THE CALLING OF GOD
[p. 122] THE CALLING OF GOD
Reading, Revised by F.E.R.
Ephesians 1: 1 - 23 Would you say that we get the calling of God here?
FER I think so. The epistle starts from it. In the unfolding of the truth in Romans, you begin with the righteousness of God as the basis of His ways, then you get the kingdom established in the Lord Jesus, and its consequences, our justification and standing in grace; then divine teaching and reconciliation are brought in, and the way of deliverance; and in connection with that, all that is involved in the possession of the Spirit, until at last you are brought, at the close of chapter 8, into the light of the calling; you are led up to it in that way.
RH Then all is in the opposite direction here in Ephesians.
FER Yes. The point at the end of Romans is the starting point here, “whom he did predestinate them he also called”. But that is where you start in Ephesians, “who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love”.
RH You really begin here at the top.
FER You begin at the top, and you come down from that. Romans and Ephesians are unique in that way. Romans begins in looking at things on man’s side down here, his moral state, etc., and showing in contrast to that how God has established in another Man His kingdom in righteousness; but in the opening here you get nothing about man’s state, but what God has done in blessing. The Ephesians begins from the [p. 123] height of eternal purpose; in the first six verses you have no allusion to sin; for the counsel of God was in a sense apart from the question of sin. Sin being there had to be met, of course.
RH It is all blessing here.
FER Yes, “chosen in him” is before ever sin came in; then sin came in and had to be met. So you get further down in the chapter, “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace”.
JT If Ephesians is the continuation of Romans, where do you put Colossians?
FER I do not think Ephesians is a continuation of Romans, but in Ephesians the truth is taken up from the opposite point of view. It is taken up from God’s standpoint, not ours.
JP So in Romans you go up the stream, and touch the source at chapter 8, but in Ephesians you begin there and come down the stream. You can hardly call coming down the stream a continuation of going up the stream.
T I suppose Ephesians is an opening out of the counsel of God before the foundation of the world.
FER Yes.
JP Ephesians is not a continuation of anything, but, begins from the purpose of God.
WM Do you think that if christians are in the apprehension of God’s calling, our lowest blessings are enjoyed better?
FER You come down to them in this chapter; the first chapter is a full presentation of God’s ways in Christ, so that you begin from the very top, and come to forgiveness of sins, and inheritance, and the earnest of the Spirit; but these are in that sense secondary to the calling. The great idea is the calling.
RSS You spoke this morning of the calling and eternal life as though they were synonymous.
FER The form which eternal life takes in regard [p. 124] to us is sonship, and if you get into the reality of God’s calling, that is sonship, you enter thus into eternal life. The same truth comes out in the last chapter of John’s first epistle, “He that hath the Son hath life”. You apprehend the calling of God, and it is there that you have eternal life.
JT Then in Christ at the present moment we have set forth what God intends in regard to us.
FER If you follow the chapter down it is a remarkable unfolding of the way in which it has pleased God to present Himself to us “in Christ”. The words “in Christ” occur frequently.
JT It is not a question of His nature here, but of His purpose; what I mean is this, you recollect some time ago it was remarked that there are two distinct lines in Scripture, one in reference to the nature of God expressed in the death of Christ, and the other in reference to His counsels, set forth in the resurrection of Christ?
FER Yes. His nature is different from His counsel. Here you get His counsel. There is His nature, for God is love, and “God so loved the world”, but at the same time God had His counsels, before the foundation of the world. All those counsels are brought into effect in spite of, and even through, what has come in, that is, sin; but the counsel was there before.
WM Those who are the objects of His counsel are before Him in love.
FER He has chosen us that we should be so.
EP Has God formed counsels since sin came in as to the administration of things?
FER I think all that has come to pass was in the mind of God, and is worked out through what has come in.
JT He made promises since sin came in.
FER But those promises were the expression of His counsel. If you remember, it says in Hebrews 6,
“[p. 125] Wherein God willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel”. Hence it is evident that promise is the expression of counsel.
RH So that we get this revelation in time of what was in counsel in eternity.
FER I think so. And so, too, you read, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”, and, “whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”.
JT Do the promises to Abraham go beyond the kingdom?
FER They go as far as this, that Abraham was to be the heir of the world.
