THE NEW COVENANT AND RECONCILIATION
[p. 38] THE NEW COVENANT AND RECONCILIATION
Reading, Revised by F.E.R.
Colossians 1: 9, 29 The thought before me is the death of Christ, and what is involved in it; this brings you to two great principles, namely, the new covenant and reconciliation. They are the two great lessons to be learnt in His death.
RSS Why do you connect the death of Christ with the kingdom — with what we had this morning?
FER What I mean is this, that when you have entered the kingdom, then it is that you are taught. If you take God’s ways in the past, the kingdom was established before the covenant. The children of Israel were brought to God in the wilderness. In that sense they were set in the kingdom before the covenant came to pass. Jehovah reigned, but there was as yet no covenant.
JSA You mean unless a soul has come under the moral sway of grace it is not in a condition to learn what God’s thoughts are.
FER Just so; it has now to learn what the mind and disposition of God is. It has come into the place where it can be taught, and then divine teaching begins. Israel had grace and salvation figuratively when they had passed through the Red Sea. They were saved from their enemies and from the hand of those who hated them; and they come to mount Sinai, and there it is the covenant is established.
JSA The idea we had this morning, viz., that you must enter as a child and then you can be taught. A child must be taught.
RSS I suppose the law was God communicating [p. 39] His mind.
FER He laid down the terms on which He saw fit to be with Israel. That is what the law meant.
JSA Then that is the idea of a covenant.
FER Yes. Israel had to accept the covenant and their blessing depended on their abiding in the covenant. You get the same principle in regard to the future; that is, the kingdom is established and the power of evil is put down by the Lord Jesus, and then it is that the terms of the new covenant are seen written in the heart of Israel.
WM Is the reception of the Spirit the point at which teaching begins, the love of God shed abroad in the heart?
FER Yes.
CW By teaching, you mean being brought to know the terms on which God is pleased to be with us?
FER That is one side of the teaching. It is most important for people to know it.
JT We know a good deal about turning to Christ’s death as relief, but not as a lesson.
FER Every important lesson is learnt there. You can gather a good deal from the analogy of Israel, for God’s principles do not vary in themselves, though they may in their application.
WM What do you mean in regard to Israel?
FER If you take the psalms, the first psalm is the description of the godly man. How is the godly man to be got? “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly”, etc. The psalm is the description of a class. When you come to Psalm 2 you have the King in Zion — “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion”. In purpose God has set His King upon His holy hill; and the two psalms give you the key to the whole of the psalms. What the psalms call for is the godly man, and the King in Zion. When you come to the close of the psalms, that is, to Psalm 118 and Psalm 119, the former gives you the King in Zion, and the latter the godly man, the [p. 40] law being written in his heart. Psalm 118 is the establishment of the kingdom. The King is welcomed in Zion, and Psalm 119 is the effect of the writing of the law. The new covenant is established, the law written in the heart, and you have the godly man. “His delight is in the law of the Lord”. That is the burden all through Psalm 119 — “In his law doth he meditate day and night”. It may be interesting to some here to mention that Psalm 119 properly closes the psalms. All which follow it are supplementary. The last two psalms furnish you with the answer to the first two. I only mention this because I think it shows that not only in regard to the past, but also in regard to the future, you have the kingdom established before you get the covenant. In the present time God has established the kingdom in the Lord Jesus Christ at His right hand, but the ministry of the covenant comes in after that. It is those who come into the kingdom that get the gain of the covenant.
JSA Would you indicate the leading thoughts of the covenant?
FER I think divine teaching is the first great principle, with righteousness and forgiveness. You learn the mind and disposition of God toward you.
JT We have been largely content with the forgiveness, and ignored the teaching.
FER And yet we are reminded of it every Sunday morning in breaking bread; in regard to the cup, the Lord Himself said, “This cup is the new testament in my blood which is shed for you”.
JT What is the meaning of that — I do not understand it fully?
FER I think the blood of Christ in that sense sets forth the new covenant.
WM It is there you learn the love of God.
FER It is there you learn the disposition of God towards His people. That lesson is presented to you afresh every time you come to the Lord’s supper.
RSS It is what death has secured for us.
FER I would say it is more what is represented in His death. It is the light of God coming out in the death of Christ. It is what is presented to you on the part of God, as to the disposition of God, in the death of Christ.
RSS Your illustration the other day was helpful: a man might die and in his will leave you a fortune; not only do you get the fortune, but you learn the disposition of the testator toward you.
JP Nothing could be of greater importance than that we should come under divine teaching — the learning the disposition of God toward us.
