THINGS THAT NEVER FAIL
PAG It is good to be occupied with things that never fail. The apostle Paul had heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus of these brethren; the Lord Jesus is never going to fail. What brought me to this is particularly those things mentioned in verses 18 and 19 - the hope of God’s calling: that is never going to fail; “the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints”: that will never fail; and “the surpassing greatness of his power”: that will never fail. So as believers in the Lord Jesus, we have access to hope and glory and power, and none of these things fail.
What God has done will not fail. He “wrought in the Christ in raising him for among the dead”. Christ is raised: that is not going to change. It is a fact, and God “has set him down at his right hand in the heavenlies”: that is not going to change either. We read in Hebrews, “sat down in perpetuity” (chap 10: 12); that just means forever. And then He “has put all things under his feet”; that is not going to change. We know that the time is coming when everything is subdued, and the Lord Jesus, of whom we are speaking; “gives up the kingdom to him who is God and Father … that God may be all in all”, 1 Cor 15: 24, 28. In relation to man’s responsibility, there is what needs to be subdued, but what the Lord will put in the hands of His God and Father is something to which no failure can attach. And then God “gave him to be head over all things to the assembly”; that is unchanging. We may say as to the church publicly, of which we as believers form a part, that failure attaches to that, but there is no failure attached to Christ’s headship. I wondered if we could be encouraged in considering that as believers in the Lord Jesus, as having faith in the Lord Jesus, we are put in touch with a system of glory, to which no failure attaches. I trust that there will be liberty to contribute to the enquiry.
ARH That is very encouraging, because the Lord in the prayer in John 17, says, “not one of them has perished”, v 12. You think of the all-securing power of Christ that kept His own.
PAG That is right, and in John 10 Jesus says, “no one can seize out of the hand of my Father”, v 29. God is not letting go of His purpose, and believers form part of His purpose. Indeed, the fulfilment of His purpose requires the saints. In the opening prayer our brother spoke about us being encouraged. That is my exercise, that we should be encouraged that God is going on with His thoughts. There is turmoil in the world, financial, economic and political uncertainty, and moral degradation. None of that is affecting what God has in His mind.
WMP These things are sure and certain and will never fail. Why, then, does the apostle have to pray about the matter for the saints?
PAG The simple impression I have is that the apostle is saying here that he knows these things, and is in the good of them, and that he would like his brethren to be in the good of them as well. One of the wonderful things about Christianity is that we can give everything we have to everyone else, and we do not lose any of it. If I have a sum of money in my pocket, and I give it to you, then you have it and I do not. But if you give me an impression of Christ, you still have it, but I have it as well. And that is the great thing about Christianity. Paul says, ‘I have this’. Think of all the difficulties Paul faced. He wrote epistles when he was in prison, for example, and yet he says, I still have all of this, and nobody can take it away from me.
WMP I was thinking of what you said about all contributing, and that is because we would have that desire that all might grow in an appreciation of all that God has for Himself, and all that has been secured in such a full way in the Lord Jesus.
PAG It is as well to remember that the apostle here is writing to brothers and sisters. The sisters are contributing too in what they bring in their spirit by way of exercise. It may be said that they cannot share their exercises out loud in the meeting, but as they bring them, and as they bring impressions, the Spirit is able to take them up and to make them valuable to everyone.
TRC During your opening remarks, I thought of last chapter of Hebrews, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and to the ages to come”, chap 13: 8. It is a wonderfully assuring scripture about the One that does not fail. Could you give us your impression of these two titles? There is “Jesus Christ” in Hebrews, but it is “the Lord Jesus” in Ephesians.
PAG The Lord Jesus is the name that the saints of the assembly know and appreciate because it directs us immediately to the Person. Jesus Christ is a name of the same Person and is generally found in scripture as the name of the One who did things for God. Christ Jesus embraces Christ where He is at the right hand of God, in whom everything is secure. Therefore “Jesus Christ” is connected with “by whom”, and “Christ Jesus” is connected with “in whom”. It is all the same Person, but the Person we know is the Lord Jesus. He has authority over us. That is why we call Him “the Lord Jesus”, but it is the authority of love.
TRC I was thinking along these lines. All that He has accomplished cannot fail. It is particularly attractive that our faith is in the Lord Jesus, that particular name that the assembly appreciates, and the recognition of His headship.