GR The passage you quoted just now is “from the foundation of the world”, but here we have “before the foundation of the world”.
FER Because the things are heavenly; His thoughts concerning the earth were in His mind from the outset, from the time there was a habitable earth.
WM Do you think that the light of sonship was presented to the Galatians to have the effect of restoring them?
FER Yes, the apostle could not restore them by what they knew; you will not bring back people who have departed by what they know; you have to present something else to them. If the Galatians had heard this before, they certainly had not taken it in. The epistle to the Galatians is peculiar in this respect; it plunges, in regard to the gospel, right into the purpose of God, “To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen”. I think it served in a strong way to expose the inconsistency of what the Galatians were doing.
GR They were going back to the place of servants. Would you say that in verse 3 of this [p. 126] chapter you have the whole breadth of the blessing of God contemplated?
FER Yes, I think so.
GR Verses four and five open up more relationship.
FER The truth all goes together; sonship belongs to heaven, and nature belongs to sonship. You could not be brought to sonship without being according to God in nature, and that involves being in heavenly places. That is, the calling is for heavenly places, and heavenly places is the scene proper for the calling.
GR The point of the passage is not election, but to connect us with that which is outside the earth.
FER That is it. There were certain counsels in God’s mind, and God has come in to give effect to those counsels. This belongs to another place and refers to what was before the world. It does not belong to the history of time nor the earth. He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.
JT Is the expression ‘heavenly’ included in the idea of eternal life?
FER No, I do not think so. I think eternal life refers to earth. I do not think we should talk about eternal life in heaven.
JT Only we have it there.
FER I do not think the term will have much force there.
JT The thing will surely be there.
FER We shall be there.
JT I will have to get this clear, for I do not understand it. How do you explain as to eternal life? I have understood that a sphere is included.
FER I think it implies a sphere of relationship and blessing, but that is not necessarily heaven. It may be heavenly, but it is not necessarily heaven.
[p. 127] I do not see much sense in connecting the idea of eternal life with heaven.
JT Well, I do not, but still I have understood that it is connected with heaven also.
FER I do not know the connection. The point of eternal life is that it comes in where death was. I think it stands in Scripture in contrast to death.
JSA I think there has been confusion between a sphere and a place. The sphere as you use it is moral; the place is more material.
FER Yes.
JT I see you connect eternal life with relationship more, having “chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love; having predestinated us unto the adoption of children”; that is the idea.
FER Quite so, but you are brought into that in anticipation now, and hence it is you get eternal life.
JT Does not sonship belong to heaven?
FER Yes, but we are brought into that sphere while we are still on earth. You are passed out of death into life.
WM Does heavenly places refer to the world to come?
FER Yes, in its moral connection.
JSA Do you speak of death in a moral way?
FER I speak of it as the judgment of God on man, “as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin”, in contrast with grace reigning “through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord”. If you do not apprehend a sphere, you have no idea of eternal life. You may quarrel with the term, but most certainly you have not eternal life in the sphere in which you are naturally.
GR Would not that be the way in which Old Testament saints looked at it in contrast [p. 128] with death?
FER Yes, and they were taught to look at it in that way, “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life”.
GR But in the New Testament the thought is greatly enlarged.
FER Because the sphere is brought into light, and the power in virtue of which you can be in that scene.
Ques Is sonship the sphere?
FER John 17: 3 describes the sphere.
GR What do you mean by heavenly places being connected with the world to come?
FER The inheritance is headed up in Christ in heavenly places. The church is set in heavenly places, “That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus”. Thus God will give to the universe a witness, but He does that in the heavenly places.
JT What do you make the Father’s house; is that synonymous with heavenly places?
FER No, wicked spirits are in heavenly places, but they are certainly not in the Father’s house.
JT Is the Father’s house the place of sonship?
FER Yes, but you hardly come into the Father’s house until Christ comes and takes you there. At the same time you read in chapter 2, He “hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus”.
JT Do you think the Father’s house is something beyond heavenly places?
FER Yes.
JT Is there not a difference between heaven, as we usually understand it, and heavenly places?
FER Not that I know of.
WM Is there not very little said about the eternal state in the Scriptures?
FER Very little, I think only about [p. 129] two passages.
