. What an incentive for us! We see the line of self-surrender set out in the service of the Master, and we are to follow in His steps. So Paul says, “Ye know how I was with you all the time from the first day that I arrived in Asia, serving the Lord with all lowliness, and tears, and temptations … how I held back nothing of what is profitable”. What concern he had for the profit of the saints, not seeking a place for himself. How we need to be preserved, dear brethren, from following men. We would have been preserved from so much in the past if we had kept before us what was brought out in those readings in Barnet in 1929, ‘The Divine Standard of Service’ (J.T. N.S. Vol. 29 p.330) in which the glory of the Person of the Son of God came out so distinctly.

Here the apostle is keeping that standard before the saints—‘He Himself said’—that is what Paul was labouring to bring before the saints, ‘ How I was with you’, and ‘ How I held back nothing of what was profitable to you’.

Then he says, “Yourselves know that these hands have ministered to my wants and to those who were with me”. He could draw attention to his hands. We spoke about the hands of Jesus, but here it is the hands of the apostle, serving so that he might not be a burden to them but that they might get the full gain of his ministry, that they might be liberated, and have part with him in the inheritance, related to a Man in glory. Then he says, “I have shewed you all things”, (Acts 20: 35); not ‘I have told you all things’, although he had set out the truth and taught them. But he had laboured, he had been from house to house, he had wept amongst them. He says, “I have shewed you all things”—it was not only what he had taught them, but what he had shown them. The beloved apostle was a demonstration. Nothing impresses young people more than a working

model. You might say that Paul was amongst these elders at Ephesus as a working model. He showed them all things. The great end of his labours was to leave an indelible impression of the glorious Person of Jesus, so he says, “He himself said, It is more blessed to give than to receive”.

But then it is to be extended, so I read in Hebrews, “Remember your leaders who have spoken to you the word of God”. Thank God for those who have led amongst us. Let not what has happened to some in any sense detract from the Lord’s sovereignty in having raised up men of gift, especially those whom we speak of as leaders in the revival—such as the distinctive ministries of Mr. Darby, Mr. Raven, and Mr. Taylor. I believe what we had in London last October was valuable in relation to the Lord’s provision for our time. It has been a time when the saints have been recovered to the truth, and the truth was unfolded in a systematic way, bringing us to the recognition of the blessed Spirit Himself, the One who has served so constantly and consistently, so gloriously, all through this dispensation. We may not be able to trace that golden thread, but there it has been. The teaching that we had that He is not in the world but in the assembly is vital. There has been that under the eye of Christ, under the control of the Holy Spirit, an area where that service has been proceeding all the time. It says that “Christ also loved the assembly, and has delivered himself up for it”

(Ephesians 5: 25), and His service has continued all the time without a break because of the presence of the Holy Spirit here.

One of the crowning touches of the unfolding of the truth under those ministries was to bring us to recognise the distinctive place of the Holy Spirit Himself objectively, and what was due to Him in His holy Person. At one time it was said that we

would not again look for distinctive leadership as we had known it in those men; the Holy Spirit having brought us to that point in the recognition of Himself, we would go forward dependently on Him until the Lord came. I believe, dear brethren, that if we trace that as a point of departure in relation to the sorrows that have been amongst us in recent years, we shall have made some progress in our souls. That is a point to which the Lord is bringing us back, and to which the Holy Spirit is working at the present time to recover us, and I believe it is a point to which the beloved brethren are answering in recognising increasingly the place that the Spirit has in the opening up of the truth to us in the completing of these final touches in regard to the assembly’s history here, the final adornment in view of the day of presentation.

But I have digressed. “Remember your leaders who have spoken to you the word of God …

considering the issue of their conversation”. What did it lead to? What did their manner of life lead to? That is what we have been speaking about in the reading, “He that says he abides in him ought, even as he walked, himself also so to walk”, 1 John 2: 6. There have been men who have followed in His steps. They have walked in the light of the revelation, and where will that direct us? It will direct us to God Himself. God has come out. In that wonderful chapter, John 13, it says that He came out from God and was going to God. True ministry comes from God and will bring us to God. “Considering the issue of their conversation …

Jesus Christ … the same yesterday, and today, and to the ages to come”. Such men did not draw attention to themselves. In his letters, when in conflict as to the truth, Mr. Raven said he felt that the attacks on him were ‘utterly out of

proportion to the weight of the person implicated’ (‘Letters’ of Mr. Raven, N.S. pp.14 and 35), but thank God for those who have recognised the weight of what he said, and for the way that the truth that was recovered to us through his ministry has been revived in these latter days so that we are being brought together into the enjoyment of eternal life. It was not a question of making anything of himself, but directing the saint to Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and to the ages to come.

Leaders may come and leaders may go—and, sadly, we may say leaders may fail—but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and to the ages to come. True ministry will lead to Him where He is, and that involves for us the full revelation of God—a Man in glory, the Holy Spirit here, and over all the Father in the supremacy of love—God known in Father, Son and Holy Spirit. What a great end to be reached! This is the way that the word will direct us. This is the way, I believe, that those whom the Lord has used walked and served, and as they spoke it would be with that attractiveness that would lead us to desire to know more of where they lived in the secret of their souls’ communion. We would love to know and be drawn into it. It is possible. This is what the end of their conversation would be. May we be drawn into it! Jesus could say in a perfect, unique, and distinctive way, “Come and see”, John 1: 39. Let us remember that. Let nothing of what has been said suggest that Jesus is anything other than absolutely unique in the glory of His humanity and in the distinctiveness of His Person. He could speak of “part with me”. The apostles came into it—the apostles’ fellowship—and they would be concerned that the saints should be brought into what they knew of the secret of divine purpose and counsel, and thus be brought into the knowledge of God Himself, as Paul says, “Until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ”, Ephesians.4: 13. Well, may we be directed by what we have been considering here today. May we not lose sight of the standard; may we have nothing less before us, and may the Lord help us, for His name’s sake.

Address at Peterhead
8 November 1975