PAG Yes, Paul gathers the matter up when he speaks of “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory”. It is the fulness, you might say, of the Lord’s divine title. And yet, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ reminds us that He has taken a place in manhood. The God of our Lord Jesus Christ is the Father of glory; He is the source of glory. The God of glory is the One whose operations are glorious. But here it is the source of glory. We are coming to the source of the glory, and when we come to the source of the glory, we see that He has a whole system of glory, and it is centred in Christ.
TRC Very confirming; we had that impression this morning, as to God, the Father of glory, being the source. It entered into our hymns -
Father, spring and source of blessing
Hymn 136
Another hymn (Hymn 49) used Source as a title of the Father. What you are bringing before us is confirming.
CAS Paul uses an expression here: “being enlightened in the eyes of your heart”. Is that an Ephesian expression? I do not know if it is anywhere else, but it does speak of the seat of our affections: the heart. I wondered whether if these things enter into our heart, rather than just our minds, we would become stabilised in relation to things that do not fail.
PAG That is good: “the eyes of your heart”. We are instructed in the Old Testament to keep our heart, “Keep thy heart more than anything that is guarded; for out of it are the issues of life”, Prov 4: 23. What the enemy wants is our heart. He may reach it through our minds, but what he wants is our heart; he wants our affections. And we know that “Christ also loved the assembly, and has delivered himself up for it”, Eph 5: 25. The apostle Paul speaks of “the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”, Gal 2: 20. John says, “To him who loves us, and has washed us from our sins in his blood”, Rev 1: 5. The appeal of love is to bring us into the fulness of God’s thoughts. We may rightly connect the love of Jesus with the forgiveness of our sins, but His love would take us much further than that, and that is why we need to be enlightened in the eyes of our heart. It would raise a question as to what I am looking at and what I am occupying myself with. And it must be by faith. Paul has “heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus”, which was in the Ephesian believers. The eyes of our heart are really the eyes of faith.
CAS “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be”, Luke 12: 34.
REW 1 Corinthians tells us that “love never fails”, chap 13: 8. He has loved us with a love that is unfailing and He still does. It is something that we can put our faith and confidence in, to know that we are loved.
PAG Love cannot fail because it is God’s nature. You could not think of it failing. God’s nature cannot change. And another thing is that “love has long patience”, v 4. Think of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, waiting for over two thousand years so that we could come into this. The assembly was seen in a pristine glory at Pentecost. God could have taken that to glory. But He has waited all this time, and He has waited in patience. And it also says, “Love has long patience, is kind”. It has been said that if I find my patience running out, I should try kindness. God, of course, never loses patience; but when the Scripture tells us about love, every attribute of that is seen in Christ and seen in God. “Love has long patience, is kind”. Think too of the patience of the Holy Spirit, all the things that have happened over the whole of the time that He has been here, and yet He has gone on in patience and kindness, in order that we might be held and kept in relation to God’s great thoughts for us,
REW The hymnwriter also says as to the Holy Spirit -
Patient, gracious is thy love,
Linking hearts to Christ above
(Hymn 21).
PAG Exactly; patience and grace do go on together. It is good to draw that out.
NCMcK We generally link that lack of failure to the purpose of God, because it does not fail, but it brings in the saints here, does it not? “The riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints”; God has purposed that, and what God has in mind for the saints will go through.
PAG In the first day of creation God brought in light to deal with failure. He said, “Let there be light. And there was light”, Gen 1: 3. But “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”, 1 John 1: 5. He stands over against all that is related to darkness. But when we come to the holy city in Revelation 21 we are told of “Her shining”, v. 11. God’s light will shine forever. I know that the shining is brought out in the millennial setting. Scripture tells us that there is “no need of the sun nor the moon, that they should shine for it; for the glory of God has enlightened it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb. And the nations shall walk by its light”, Rev 21: 23, 24. So God intervened in light, but He will sustain that light forever. There will be no failure. That light will not get dim; just as the love will not fail, the light will not fail either.
ARH How is this to affect us now? If God takes a person up, He has something in mind for that person to work out. And that might go on in patience, working it out. But how is it going to affect us?