JC What is the meaning of “passed through the heavens”?
FER He has gone in that direction as High Priest.
Ques Have you any thought as to why we have so little said about the eternal state?
FER I do not know that we want to know much about it now; we have the great features of it given to us.
WM You would say that what God is necessarily occupied with is the sphere into which sin and death have entered, and the saints according to Him in it.
FER Yes. The great question with God is the triumph of good over evil, and you are carried on to that point; you get the solution of every moral question in the Revelation. The book of Revelation does not close until you get the complete disentanglement of good and evil, and each is relegated to its own place. The new heaven and new earth are brought into view; and the devil and his angels, and the children of the devil are all cast into the lake of fire. Evil goes to the devil, and good to God. That is a much more important question than that of place.
WM Would you say that all was settled for God at the cross in principle, but in detail it is carried out in the world to come?
FER Yes, even in the millennium a good deal that is not of God is tolerated, but the final solution of everything is the great white throne.
JP So we get the lake of fire at the end of chapter 20, and the new heavens and new earth in the opening of chapter 21, and the tabernacle of God with men.
FER Yes, that is God’s triumph.
WM And eternal life is the climax in the world to come.
FER Yes, death is swallowed up in victory and the blessing is commanded, “there (Zion) the Lord [p. 130] commanded the blessing, even life for evermore”. As to the eternal state, death is cast into the lake of fire; there is no more recollection of it. Therefore you will not want to talk about eternal life in contrast to that.
Ques Sonship, I suppose, will be spoken of in the eternal state; that will not cease?
FER No, because it is connected with heavenly places, and God’s eternal purpose. He hath predestinated us to sonship, and that is for eternity. The thing in itself is apart from the whole time state; it is before the foundation of the world, and belongs to heavenly places. We are in the light of it, and formed according to it now, to be holy and without blame before God in love. So that we come into the reality of it now.
GW So that sonship is greater than eternal life.
FER I think so.
AHP We have taken it up the other way.
FER I do not think you get any allusion to eternal life in Ephesians; you get a good deal about it in Romans; even in Colossians you do not get much said about eternal life. In Timothy we have, “Who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel”; that is down here, and you get the contrast between death and life.
T Would you say that sonship is distinctive of the church, and eternal life not?
FER You must not run things on too hard and fast lines; sonship in a certain sense is not distinctive of the church. The church comes into sonship, but I think it has its own peculiar and distinctive place as the church. The church is the body of Christ, and nothing else except the church has that place, but the sons of the resurrection are the sons of God. This shows that the term ‘sons’ is sometimes employed in a wider way than we are accustomed to use it. Angels in the Old Testament are called the sons of God. We are brought into sonship, but with us it has its own peculiar character in connection with [p. 131] the Spirit of sonship. The Spirit and sonship are closely connected in us, but the Old Testament saints had not the Spirit of God’s Son, and yet Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the sons of God, being the sons of the resurrection.
JT What is the difference between sons and children?
FER I think the idea of children is that you are suffering with Christ and sharing His rejection here. The thought of sons is that you are associated with Him in glory. Sonship belongs to the assembly.
RSS Would you speak of yourself as a child of God?
FER I would, without hesitation.
RSS Is that a scriptural expression?
FER I see what you mean, but “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God”. There must be a measure of individuality in the idea of children, for your spirit is not my spirit.
JSA At the same time the blessings that belong to children in a sense are common.
FER The idea of children of God is that of a generation that is morally of God; it is in the midst of this crooked world that there is such a generation.
JT Could you connect sin with the children of God?
FER I think they may be contemplated apart from sin as the children of God, but “if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father”; properly speaking, the children of God, as such, do not sin, and yet, after all, we are individuals down here, and possibly may sin.
RSS Is the thought of children simply likeness?
FER The idea is that you are begotten, you are of God. Adam begat a son in his own likeness; so the children of God are of God. I think the truth of children of God is realised by the Spirit. I should [p. 132] not speak of myself among men as being a child of God; the heart cherishes the idea, but it is, so to say, the secret of the christian. The thought of sonship brings you into association with Christ in glory. You would not, I judge, find in Scripture, ‘Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus’.
JT You are not children by faith, but sons by faith.
WM Do you read that passage in Galatians, “Ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”?