JT I think, if I understand rightly, you do not take up the covenant as connected with the purpose of God; it is more God’s disposition toward us?
FER I think the covenant is something about God; God will have you to learn His mind and disposition. God intended Israel to learn this lesson, only they were in the flesh, and He dealt with them accordingly. You get two things in this chapter, viz., the new covenant and reconciliation. “In him all the fulness was pleased to dwell” — that is one statement. “And by him to reconcile all things to itself” — that is the other statement. On the one hand, all the fulness dwelt in Christ; on the other, having made peace by the blood of the cross there is reconciliation. The first is us-ward and the other God-ward. In the cross there was the removal of the old man to the glory of God; but where that man was removed, the love of God was expressed. The latter gives you the covenant, and the former reconciliation.
WM I think you said that none of us knows anything about God except what we have learnt in the death of Christ.
FER That is my conviction. People may have a sort of idea of God through providences, but after all they are a veil. But we enter within the veil. It is [p. 42] most important to understand that the One who died upon the cross was the Son of God; so that there we have a perfect expression of the love of God. The veil of the temple was rent in twain because God was expressed, and God having come out in that way, the Jewish system could exist no longer, for the simple reason that God was now perfectly expressed.
WM He came out of the thick darkness.
FER Yes. Now we walk in the light as God is in the light. The whole thing is set before us in a way in the Lord’s supper. The first thing is, “This is my body which is given for you”. All that is at an end. I suppose the Lord intended to convey to His disciples that that condition is gone. They were not going to be for God in flesh if He died in flesh. Christ has not died to revive anything that is under death. He died to end it, that in Him all might be new.
JSA The difficulty with many of us as to reconciliation is that we have looked at it as reconciling us to God, instead of seeing it as the abolition of us, that all might be in a new Man.
FER That is the idea. Everything comes under the eye of God in another Man, and hence new creation comes in in connection with reconciliation. “Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new and all things are of God who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation”. You see this in a remarkable way when Christ was here upon earth. For the moment everything was changed by His presence upon earth. I do not think God had His eye then on the perversity of the Jew, but upon Christ, who was perfectly according to His pleasure. There was good pleasure in man.
JSA And now that He has displayed the righteousness of God, God’s good pleasure is set out in Him in resurrection, and the reconciliation is set out in Him [p. 43] there.
WM So that His presence here meant that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.
FER Yes, God had come close to man, not imputing trespasses. It was the new starting point for God. Only the word of reconciliation had to be brought in. There was in Christ all that was agreeable for a moment, but peace had to be made by the blood of His cross. He was the One in whom all was reconciled, but the man that was offensive to God was to be removed in order that all might be effected for God’s glory.
CW The great idea that has been held in regard to the death of the Lord Jesus was that it was something that we could present to God.
FER When you come to the last chapter of 1 John, the blood and water witness with the Spirit. It is not so much the efficacy of the blood and the water in that chapter, as that they are witnesses, and if they are witnesses, they are witnesses of something. What are they witnesses of?
JT They witness that God has given to us eternal life.
FER They witness to the source from whence they came. They witness to what the Lord testifies of in John 3, that is, the love of God.
JT There is the perfect expression of the love of God in the death of Christ; now we get the Holy Spirit and He teaches the lesson.
FER He teaches what is behind the kingdom. The first thing God presents to us in the gospel is His grace, but He presents Himself in grace that you may know what is behind it all, and that is God’s love to the world.
JT What a man needs is God’s grace presented to begin with.
FER That is the gospel, the glad tidings of the kingdom and the grace of God, but then there lies behind that, the love of God — “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. God’s disposition towards those that believe is love, having now perfect satisfaction in such as have gone out at the door that He has opened. In love to the world He has opened the door out of it; the door has been opened by the death of Christ. The love of God finds its satisfaction in those who go out at that door; there is no satisfaction in those who are perverse enough to remain in.
WM Those who go out at the door enter into His eternal purpose.
JT In that way eternal life is really God’s objective point.
FER You have a positive statement of it. Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life. So in John. You get nothing about the Red Sea or the wilderness in John. He goes at once right into the truth, and that is God’s purpose of eternal life.
JSA You look at the brazen serpent as introductory to the gift of the Spirit and life.
CW Eternal life is the condition in which it will suit the heart of God to have man.
FER The wages of sin is death and the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. Christ takes the place of universal headship to carry out the mind and purpose of God, and that is to “give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him”. Souls are led by the teaching of Christ into the heart of God, and thus they get into eternal life. The work of Christ by the Spirit is to lead you to the source from which the witnesses came.
