CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE OF GOD'S SON
CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE OF GOD’S SON
My thought is to seek to show what God has in His mind in all His operations. It is a great advantage to have the end in view in regard to any given undertaking or operation, and God has been pleased to admit us into His counsels, so that we may understand what He has before Him. My desire is that the result of our meetings here may be that we may have a better appreciation of what God has in His mind. He has an ideal, and His ideal is not His afterthought. An ideal is necessarily a primary thought, so that Adam was not God’s ideal. God’s ideal is Christ, and His ideal necessarily preceded all His operations. I want you to take that in. God had that in His heart from the outset. He had Christ as the Son in mind, and in taking up each of us He has taken us up as having foreknown us. He did not foreknow us as sons of Adam. He foreknew us in connection with Christ, so that He predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son.
That is what I wish to dwell upon, but one has to inquire whether souls really believe on the Son. If you do not believe on the Son, if the light of the Son of God has not entered your heart, you have no right thought as to what God has taken you up for; hence the importance to Christians of believing on the Son. Now, the gospel of John was written for that end. We are accustomed to use John’s gospel to announce the glad tidings to the unsaved, but we must bear in mind that it was written to believers and for believers. The apostle who wrote that gospel selected certain doings and sayings of Christ which were calculated to direct the soul to His Person. He does not call attention to Him as an [p. 187] official Person, as Luke does. Luke calls attention to Christ in an official light. He was writing to Theophilus, and he sets forth in order, or “with method”, the things concerning the Word; the things that had been accredited among Christians. He set them forth in order, and the object was to show that God had intervened in Man, to make known the grace of God to the race. It was the Son of God, whom he presented, of course, but He is viewed in Luke as the Anointed, and this characterises Luke’s narrative.
Now, John is not on that line. John is not concerned about the race exactly, although he is intensely evangelical. What he is concerned about is that those who had confessedly believed through the official gospel were drawing back; they were giving up things and this is a condition exactly corresponding with our own; wonderful light has been vouchsafed by God and received widely, but, alas! many are going back. Hence John states the effect of Christ’s ministry, as recorded in chapter 6, where He is said to be the “bread of God”. He tells us how Jesus spoke and what He said. He tells us that Jesus said, that His words were spirit and life, and he tells us that many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him. Now note! “Many of his disciples;” those who had professedly believed. There was “a hard saying”, and they went back. I refer to that because of present conditions. It is a time, not exactly of gathering. God has gathered wonderfully; the testimony has had a wonderful presentation, thank God, and many have responded to it. But, alas! in many respects it is a time of “going away”, turning back and “walking no more” with the truth. The Lord says, “Will ye also go away?” To my mind that is a most touching appeal; and the ready response of Peter is, “to whom [note the word whom not to what] shall we go?”
[p. 188] They had been associated with a system, for Judaism was a system, but Peter does not say, To what shall we go? He says, “to whom shall we go?” A Person had crossed Peter’s horizon; he had become acquainted with that Person. That Person had spoken of life; He had spoken of life eternal, and Peter says, “to whom shall we go; thou hast words of life eternal?”
Now, that, to my mind, illustrates the conditions since the official system gave way. What I call the official system is that which was established by the ministry of the apostles. That gave way, but this Person did not give way, and affection clings to the Person; and from that day to this, and until the coming of the Lord, everything hinges on the Person of the Son, and on affection for the Son, so that the word of Christ is still, “Will ye also go away?” What holds you? What held Peter? Christ held Peter. The Son of God held Peter, and hence John cites this instance, among others, to show how the saints of God are held and sustained until the coming of the Lord since the breakdown of the apostolic system.
Well, now, the question is, beloved friends, whether we believe on the Son. You will find that all through in John’s gospel the result of the miracles is that somebody believed; and after recording all the signs John says Jesus did many more than these. “Many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples”. Not in the presence of the world, but in the presence of His disciples, the point being the holding of those who professed to believe. He did the signs in the presence of His disciples. The first is in chapter 2, and the result of it was that His disciples believed. So John says: “These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name”. Hence the importance of John’s gospel is that our hearts should be in the light of the Son. It was written specifically that the disciples should be in the light of the Son.