FER I do.
JT But in John it is, “Now are we the children of God”.
FER Yes, but it does not say children of God in Christ.
RSS I suppose, “in Christ” is connected with sonship?
FER Yes, Christ is the perfect expression of God’s mind and counsel in regard to us, and everything is established and expressed there.
WM Do you look on the relationship of brethren as more outward?
FER Fellowship is what we are called into. We come into that by the common confession of Christ as Lord.
Ques Would you say that belongs to this time and scene?
FER Yes, it belongs to the house of God.
JT But our peculiar privilege is outside of that.
FER Yes, every christian knows that the Father loves him, and the effect of that is that when we come together we are all conscious of being in common blessing.
GF Do you connect the name of Father with children, and God with sons?
FER No, Father is connected with both.
WM Would you stake everything on the truth of Christ’[p. 133] s Lordship?
FER Yes, I would say, if challenged, that I am a believer in the Lord Jesus, because that person, too, ought to be a believer in the Lord Jesus. I could hardly say he ought to be a child. It is wise to take ground down here which everybody ought to take.
WM That is, in connection with Christ as Lord.
JP Persons are not responsible to be children, but they are responsible to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
FER The truth of Jesus as Lord involves resurrection and ascension, and everything hangs on it, and therefore I would take my stand on that. Every knee is to bow to Him and every tongue to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. I am content if you confess that He is Lord, but if not I have nothing to say to you. The exaltation of Christ was the testimony on which christianity was founded, and on that one should be prepared to take his stand.
JT Do you connect the idea of children with the assembly?
FER No, because in it you are as sons in association with Christ.
JT What is the meaning of that verse in Romans 8, the glory of “the children of God”?
FER I think sonship.
JT So that in the assembly we are brought into the good of sonship.
FER Yes.
RSS When the Lord sent the message by Mary, “go to my brethren”, that was bringing them into association with Himself as sons and not children.
FER I think so. The great point in John 20 is association with Himself; it is a pattern of the assembly.
JP And the connection in Hebrews 2 makes that very clear.
FER Yes, very clear, “both he that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which [p. 134] cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren”. The saints are brethren to Christ, but they are sons to God. This expresses our relationship to the Father and to Christ. He is the Leader in the company, that is the place which Christ has taken as man. God has predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
RSS I want to ask a question as to, “conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren”. When God first made man He said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”. What is the relation between the two expressions, image and likeness?
FER Image is used in two senses; it is used as representative; for instance, when the Lord took a Roman coin He said, “Whose is this image and superscription?” The image was representative of Caesar; but there is another sense in which image is used, and that is as an intensification of likeness. You may get a likeness which is not an image. If a picture happened to be a very striking likeness, you might say, that picture is the very image of the person. I think when God spoke at the beginning, “Let us make man in our image”, it was that man was to be representative in a sense of God, but there was the moral likeness to God also; man is still God’s representative here, though likeness is lost. But in the New Testament we are to be perfectly like Him, “conformed to the image of his Son”. It is, as I said, the intensification of likeness.
RH We get Christ spoken of as the image of the invisible God.
FER He is not only the image, but He is Creator. In this chapter you get one thing after another taken up, and everything is in Christ. You get forgiveness of sins and inheritance, and the Spirit as the earnest. Everything is taken up in detail as [p. 135] set forth in Christ, but all are secondary to the greatness of the calling.
JT Would you say that all christians are holy and without blame before Him in love?
FER The question has been often answered, ‘Yes’, and ‘No’. I do not suppose there is a person here who would take the ground of being so, and yet, so far as the work of God has taken effect, you are so.
JT You connect it with the work of God, then.
FER Entirely. God has called you to that. You can only be holy and without blame as you are really so.
GW We have the calling of God presented to us, and most of us admit how little we go on in it. How do you connect our responsibility with that? We are certainly responsible for failure; God is not.
FER I cannot tell you; there may be something to hinder, as the apostle says, “if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you”. There are very few of us but what keep some chamber in the heart locked up. It is only God who can unlock it. I think we have very often to humble ourselves, but if there is purpose of heart God will make known to us any kind of hindrance.
JP The psalmist seemed set to go on, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after”.
