THE MOVEMENTS OF CHRIST

THE MOVEMENTS OF CHRIST

John 13:1-11; John 13:31-38; John 14:1-3

A. J. Gardiner I wish, dear brethren, to direct your attention to the movements of Christ as they are set before us in this passage, involving love to His own and love to God, believing that, as we are impressed with these movements and rightly affected by them, it will work out in the strengthening of our position here in testimony and also in increased freshness and substance in the service of God.

We are greatly privileged in that at the present time the testimony is entrusted to us, in the charge of the Holy Spirit, and the service of God, is also, you might say, entrusted to us, although it is in the hands of the Lord Jesus as the Minister of the sanctuary, and also in the hands of the Holy Spirit. But I mean it is a great privilege to realise that to us who are but men, God’s creatures, He is pleased to give this double privilege of being in a world of evil in the maintenance of the true expression of Himself, and also of affording Him pleasure unceasingly as ministering to His heart.

Very great issues were raised by the introduction of sin into the universe, and God has been pleased to take up the issues that were raised and to solve them in man. Man has been from the very outset the object of His thoughts, the object of the purposes of His love; and sin having come in and having constituted a challenge to His rights, and the lie that the serpent introduced having involved a question as to whether God is really good. God has been pleased to take up the challenge and intends to meet it in man. He is not meeting it in angels; the angels that have fallen are being reserved for judgment;

but He is pleased to meet the challenge and take it up and solve every issue that is raised in man. Primarily, of course, He solves these issues in Christ, as we shall see, but then they are also to be worked out in the power of the Holy Spirit in the saints.

Now in this chapter 13 the Lord contemplates that He is about to depart out of the world to the Father. There is a striking majesty about the movements of Christ as we have them presented to us in John’s gospel. He is not presented as being slain and cast out, He is presented as departing out of the world to the Father, and departing at the right time. Nothing that man could do could alter the time. The time had come, His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father. So that as we follow the movements of Christ in the gospel of John we are impressed with the wondrous deliberateness in all those movements; the whole matter being in the divine mind and being carried out steadily by the Lord Jesus without being deflected or hindered; all is done perfectly and to time. But now the time having come when He should depart out of the world to the Father. He has in view His own who are to be left in the world. That is a very touching thing for us to remember, for the Lord has been in this very world and knows its character, and what its influences are and how active Satan is; and knowing all about it He takes account of His own, as He calls us, who should be in the world, and takes occasion, as it says, to love them to the end. Not that He had not always loved His own, but it is as though the Spirit of God would impress us with the sense that in view of the position which was to arise by reason of His departing out of the world and His own being left in the world, He set Himself deliberately to love them to the end.

Hence that is one thing, dear brethren, that we can always rely upon, the love of Christ. As Paul says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Paul proved it in a remarkable degree that nothing and no one could separate him from the love of Christ. That is something for us to take account of, that whatever arises we may rely on the faithfulness and the power and the service of the love of Christ, because another thing comes into view and that is that Satan is very near. It is a feature of this chapter that the devil is near; he had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariote, one of the twelve, to betray the Lord. He was there present on this occasion, one of the twelve, with that thought in his heart, put there by the devil, that he should betray the Lord; and later on in the chapter the devil enters into him.

So we are reminded that that is the situation, the Lord departing out of the world, His own left in the world and the devil very near and very active; and the sorrowful thing is that there should be one of those who outwardly belonged to Christ - he was not a real disciple though he had that position - that there should be one who opened his heart to the devil. We are told in the previous chapter what the secret was; we are told that Judas was a thief and had the bag and carried what was put in it; and therefore for a trifling sum of money, covetousness having taken possession of his heart, he was prepared to betray the Son of God. It shows how watchful we need to be that we should not allow in our hearts the beginnings of anything that is contrary to the truth, because in the measure in which we do we are exposing ourselves to the attack of the devil. Let us not forget that the devil is near and that he is bent upon spoiling, if he can, and to what extent he can, what is of God down here, and that we expose ourselves to his attack if we allow in our hearts or minds anything that is contrary to the truth. Hence the very beginnings of things are to be judged if we would be preserved, as it says in the epistle of John, “He that has been begotten of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him.”