You will observe that the descent of the Spirit on Christ in John’s gospel is not to anoint Him. In Matthew and in Luke it is to anoint Him; but in John, where the Spirit descended and abode upon Him, it was simply to designate the Person; not to qualify Him for service, but to call attention to the Person. That Person was qualified inherently. In His own Person He is the Son, and He is supreme, hence John the baptist tells us: “I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptise with water, the same said unto me. Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptiseth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bear record that this is the Son of God”. In other words, the coming of the Spirit on the Son, according to John’s gospel, is to designate the Person, and that to one who ought to have known Him if He could have been known after the flesh. But the Son cannot be known after the flesh. If any one could have known Christ after the flesh it would have been the Baptist. He was his relative, contemporary with him, of the same age, and yet John did not know the Son. Unquestionably he knew Jesus, the reputed son of Joseph and Mary, but the Son of God he did not know; he became introduced to the Son — to the Person, by the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him. So in John’s gospel the Spirit of God brings forward the Son to meet conditions such as those in which we live.
Well, now, if you are in the light of that Person you are to know that God intends nothing less for you than that you should be conformed to the image of His Son. He has no other thought for you than that you should be conformed to the image of that Person, and, further, that He has foreknown you [p. 190] to that end. The apostle speaks of all things working together for good to those that love God. That is one point. Every genuine believer loves God. But then he adds, “to them that are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren”.
When the Spirit of God uses a word He uses it according to its full meaning; and if He speaks of many brethren there will be many. Remember that the word many in a divine utterance means a great deal. It means a great deal with us, but how much more with God; and Christ is to be the Firstborn among many brethren. The idea of brethren is that there is mutual affection, and Christ is to be the Firstborn among the many just like Himself, and there will be mutual affection.
Now I want to show you, if I can, how God effects this in each of us. But I would again repeat, that it is of prime importance that your soul should be in the light of the Son of God to whose image you are to be conformed. That is to say, that you should believe on the Son. I would appeal to you as to whether you do believe on the Son. If you do not believe on the Son you are always exposed to the influences of this world and the systems of this world. It is the influence of the Son of God that will hold your soul! Since Paul’s day the Son has been the great centre of attraction to hold the people of God.
Well, I want to show you how God works out the image of His Son in us collectively to begin with. When I say that He works it out collectively, I mean that He works it out by placing us in relation to one another and placing us under the same conditions, giving us the same food to eat and the same drink and the same Object. Now I shall have to be brief, but I want to enlarge a little on these things. The idea [p. 191] in Christianity is to get the people of God together. I have alluded before to a word in Proverbs 20: 2: “The rich and the poor meet together”. The rich and the poor; that is to say, the gospel goes out to every kind of person in the world, for God has only one mind about man. He thinks of everybody, and He sends the gospel to the rich and to the poor alike, and the effect of the reception of the gospel is that they all “meet together”. There is a centralising influence in the gospel. Those who receive it are drawn together so that they meet together. Now the passage continues, “and the Lord is the maker of them all”. That is. God has us together, and the first element, as it were, that is pressed home is that He is the Creator of us all. If you have anything that distinguishes you, anything that is of any value, it came from God; you did not get it in the world. Anything that you may have acquired in the world does not count in the gathering of God. It may count in the world, in business, and in society, but not in the gathering of God, where “the rich and the poor meet together”. Anything that counts there is from God. So Scripture says, “The Lord is the maker of them all”. In other words, we have all the same Maker.
Now, that is one element that produces similarity, if it is received. Have you received that light? it may be elementary light, but it is necessary light; that God is the Creator of us all? We all have the same Creator. “The Lord is the maker of them all”. The effect of that is to produce similarity, a similarity that comes from God. God is beginning His work to produce sameness, similarity in us all, and He begins by impressing upon us that He is the Maker of us all; that He is our common Creator. I do not limit the idea to merely physical creation. Whatever there is in us that is of any account comes from God. God is the Creator of it. Anything that you have that is of any value came from God.
[p. 192] Now I refer to the epistles to the Corinthians to show how in the assembly the Lord has placed that which has the effect of producing sameness or similarity, and I refer you to the Lord’s supper. At Corinth the rich and the poor met together, but the rich maintained their dignity. They had their meal according to their wealth. They ate apart from the poor, and they put the poor to shame. That was not sameness. That did not produce similarity. The rich did not there glory in their humiliation and the poor in their elevation. The rich maintained his place and gave the poor his place. But the apostle says, “this is not to eat the Lord’s supper”. The Lord’s supper is common to all Christians. The Lord in instituting it makes no difference. The bread was common to all and the drink was common to all.