FER The apostle unfolds a great deal in this chapter, but at the end, having done this, he virtually says, I cannot do anything more for you, for he resorts to prayer, and hence owns his own helplessness.
WM I suppose prayer in the one in whom the work is being effected would be helpful.
JT I feel myself, with regard to all the Lord has been giving us at these meetings, we cannot take anything but what the Lord makes good in us.
FER We may try to help one another, but we cannot really effect anything in one another. We may [p. 136] try and make evident to one another what the mind of God is, but that is all.
AHE He uses us instrumentally?
FER Not as effecting anything.
AHE What are the gifts for, of which you were speaking last night?
FER That the mind of God may be kept before the saints, but the gifts must be followed by the work of God.
GF Do we learn by the discipline in the pathway?
FER It helps you to learn by the Spirit of God. Discipline comes in to remove hindrances.
WM But a gifted person can only bring light.
FER That is all, he can effect nothing.
JT Is it by studying Scripture?
FER No. The anointing which you have of Him teaches you.
JT What is it that we are taught, are we taught the Scriptures?
FER No, we are taught the knowledge of God.
RSS Is it not really the point, that we are often bent on growing in the knowledge of truth, but after all the great thing is the knowledge of God?
FER What is the truth? Christ as the expression of God, and therefore if you know Christ you know God and His will; that is what the truth is. We grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ques Is it all summed up in Colossians 1: “growing by the true knowledge of God”?
FER Yes, and Christ is the Teacher.
EP When the apostle Paul commended the Ephesian saints to the word of His grace, what did he mean?
FER Not simply the Scriptures, because the New Testament scriptures did not exist. It is the word as the expression of God’s grace.
JC The word of God is in [p. 137] the Scriptures.
FER Christ is the word of God. The Scriptures are more the record of it, than the thing itself.
RH We have to learn from a living Person.
FER Yes, and no one can teach you but that Person; God alone can teach you; God teaches us by Christ, and Christ teaches by the Holy Spirit.
WM What would you say was the value of reading the Bible?
FER We get things put into shape in our minds, and if you are familiar with Scripture your thoughts are kept within bounds; the Scriptures are the limit, and if you go beyond them you transgress; and if I find you are transgressing the Scriptures, I would say you are all wrong somewhere. But a man who has things simply from Scripture has no power in unfolding the mind of God. You may hear wonderful lectures from people instructed in the Scriptures, but there may be not much power in them.
JA 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”, a means to an end.
FER Yes. They are a ground for faith as having authority.
WM Then a Bible student is not much after all.
FER I have said that if I had to live over again I would study Scripture less and pray more. The great thing for a christian is to get into his closet and pray. Prayer and meditation.
EP Why is the scripture said to make us wise unto salvation?
FER The man of God wants to be furnished with the Scriptures because of their disciplinary value.
Ques In Hebrews 4 is the word of God a person?
FER No, I think it is His testimony. It is, however, very near akin to God Himself.
JSA I think you have said that intelligence is of [p. 138] great importance to us so that we may communicate to others, but actual growth in the soul depends not so much on intelligence as on the Spirit of God.
FER The Scriptures show what God has given you, and it is put into its own proper place by the Spirit in the soul.
JT You remarked some time ago that they had no scriptures in the early days.
FER No, they had the word of the apostles, but they had not the communications in a written form.
GF What about the word of God grew and multiplied, in the Acts?
FER It was the apostles’ testimony, not the Scriptures.
WM Bibles were not plentiful.
RSS I was wondering if, in Luke 11, where the Lord teaches His disciples to pray, it is that He first reveals God to us, then He leads us so that we might ourselves, so to speak, be at home in the presence of God, so as to pray to Him.
FER Yes. He says, “how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him”, and Christ goes up and gives the Spirit that they may pray.
GF What would you say of a person looking up subjects to address a meeting?
FER I never care to give the same address twice, and on the other hand, I would not care to come before an audience without feeling that I had got some word from the Lord for them. I do not think that otherwise I should do them justice. I can only bring before people what I have known. It is not so much what I have gathered from the Scriptures as what I know. I can say in all truth that I keep one thing before me; that is, in some sense to present God in Christ, and that can only be done in the measure in which you know God and Christ. You must speak from conscious enjoyment if you are to have much power.