PAG One way I hope it might affect us is that we do grow to realise as we go on that God has nothing but the best in mind for us. We have referred to “the hope of his calling”. Well, that is a heavenly calling. God has nothing less than heavenly things in mind for us, and “the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints” has nothing less than glory in mind for His saints. That is why the Lord Jesus says in John 17, “the glory which thou hast given me I have given them”, v 22. That has in view the glory of sonship; nothing less than sonship is in His mind. And then, “according to the working of the might of his strength, in which he wrought in the Christ in raising him from among the dead, and he set him down”. But then, when we come to Ephesians 2, we see that He has “raised us up together, and has made us sit down together”, v 6. So He has nothing less in mind for us than that we should be seated, restfully and unchangeably, in heavenly places. And then we find that there is to be glory to God “in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages”, Eph 3: 21. God wants everyone involved in that. It is not just some people. So we should see that not only does God have the best in mind for us, but that it is possible.
NCMcK It is our faith in the Lord Jesus. We often find our faith wanes somewhat, but we are never asked to have our faith in ourselves. What the passage shows us is that we are to have an attachment to a great system of things. Paul is praying here, that we should be able to see and recognise that God’s system of things is not marked by failure or transience at all.
PAG What you say about not having faith in ourselves is found in what Paul says to the Philippian brethren. “For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and boast in Christ Jesus, and do not trust in flesh”, Phil 3: 3. Not only does he say that we do not have faith in ourselves, he more or less says that there would be no point in trusting in the flesh, because whereas God’s things never fail, the flesh will always fail. However refined and excellent it may be, it will always fail. But we have access, not only to a system of glory that never fails, but to divine Persons who never fail. The Spirit is indwelling; the Lord is our Head in heaven. It is very encouraging that John says, “I write to you, little children, because ye have known the Father”, 1 John 2: 13. You might think that is quite an advanced thought. No, even the smallest child knows the Father who gives you your food and clothing, the Father Himself. We have direct access to divine Persons and we have a direct access to divine power.
NCMcK We are connected with things that belong to purpose. But the purpose of God does not only relate to what is future. The purpose of God relates to the present time as well, does it not?
PAG Well, that is made clear in the first part of Ephesians 1. We find there, “having marked us out beforehand for adoption through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will”, Eph 1: 5. So that is God’s purpose as it was. And then further on “having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in himself for the administration of the fulness of times”, Eph 1: 9,10. That is God’s purpose as it will be. But then in verse 11 “according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his own will”. That is God’s purpose as it is now. It is all the same purpose, and the thing to note is that the will of God applies to the past and the present and the future, and so does the purpose of God. My own will can do no more than apply to the present. God’s will applies to the future and it applies to the past. The only point in time I can exercise my will is now. I cannot change something that happened yesterday, and I may, in my actions, affect something that happens tomorrow, but I cannot make it certain. The purpose of God makes me certain about what will happen, not about the detail of my life down here, but it makes me certain that what He says will happen.
Abraham trusted God, that what He had promised He was also able to do. In that sense, Abraham demonstrated confidence in the purpose of God. What the apostle is saying is that these things that we are speaking of are not all future; they apply now. He is not saying that you should know what is the hope of His calling once you get to heaven, or the riches of the inheritance later, or the power of resurrection after you die; these are to be known now.
PJM Are these like anchors in the soul, steps of faith? I wondered whether as we come into the appreciation of these things, our hearts expand. Paul says, “making mention of you at my prayers”; he was not asking how God was going to answer these prayers, but he is looking for the fulness to be filled out in these steps and anchors in the soul.
PAG The fulness is generally the expression of something. The assembly is spoken of as “the fulness of him who fills all in all”, Eph 1: 23. The assembly will be the expression of the purpose of God, and she will be the expression of the glory of Christ. God “all in all” is God “all in all” eternally. “The fulness of him who fills all in all” is Christ administratively. The assembly will be the vessel through which the administration takes place, and she will be the fulness. She will be the full expression, having the glory of God, her shining. She will be the demonstration publicly in the millennium of the fulness of Christ. He will be, of course, personally active, but He will be active through the saints of the assembly. And then the glory of God will be seen eternally. “The tabernacle of God is with men” (Rev 21: 3); that will be seen in the assembly. The assembly brings God’s thoughts and His workmanship into demonstration. As I would understand it, the saints of the assembly now can each, in their measure, be a demonstration of the work of God.
PJM The apostle is delighting in the measure that the Ephesians have already arrived at, but desires expansion.
PAG When the Lord speaks to the Father in John 17 as to the matter of oneness, He says, “that the world may believe that thou hast sent me”, v 21. That is the present time. There is an expression in testimony “that they may be all one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me”. That is the expression of oneness in testimony. And believing is what marks the time of faith. But then when you come to verse 23 the Lord says, “I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one and that the world may know that thou hast sent me”; that would include public testimony to the work of God in the millennium - “perfected into one” - when the church comes in all its completeness, and the world “knows”. That is what we are speaking about. It is in view of the world believing at the present time, and knowing in the millennium, which we speak of as the day of display, that God’s work has achieved what He set out to do.