That seems to be a simple thing; but does it not suggest affection? The Lord says, “This is my body, which is for you”. Who are the “you”? Christians. All Christians are included in that, as distinct from those outside. And what do we eat in common? We eat the bread. And what is the bread? The bread is the symbol of the body of Christ. Now, what was the body of Christ for? I speak of the body of the Lord reverently. What was it for? It was for the carrying out of the divine will. “Lo, I come to do thy will”; “A body hast thou prepared me”. It was for the carrying out of God’s will; and in order to carry out that will Christ’s body was surrendered in death. That is what is before us in the bread we partake of. Is not that wonderful food? Now, what is the effect of that food? The effect of that food rightly understood is that your will and my will are set aside. Thus there is similarity. It may be negative similarity, but negative similarity is necessary. If we have so many wills, it is well to get rid of them. The bread which we break is the communion of the Lord’s body, and it betokens to our hearts that He has set aside those wills of ours, in His own holy body through death. Be has set them aside. There is no room for them in God’s assembly. God’s assembly is where God rules, and hence there is no place there for our wills. The food that we partake of involves that, and the drink too. He says, “Drink ye all of it;” the all refers to all true believers. I always feel sorry for the believer who does not partake of the Lord’s supper. The Lord included him here. He says, “Drink ye all of it”. That is the drink, the common drink of the assembly. We have all the same food and the same drink. Drinking is for satisfaction. The apostle alludes to it later, saying, “we have all been given to drink of one Spirit”. So we have the same spirit. The wills are gone, and, with the wills, that naughty spirit that manifested itself in us all, and instead of that we have the Spirit of Christ; “we have all been made to drink of one Spirit”. Now, if we have all the same spirit, clearly there must be great similarity. If you get a company of people all pervaded and animated by one spirit there is great similarity.
Well, now, that Spirit gives satisfaction. He gives us character, for in chapter 12 it is a question of the anointing. “So also”, says the apostle, “is the Christ”. That is, we are all anointed. Our faces shine, for oil makes a man’s face to shine. There is satisfaction within in the drinking, and there is distinction, divine distinction, without, for we are really God’s anointed. We come into the anointing of Christ. As the apostle says, “So, also, is the Christ”.
Now I go on further, into the second epistle, and there we are brought into the presence of an Object in heaven. In chapter 1 the Son is introduced, the Son being invariably the point of recovery. Every [p. 194] promise of God is yea and Amen in the Son. Whatever failure the first epistle may have disclosed, the second epistle opens with the Son, and every promise of God is secured in the Son. No failure on the part of God’s people can touch that. So the heart is reassured. Then in chapter 3 we have the glory. Paul says, “we all, looking on the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory”. What I would point out is, that we have the same Object for our hearts. There is progress; there is development in the presentation of the truth to the Corinthians, and in chapter 3 of the second epistle the saints have the same Object for their affections in heaven. He says, “we all”. Who are the “all”? The same that partake of the cup and the bread, the same that drink into the one Spirit. “We all, looking on the glory of the Lord with unveiled face”; every one looking up at the glory! Has not that a transforming effect upon each of us? It has a transforming effect upon each one, and the effect it has upon each it has upon all. So, the apostle continues, we “are transformed according to the same image”, the same; that is to say, we are all alike, and that like is after Christ. We are transformed to the image of Christ. But we are all transformed; he says “we all”, and “we all” embraces believers in the beholding of the glory. So that now we have not only a company with a common Maker, but we have a company with a common likeness, and that likeness is the effect of beholding the glory in the face of Christ. I say — what a company! and all that is brought to pass by the ministry of the Spirit, so that we have a company formed after Christ in glory; and, as the apostle adds, “from glory to glory”.
It is in that way that God leads us on until we see the place the Son has. The Son is God’s ideal, as I have said. God never rested until the Son appeared.