So the devil was near, and it says that, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given him all things into his hands, and that he came out from God and was going to God.” How much is comprised in those few words! He came out from God in order to bring God out in full declaration and to bring out all that was in the mind of God to establish in the way of blessing; and He was going to God. First He must lay the basis for everything in His death, but all is put in that wonderful way that one of the Godhead had come in in manhood, going through with every thought of the blessed God, and He was going to carry everything right through and secure the full answer to all that God had purposed in His love. He came from God and was going to God, and He was in the full consciousness of that, and in the full consciousness, too, that the Father had given Him all things into His hands. Being fully conscious of that, with all the moral glory that attaches to One to whom such great things are committed, He “rises from supper and lays aside his garments, and having taken a linen towel he girded himself.” He had in mind, as we know well, to set an example of how love acts; He had in mind that an example of love in its actings, and not merely as an abstraction, should be left in the company of His own, and be impressed upon every one who was present. Only eleven were impressionable, but the Lord intended that all the eleven who were impressionable should take on the impression of love in the way it acts as He was now setting before them. I need not say that everything that Jesus did is enhanced by the glory of His Person. So that it says at the end of John’s gospel, “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they were written one by one, I suppose that not even the world itself would contain the books written.” They were all of such value that they were worthy to be written one by one; but written books are not capable, they are not sufficient, the world itself could not contain the books that should be written if all the things that Jesus did were written one by one. There was a moral glory attaching to every one of them. But in the assembly, the body of Christ, the things that Jesus did are now being repeated, you might say, are now being worked out under His own influence in those who are the members of His body; so that the whole assembly, the body in its entirety, is the vessel in which the things that Jesus did in the moral glory of them will appear in a coming day.

So, as I was saying, everything that Jesus did was enhanced by the glory of the One who did them, and here there is the expression and the example of serving love. No one is asked to get things ready for Him, no one is too unimportant to be served by Him; He does everything Himself and does it in the conscious dignity of His Person and of all that was entrusted to Him. He rises from supper, He lays aside His garments, as though to divest Himself of anything that would attach official importance to Him, He takes a linen towel. “He rises from supper and lays aside his garments, and having taken a linen towel He girded himself,” that is, He deliberately assumed a bondman’s service, “Then he pours water into the wash-hand basin, and began to wash the feet of the disciples, and to wipe them with the linen towel with which he was girded.” There can be no doubt that He went round the whole circle. It says, “He comes therefore to Simon Peter”; there is nothing to suggest that He went directly and immediately to Simon Peter; in the course of going round the circle He comes to Simon Peter, and at the end it says, “When therefore, he had washed their feet.”

So that we are to gather that He went round the whole circle, every one of His own receiving this personal service from the Lord Himself. But what has all this in mind? It has in mind, dear brethren, that we should learn love in its practical working and in its impartiality, love that takes account of every one in the circle. We were saying this afternoon that the working out of love is largely left to the localities. Of course, wherever we meet the saints they are an object of love to us and can be served in love; but the practical working out and development of love amongst ourselves really in the last resort works out in the local company, and this is to instruct us that everyone is to be regarded as an object of care and worthy to be served. The one who washes the feet goes down lower than all. What a help this will be in the conditions locally, dear brethren, if we begin to take on this spirit that has been set out in Jesus, “Least of all,” as it says elsewhere, “and servant of all.” There is plenty of room for such; there is not much room for those who desire to be something, like Simon Magus who gave out that he was some great one. There is plenty of room for any of us if we are prepared to be least of all and servant of all; and that attitude of mind and the service that results from it have been dignified by being exemplified in the Son of God.

I do not know that I need enlarge further on this. The Spirit of God records the incident through John and he records it in great detail. I think we may assume that John, as we may say, was spellbound as he saw the Lord moving in this wonderful way, because every movement of His is recorded; how He rises from supper and how He lays aside His garments and how He took a linen towel and how He girded Himself and how He poured water into a wash-hand basin and how He began to wash the feet of the disciples and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded, and how He took again His garments; all is recorded. If we had been recording it, the probability is that we would not have recorded all these details; but every detail has its value as we see who it was who was moving in this way. He was not asking anyone to do part of the labour. He was doing it all Himself and the least of the twelve was equally served as much as the greatest.