CJMcK When Paul speaks of “the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints”, is he really referring to the work of God? The riches of it suggests great wealth. Does it encompass every believer and what is being formed in them? God can take account of the glory of it as after Christ.
PAG Yes, so “the riches” is plural. It involves variety, “the riches of the glory”. Consider the hymn book that we use, and look at the variety of riches that are available in the hymn book. We come together on Lord’s day morning to break bread, and we look round and see the saints. We see “the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints”. And you think about believers who served the Lord in their measure in the past, and are now with the Lord. They were added to the riches of the glory, and none of that will ever change. We should be encouraged that in each one believer, God is adding to the riches of His glory. There is nobody missed out.
PJM It is God’s inheritance, because God has a claim on it. It might have read, ‘what the riches of the glory of His work in the saints’, but “His inheritance” seems to me to make a divine claim on it, because it is His work.
PAG It certainly does, because it tells us as to the Beloved (that is the Lord), “in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of offences”, Eph 1: 7. So the blood of Christ is given to secure God’s inheritance in the saints. Another feature of an inheritance is that it is something you did not have before. Scripture says of the Lord that “he inherits a name” (Heb 1: 4): He took a name that He did not have before.
God did not have this inheritance in the saints before. Before today, He did not have as much as He has today. If one person in the whole world is saved today, God has more today than He had yesterday; so His inheritance is continually growing until the time when the Lord comes to claim His own. It should encourage us that each believer is adding something to what God had, and it is more today than it was yesterday.
CJMcK The work of God never deteriorates and never fails.
PAG That is what John emphasises. “Whoever has been begotten of God does not practise sin”, 1 John 3: 9. Well, what about me? John covers that when he writes, “if any one sin, we have a patron with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”, 1 John 2: 1. What I allow in myself, contrary to the will of God, is not the work of God: it is the first order of man. That is why we are told that “if, by the Spirit, ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom 8: 13): because that line of things needs to go. It was dealt with at the cross, but we need to be in constant exercise, that “every one begotten of God does not sin”, 1 John 5: 18. I am glad you mentioned that, because it would be good if we could all carry that away. There is something in each believer that cannot fail.
LAH We spoke about what is unfailing. It speaks here of the power towards us. Why does Paul use the resurrection of the Lord as an example, that God wrought in Him?
PAG It is something I have been thinking about. It might lead me to inquire why resurrection power is emphasised here rather than creatorial power. I hesitate to make a comparative statement, but the apostle could have spoken about the creation and he did not; he chose to emphasise resurrection power. He says, “according to the working of the might of his strength, in which he wrought in the Christ in raising him from among the dead”. We know that that is the power that is towards us here, but then in chapter 3, it is the power that works in us. So all of us will need that power. We may or may not go through death itself, but we will all need that power, because we will all be changed, and we will all be given bodies of glory. I have been thinking about this expression, “in which he wrought in the Christ”. Death has a power. Indeed, we are told that “The last enemy that is annulled is death”, 1 Cor 15: 26. But God has a greater power, and that power is towards us. When we preach the gospel, we are, so to speak, directing the power of God towards the persons who hear it. And it is resurrection power, because we are dead in offences and sins, so we need that resurrection power.
LAH That is helpful. You have spoken of hope. Our hope is connected with the Lord as raised from the dead. Our hope is in what has been accomplished.
PAG Yes; the scripture speaks of “Christ Jesus our hope” (1 Tim 1: 1): that is what we have as individuals. “Christ in you the hope of glory” (Col 1: 27): that is what we have collectively. Christ is our hope. Whether we are on our own or together, we have one hope, and it is Christ, and He is the One who is raised.
NCMcK Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father.
PAG The glory of the Father suggests His love. And what greater power is there than the love of God? There is no greater power in the universe.
SAF In relation to the previous question, these verses contain things in which God has particular pleasure. Paul seems to be praying to the end that we might have the same enjoyment in them.
PAG That is a very good way to put it. God wants us to enjoy the things that He is enjoying. Mr Darby conveys his impression of that in hymn 14.
All the Father’s counsels claiming
Equal honours to the Son;
All the Son’s effulgence beaming
Makes the Father’s glory known.