[p. 195] You may have noticed that in chapter 1 of John’s gospel, the Spirit descended and remained on the Son. That is to say, God had reached His object; He rested there; there was nothing beyond that for God. He had reached His great end, for the Spirit rested upon the Son. But He would surround that Son with many sons, and so the result of the Son’s death and the wonderful ministry of the Spirit is to bring in a company and place them in association with Christ in heavenly glory, in every way suitable to Him. I say in every way suitable. You must not think for a moment that God will ever transfer anything from earth to heaven that is not suitable for heaven. That would not be like God. The Spirit’s testimony of Enoch is for the assembly, and the testimony was this, that he “pleased God”. Now, who pleases God? When do we please God? When we are formed after Christ. The Corinthians did not please God in the first epistle, and the second epistle was to the end that they should please God; hence you have the glory, so that they should be affected by it and changed, and then we get reconciliation introduced. Reconciliation brings in what is for God’s pleasure. We are reconciled as transformed. How can we be suitable, or to God’s pleasure, except as we are changed? We cannot be to His pleasure without being changed into the image of Christ, for God will have nothing less; He will have nothing lower than that upon which His Spirit rested and abode, and that is the Son; hence we get reconciliation. Reconciliation is to bring in what is for God’s pleasure, so that God has complacency in us. Then in chapter 5 we get “in Christ”. “If any one be in Christ, there is a new creation ... all things are of God”. And that is what God translates. God translates that which is of Himself, what pleases Him. We are told that at the beginning God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”. There we see that God’s idea was to have one here upon earth after His image and after His likeness, and hence He created Adam.
Now God is going to put something into heaven, and what will that be? It will be entirely of Himself. And what will it be after? After Christ. So, “if any man be in Christ, there is a new creation”. We could not be there otherwise. It must be new creation, and new creation means the total setting aside of everything of the old. “The old things have passed away, and behold all things have become new, and all things are of God”. Well, that is what goes up to heaven. What goes up to heaven is what is new-created, what is in every way after God. As I said before, God will not translate anything to heaven that is not suitable to Him, and we are rendered suitable in virtue of being created anew; hence Paul says, “I knew a man in Christ”, a man in Christ, and he was “caught up into paradise”. That man was suited to go into paradise, a “man in Christ”. “If any one be in Christ, there is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold all things have become new: and all things are of the God who has reconciled us to himself”.
Beloved friends, God puts into heaven what has morally come out of heaven, and it goes into heaven in every way suited to Him; and we are to be translated to heaven as a company. Do not think that you are to go up alone. You are not distinguished enough for that. Paul was caught up into paradise to receive revelations. But we shall go up in a company. The apostle in writing to the Thessalonians tells them that the dead in Christ shall rise first, and then that we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them. That is to say, the company is first formed upon earth, and there is not a vestige of the old left. Every particle of the old has disappeared, and that company goes [p. 197] up and is entirely suited to the place. “We which are alive and remain”, he says, “shall be caught up together with them”. We are not to go before them, and we are not to go after them. We are to go with them. We are to go together. In other words, God reverts to His original thought of His assembly. It is formed upon earth intact. It is formed in the power of life, the power of resurrection, and then there is the ascent. The ascent follows that. That is privilege. What is peculiarly assembly privilege, always follows and goes beyond resurrection. Resurrection brings the sleeping ones back to earth, and the same power changes us physically; then we are placed together in assembly, as we might say, and all caught up together to meet the Lord in the air.
You could not think of God translating to heaven what would not be suitable to heaven. If He did so, things would be disturbed there. Anything incongruous would disturb what is there. But God puts into heaven not only what is suitable for angelic company, but, wondrous thought! suited for the Son, the One who is in honour there, the One who fills that scene — the Son. As John says, “we have contemplated his glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a father”. That is the glory of the Son. We behold His glory, His distinctive, personal glory; and John says it is a glory as of an only-begotten with a father. Well, we are said to be the “companions” of that Man, and God is working it out now with each of us. Every bit of ministry, every bit of exercise, every bit of divine culture, is to form us after the pattern of Christ, so that God ultimately secures a company that is in every way formed after that Man; and then that company is translated. And what a company! As the apostle says, “Many brethren”. That vast host ascends to join the Lord, and then to come out into public display with Him as His “brethren”, so that He is the Firstborn among them.
May God grant that His ideal may be the ideal that we have before us, and that we may yield ourselves to God as in the light of the Son, so that He may form us after His Son, to be companions of His Son.
Pages 199 - 276. “Wisdom; its Instruction and Final Result”. New York, 1911 (Volume 12).