JSA I think you gave us an interesting distinction in pointing out that love works for its own satisfaction, and therefore when the love of God comes out it must work to the satisfaction of itself.
FER Grace is the attitude of God toward man [p. 45] as such. God in a sense adapts Himself to the condition in which man is. You could not speak of grace as the nature of God. He is gracious, and there is the grace of God, but God is not grace. God is love. That is His nature.
WM Would you say grace has its full display in the kingdom, and that love is eternal?
FER I think His love comes out also in regard to Israel; if they are brought into the new covenant, in a certain sense they learn the love of God. Not in the same way we learn it, but I think they do learn the love of God, for they love God.
Ques Do you not get in the Old Testament the sinner presenting a sacrifice for forgiveness, as in Leviticus 5?
FER It is in the first instance the way of approach. If a man is to approach God he must approach God by a sacrifice.
Ques The sinner must come to God with a sacrifice?
FER He must come to God by it. “Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain”, otherwise he would go to God on his own merits. In the book of Leviticus, however, it is not the case of a sinner; it is rather the idea of restoration; it applies to people who are in relation with God. You have to go back to the blood in Egypt if you want the case of a sinner.
Ques Then a sinner takes the lamb in Egypt.
FER Yes, but in the Old Testament all the types fail you, for you have no real type of the gospel. As a matter of fact, in the gospel the Lamb is already provided; a man has not now to provide a lamb. God has provided the sacrifice. You are justified in believing God’s righteousness in Romans 3.
JT Do you make a distinction between the expression “love of God” and the satisfaction of the love of God?
FER I think God must have an answer to His love to the world. Where does he [p. 46] get the answer?
JT Ephesians 1 would give the answer.
FER In John you have the “whosoever”. God maintains that all through John; it is neither Jew nor gentile, but “whosoever”. The witness of God’s love is presented to man, and “whosoever” takes that way, enters into the door that God has opened. The question is sometimes raised whether God still loves the world; but that is not the idea of the passage. God loved the world, and He proved that love by opening a door out of it. And this love must find satisfaction in those who go out of that door. Of course all those who really go out of that door have been called in divine purpose. God’s love will find satisfaction because His love is allied with power, and the love uses the power. The power of God is the servant of His love.
WM For the gratification of His nature.
FER Precisely so. Therefore no one can tell what the love of God will do for you. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him”. They are revealed now, but no one can tell the extent of it.
RSS You say love works for its own satisfaction. Is there not a selfish side in that?
FER It may be so with us, but of course the difference between God and us is this, that God is perfect, and that God must work for His own glory. Everything must be for God. It is the only security for eternal blessing that everything should be for God.
JP And in a Being of absolute perfection there is no thought of imperfection.
FER So, too, God is entitled to it. It is impossible for God ever to regard the creature as an object. Our ideas of God have been too much formed according to our own thoughts. If God be God and the creature a creature, the creature can never be an object to God, however He may [p. 47] bless him.
JSA He can use him as a means for displaying His grace and glory, etc.
FER You will find that your happiness and blessing is contributory to the glory of God, and that God Himself becomes the great and ultimate end of all.
JP That is the force of the expression, “that God may be all in all”.
JSA And is the very occasion of love, “he will rest in his love”.
FER I think in the eternal state the love of God will pervade everything, but then in relation to everything God will have His own proper place. Every eye will be directed to God, and every being in the universe of bliss will be conscious that he is there for the satisfaction of God.
JT Someone wants to know why man could not be an object of God.
FER It is impossible for the creature to be an object to God.
JA It has been said that love must have objects to gratify itself.
FER I think love will work, but love will work for its own satisfaction. It is good for those who are the subjects of God’s love. A parent has the most profound pleasure in the happiness of his child, yet at the same time really it is for the satisfaction of the parent. My love cannot be satisfied as a parent unless I do the best I can for the subject of my love, but I am not perfect. Supposing I were infinitely good and perfect, and had power to work for the children of my love, it would be all right. It would be the best possible guarantee for their happiness. I would have my proper place as parent, and they would have their proper place as children. So God is infinite in power and love, and all those who are the subjects of His love come into the most profound happiness and blessing, and God gets His own proper place. The most terrible thing that ever came into the world was sin,
[p. 48] because it made man consider himself as an object. The apostle brings the thought of God’s glory into the doxology, “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things”.
B When the Lord was here there was an object for the love of God.
FER I would hardly say so, because He was Himself God. In Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead.
JT Would you say the voice from heaven was the Father’s voice?
FER Yes, He was speaking to the Son. We really learn the Trinity in that way. The Spirit descended on Christ and there was the Father’s voice, “This is my beloved Son”.