The Father is enjoying what He finds in the Son, and the Son is enjoying what He finds in the Father. Divine Persons want us to come into that; so that is why the Lord says to the Father, “I in them and thou in me”, John 17: 23. He wants us to enjoy the same love that He is enjoying.
GJH I was just wondering about the hope of the calling. Do you think that when God starts a work in a believer, He will never lose sight of them? He knows us even before we are saved, because God’s grace is towards all. Does it help us that once God has started working, the believer is forever linked with God and Christ?
PAG The Lord says that “no one can seize out of the hand of my Father”, John 10: 29. God is not going to let us go. A gospel chorus has the lines,
O love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee
(George Matheson (1882)).
Love will not let me go: God is not going to do that. Our faith may weaken; we may lose the joy of things, and yet we find that God has never let us go. He has never let us down. We are told in John’s first epistle, “if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things”, 1 John 3: 20. I may have to say that I have failed and I am no good. But God gave His Son to die for us. He is not bringing us home to Himself because we are good. He is bringing us home to Himself because He wants us to be in His presence and He gave His Son to die for us.
TRC “He who has begun in you a good work will complete it”, Phil 1: 6. If God begins something, He always completes it.
PAG He certainly does. That is it is another feature of what we are speaking about, things that do not fail. God never starts anything without knowing the end from the beginning. And in relation to what we have been saying about His purpose, He knows what He is going to do. We might not know how He is going to do it. That is a completely different matter, but He is not going to fail. When the Lord said on the cross, “It is finished” (John 19: 30), He had done everything that was required. He could speak anticipatively of what would be secured, not only through His death, but the shedding of His blood and His resurrection.
WMP Does it help us to just lay hold of what you have said earlier about what God is securing for Himself? The expression “to the praise of his glory” comes into the earlier part of the epistle, Eph 1: 12. So all of this is to yield something from our hearts for God, not to be content merely with the blessing, wonderful though it is. There is to be a return, is there not?
PAG That is exactly right. God is looking for something from us. When the children of Israel were captive in Egypt, He did not say, ‘let my son go so that they should not be slaves’; He says, “Let my son go, that he may serve me”, Exod 4: 23. He wanted us to be set free in view of serving Him. He is looking for a service of love.
GJH It has been said that a believer who has been buried has been an honourable vessel for the Spirit. There would be something missing if that person were not taken to heaven. I was thinking of what goes through. There are many things we can occupy ourselves with today that might shake us, but there are scenes that do not fail and things that go on to eternity.
PAG I think so. We may read some scriptures and you wonder why they are there. As an example, in 1 Chronicles 8 there are forty verses that are in essence a list of names. Most of them are not heard of again. Why is that? They are recorded because they are important to God, and these names will be meaningful in the day of display. Nobody need think that they are not important to God; even if nobody else knew who they were, they were still important to God. If they were not there, there would be something missing, and God is not going to lose anything.
PJM Another thing that is unchanging is His calling. No-one called will be omitted from the gathering.
PAG Yes. In Luke 14 we read of persons who were invited and did not come. That was because of their own will. But if God has called us, Paul tells us in Romans 8 what God thinks about that. “But we do know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to purpose”, v 28. That calling will not fail, but He wants us to come into it, because the apostle tells us, in that same chapter, that “whom he has called, these also he has justified; but whom he has justified, these also he has glorified”, v 30. The gift of the Spirit is given in order that we might enter into the joy of the heavenly calling.
PJM It is the very best calling that there ever could be. “So that ye should know what is the hope of His calling”; I think that would give direction to anyone’s life.
PAG It would give you a focus.
SW How do we know these things do not fail, or will not fail? I was thinking that it is good to prove them, to go in for them. Scripture speaks about, “an incorruptible … and unfading inheritance”, 1 Pet 1: 4. We need to have exercise to prove these things, the reliability and unfading character of them. What would you say?
PAG It is a good question. How do we know? John tells us how we know some things. He says, “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren”, 1 John 3: 13. Ministry is worth reading, and it is worth giving time to. But you do not know that you have passed from death to life by what you have read; you know by what you experience, particularly among your brethren.