So He tells us what He has in mind. He says, “Ye call me the Teacher and the Lord, and ye say well, for I am so. If I therefore, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet; for I have given you an example that, as I have done to you, ye should do also.” That is, He is setting in motion this great idea of love amongst ourselves and showing that it is not to be a theory but it is to work out in actual expression, and the expression of it is in love that serves. Just as Abigail, to whom we have often referred, when she heard that she was to become the wife of David in his rejection, said, “Behold, let thy handmaid be a bondwoman to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.” She understood that the time of David’s rejection was a time when those who were with him would need refreshing, and she was content to take her place as a bondwoman, having no aspirations beyond that that she should be privileged to wash the feet of the servants of her Lord.

Now Peter objects, as we know. In this chapter Peter is twice in the wrong simply because he had himself before him; either mock-humility, saying, “Thou shalt never wash my feet,” or else self-importance saying “Lord, why cannot I follow thee now”? It is astonishing - let everyone allow his own heart to bear testimony - how much self intrudes itself in our thoughts and exercises, and this chapter shows how self can be a real hindrance to the entrance upon the thoughts of God. So the Lord answers Peter’s objections by saying, “Unless I wash thee, thou hast not part with me.” Who raised the suggestion about part with Christ? It did not come from Peter; it did not come, as far as we know, from John; it did not come from anyone but the Lord Himself. He has that in mind in His service toward us in love, that we should have part with Himself. There is scarcely anything more affecting than that. John seems to have taken on the idea, for later on in the chapter he is seen in the bosom of Jesus; he understands that the Lord wants him to be near Him, not active in service, but near the Lord. Service has its due place with those to whom it is given to serve, but service that love dictates is open to anyone, and real service proceeds from nearness to Christ. So John understands something of what was in the Lord’s mind when He alludes to “part with me,” so we find him in the bosom of Jesus.

Now I pass on to verses 31 and 32. The first passage that I have been dwelling on has in mind that we should be really marked by love amongst ourselves, and that is an important feature as strengthening the position of testimony. It says, “Jerusalem ... is a city that is compact together,” Psalm 122: 3. If the saints are moving together in the love that is learned from Christ, the enemy will find it very difficult to get in, and hence the great importance of this idea of being compact together in our several localities, because there is nothing that will so keep the enemy out as the saints being truly together. The service of love begets confidence, and confidence begets openness, and the more love is in activity the more there are conditions in which Satan finds it difficult to get in. So love will be always on the watch also, as we were having this afternoon, “If any one see his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask.” Love has its eyes open and love, you might say, has its knees ready. “If any one sees his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask.” So that love is always ready to take up the cause of anyone who for the moment appears to have come under the influence of evil.

So as I was saying, this great thought of love amongst ourselves is an important element in the strengthening of the position here in testimony. But now we come to these verses 31 and 32, and the Lord says, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” This, you might say, is the central point of two eternities, if one may use the expression. That is, speaking according to human ways of expression, time is an interlude or interval between eternity that has gone before and eternity that is to follow. I realise that it is a human way of expression, but Scripture speaks of “from eternity to eternity.” But here the cross is in view and it is the central point of everything - the cross. Behind the cross lies the marvel of the incarnation, but the cross is the great point at which every issue raised by the introduction of sin has been solved according to God, and in addition love has come out in glorious expression there. It is the glory of the Son of man that God has been glorified; as I was saying earlier, the issues that have been raised by the introduction of sin God has taken up in man, but it is in the Son of man; it is in the Son of man primarily that they are taken up, and only by the Son of Man could all that was effected at the cross be effected.

So the Lord is speaking of the cross. The moment had now come, it was immediately before His spirit. Not exactly the sorrow of it; we get a suggestion of Gethsemane, the nearest approach to it in this gospel, in chapter 12, where He says, “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But on account of this have I come to this hour. Father, glorify thy name.” How good it is to follow the movements of Christ and the words of Jesus, to see the motives that impelled Him in His service. “Father, glorify thy name.” There was one Man come forth in Jesus whose one thought was that God should be glorified, that every challenge that had been raised by the introduction of sin should be fully met and in result God should remain supreme in the affections of His creature. And now the time had come for this to be done. Sin had come in, the creature upon whom God had set His heart had become estranged from Him, it looked as though the devil had won the day. And now there is this wonderful movement on the part of the Son of man, and at the cross sin is judged according to divine standards of holiness. What a wonderful thing that is! Not judged in those who were sinners but judged in the Person of the Son of man, as it says in another scripture, “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us.” Is it possible to fathom it? We may, at any rate, contemplate it. It gives us an impression of the wonderful way in which every issue raised by the introduction of sin has been met by God Himself in the Person of His Son, but it involved infinite cost for Christ and for God too.