JP So that the covenant and divine teaching has a sort of intermediate place?
FER I think it is to instruct you; it is divine teaching by the Spirit. Christ is the Mediator of the covenant, which is a very important point, and the Spirit is the means, and Christ by the Spirit leads the hearts of His people into what the disposition of God is toward them, and that disposition has been expressed in His death. Volumes would not express that love, like the death of Christ.
JP “The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God”.
FER That is a beautiful expression.
JT Would you say the death of Christ in that way was objective, while the teaching was subjective?
FER I think so.
JSA As you have said sometimes, it is in His death that we hear the “voice of the Son of God”.
JA “Reconciled to God by the death of his Son”.
GR Do you refer to John 5?
FER Yes, that is the voice of the Son of God, the expression of His love. It is not a voice in the sense of a sound; it is moral; divine teaching.
[p. 49] This never came out fully even in His lifetime; it came out in the cross. You first learn the death of Christ in its value as sacrifice. Then it is seen as the expression of love.
JSA You get a beautiful expression in Psalm 85, “I will hear what God the Lord will speak”. if He has spoken it is life and peace that you hear.
WM And you live in the light of His love.
FER Reconciliation comes in here. One lesson is that you are removed. Not one bit of flesh is sanctified; you are sanctified, but not one bit of flesh is sanctified. You are sanctified because, morally, you can be apart from the flesh before God. While you have many duties to fulfil in flesh, yet for God in the sanctuary you can be in the power of the Spirit, morally apart from the flesh. You are risen with Christ and qualified in that sense for priestly service, and you are also quickened with Him.
WM Does reconciliation link on with the assembly?
FER Yes, it leads on here to the truth of the body. In Him all the fulness was pleased to dwell. That is the perfect expression of God on the one hand, and on the other reconciliation for us has been effected.
JT You would take “risen with Christ” as God’s pleasure in regard to us, but we need quickening in order to enjoy it.
FER You can only be in association with Christ as being quickened with Him.
JSA The word ‘quickened’ has been used as to the beginning of the work of God in the soul.
FER It takes in the totality of it. You are risen and quickened with Christ. That takes you out of everything here. The two expressions always go together. ‘Risen’ is that you are outside of man; you are on the platform of purpose. It is to bring you into priestly service. You cannot be a priest [p. 50] after the flesh. It is very extraordinary how every arrangement of christendom is a denial of the truth.
JSA What are you referring to?
FER In regard to priests, there are plenty in this country, and yet even Christ Himself was not a priest after the flesh. “If he were on earth he should not be a priest”. Christ Himself only took up priesthood on the platform of resurrection. As long as death lay before Him, He could not be a priest. He is a priest in the power of an endless life. It is the fulfilling of the type of Aaron’s rod.
Ques Was it not in the character of a priest that he offered the sacrifice in Hebrews 10?
FER He was victim; He offered Himself as victim. The dominant thought is of victim. He offered Himself; it is true, but the thought is the value of the blood of the victim. In all these passages you have to see what the prominent thought is. A priest might be an offering priest; the high priest was not usually an offering priest. On the day of atonement he offered, but in general the high priest did not offer. The sons of Aaron generally offered the sacrifices. I have no doubt on the cross Christ took the place of offering priest, but the prominent idea is of victim.
CW Then the result of the teaching of the new covenant is that you are made to live in the presence of the love of God.
FER I believe so; the great thing is that the love of God will not rest until God has you in His own habitation. “For his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus”.
CW Would you say what is the effect of reconciliation?
FER The good of reconciliation to you is in the recognition that the man after the flesh is gone;
[p. 51] that is, distance is gone because the flesh is gone. There was a complete setting aside in the death of Christ of the man who offended against God. Our old man is crucified with Christ. So you have the one man clean gone, but you have the formative power of another Man in the death of Christ, that is in the expression of the love of God. God has got man for Himself according to His mind.
JP That is where you get the putting on the new man.
FER Exactly. We can understand now that idea; you have put on the new man, having put off the old man, having been renewed in the spirit of your mind, and the new man is after God; that is, he is after God’s nature in righteousness and holiness of truth.
CW And the result is that we grow by the knowledge of God.
FER And the object is to prepare you for ministry and worship with a view to the service of the sanctuary. That brings in the truth of priesthood. What is the use of a priesthood which does not know God. The thought of a priest is access, and how could you have access to a person that you do not know? You must know the love of God. Another thing is, you must be akin.
JSA And the priest for us is the Son of God, and we must be sons to be priests.
FER Yes, you appear before Him in the blessed consciousness of God’s love.