John writes in his first epistle, “And this is the witness, that God has given to us eternal life; and this life is in his Son”, chap 5: 11. “These things have I written to you that ye may know that ye have eternal life who believe on the name of the Son of God”, v 13. Well, do you believe in the Lord Jesus as your Saviour? Then you do have eternal life. That is what he is telling you, so you know. Paul says, “to know him, and the power of his resurrection”, Phil 3: 10. You might wonder how you can know it, if it has not happened yet. But one point about this chapter is that the power of resurrection is towards us now. How do believers get through? They get through because they have the power of resurrection working in their souls by the gift of the Holy Spirit, keeping them out of the level of this world. It is not something we are doing for ourselves.
CAS When Paul goes to Ephesus, that is the first question, “Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye had believed?”, Acts 19: 2. Paul speaks here about being “sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”, Eph 1: 13. You have been speaking about the gift of the Spirit. How else could we get through? Because our tastes change completely.
PAG The Spirit helps in our understanding. It is important to recognise that we can ask the Spirit things directly. If you read a scripture and you are not sure what it means, you can certainly ask the Holy Spirit to help you to understand what it means.
Nehemiah was in the presence of the king. He was the king’s cupbearer and the king asked him a difficult question, and he said, “I prayed to the God of the heavens”, Neh 2: 4. You might be in a situation and you do not know what to do. Maybe you are surrounded by other people; maybe they are asking you questions: you can speak directly to the Spirit, and ask Him to help you. Perhaps an opportunity comes up to do something or to go somewhere, and you would like to pursue it, but you know that you should not. You can ask the Spirit to help you to overcome the temptation; He will and He does.
NCMcK The bent of this section is that believers should be fortified with knowledge and an understanding of the power that is towards them. This is going to help us in regard to that. Paul’s prayer was that we should know. Then God has set Christ down at His right hand in the heavenlies in this age: that must be the present time. Believers recognise that there is a Man in glory who has been set down over every adverse power, and we are to understand that He is our Lord. He is over everything.
PAG Yes, and the power He has is heavenly power. In the opening chapter of Ezekiel there is a description of living creatures and wheels, which may on the face of it appear complicated. One of the significant features of these living creatures in Ezekiel is that when the living creatures went, the wheels went beside them, “And when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. Whithersoever the Spirit was to go, they went, thither would their spirit go; and the wheels were lifted up along with them: for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When those went, they went; and when those stood, they stood; and when those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up along with them: for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels”, chap 1: 19-21. I remember that passage being read when I was a child, and I wondered what it meant.
One of the things it suggests is that the power of the Spirit is here on the earth, but it is not constrained by the earth. When the Spirit was lifted up, the wheels were lifted up: there was no necessity to worry about what was happening on the earth. The Holy Spirit is here, but His power is heavenly power, and He can lift us up out of the earth, and there is nothing the earth can do about it. That is the power that is towards us, the power that works in us. It is a power that can lift us up out of the earth. That is what resurrection can do: lift you up out of the earth.
It may be said that the body is buried; it is in the earth. Resurrection lifts us up out of the earth. Job said, “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and the Last, he shall stand upon the earth”, Job 19: 25. He will stand on the earth, the earth that claimed the dead. He will stand on it as raised out of it. That is the power that is towards us, power that can lift a dead person out of the earth. And that power is not going to fail. As we have noticed, “The last enemy that is annulled is death”, 1 Cor 15: 26. So the power will go on when death is gone; it would strengthen us.
WMP That is very helpful and encouraging. When Paul says, “to know him, and the power of his resurrection”; that was the power that enabled him to go on, because he speaks then about being in the race and continuing, but his eye was on the goal. He was looking to what was heavenly. That power being towards us is to enable us to be like that, to continue.
PAG What you say is very important. “To know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings”: Paul knows the power of His resurrection before he knows the fellowship of His sufferings. This is a suffering time. We know it. But it does not say, “the fellowship of his sufferings” and then, the power of resurrection comes after. We are to know the power of His resurrection first. Hence you know that the sufferings are not the end of the matter. The end of the matter is glory.
NCMcK God has raised Him up and sat Him down at His right hand in the heavenlies. That is Ephesian ground, is it not?
PAG The right hand involves power and authority. So all authority is vested in Christ and it is coming from heaven. At His right hand, then “above every principality, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name named, not only in this age, but also in that to come”. In that sense, all the unrest and opposition of the millennium and what immediately precedes it, the man of sin, the beast, the false prophet, however they may be described, even Satan himself whose name is Apollyon, Abaddon, the ancient serpent and Satan and the destroyer. It has all been anticipated, and there is One who is above all of that, and will subdue all for God’s eternal glory.
Glasgow
19th January 2025