But now the time had come for it to be done, and it was the glory of the Son of man that He should do it. Sin was judged in a most absolute way; all that was due to God was met and His throne and nature abundantly vindicated, and at the same time a way cleared, by this wonderful road that love has taken, whereby we might be saved. It is a question not only of holiness being vindicated but of love being expressed, as the hymn puts it.

“Love, that on death’s dark vale
Its sweetest odours spread;
Where sin o’er all seemed to prevail,
Redemption’s glory shed.” (235:4)

What a glory it is, the glory of God! The way that He is able to meet any situation and does it consistently with Himself, and shines out in a glory that was never known before, the glory of love in redemption. But Jesus was needed if it was to be done, and so it says, “Now is the Son of man glorified and God is glorified in him.” And therefore, in the light of the cross of Christ we become affected more and more by love. It is not only the way that Christ serves us that impresses us, according to the first part of the chapter, but we become affected by the wondrousness of love in redemption, and at the same time we get a wonderful standard, a perfect standard of holiness. We learn to judge sin as God has judged it, but we learn to rejoice in the love that has found a way of saving us and making us suitable to itself. It involves not only redemption but the gift of the Spirit.

But here the Lord is speaking about this moment of the cross. “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God also shall glorify him in himself,” that is, as I understand it, in God; the Lord Jesus is not for the moment glorified publicly but He has been exalted to the right hand of God and God is for the moment keeping Him out of sight. The moment for His public glory is coming soon, but He is glorified in God, He has not had to wait for that. Now that being accomplished, God is left free to open up what He has had in His mind all along from before the foundation of the world.

So we find the Lord is moving still; He moved to exemplify love amongst His own. He moved in His thoughts to the cross, and now He speaks of further movement. He says, “Ye shall seek me; and, as I said to the Jews, Where I go ye cannot come, I say to you also now.” Now Simon Peter again intervenes and says, “Lord, where goest thou?” and Jesus says, “Where I go thou canst not follow me now,

but thou shalt follow me after.” That is, the Lord must go first. In the first part of the chapter Peter has to learn that he must allow the Lord to serve him, he must allow the Lord to set the example of love; but now he is to learn that the Lord must go first; he is to follow after, as we all are, but the Lord must go first, and we will learn our place as we follow the Lord in His movements. Peter says, “Why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thee.” Full of himself, full of self-importance, even occupied with his devotedness to Christ! What a snare self is! The only thing that will eclipse self is Christ, and the Spirit of God is given us to that end that self should be eclipsed by the appreciation of Christ. So the Lord has to say to Peter, “Thou wilt lay down thy life for me! Verily, verily, I say to thee, The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice.” What a lesson Peter had to learn! What lessons we all have to learn! Believers have to learn what the heart is capable of, what self-confidence will lead to, what boastfulness will lead to. All these things have to be learnt, and why do they have to be learned? In order that we should have no confidence in ourselves, as Paul says, in the epistle to the Philippians, “For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and boast in Christ Jesus, and do not trust in flesh” - no room for the flesh at all. We “worship by the Spirit of God,” God is before us in His blessedness, the power for the worship being the Spirit of God, and we boast in Christ Jesus, the Man of God’s choice, and we have no confidence in the flesh, and that is the happy portion of the believer. So Peter has to learn it, he has to learn what he is in his own untrustworthiness; but the result of it is that he will learn to appreciate Christ more, and learn to appreciate the Spirit more, and learn to fill out the rest of his time here in distrust of self and in confidence in the Lord and in the Spirit. That is the secret of soul prosperity, dear brethren, the measure in which we can be maintained in the distrust of ourselves but in confidence in Christ and in the Spirit.

So all this is intended to provide substance in our souls as we increase in the knowledge of God; God Himself is to be the object before our hearts, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I believe God is making Himself indispensable to us, and intends to; He intends all the exercises connected with our position here in testimony, and all the exercises that arise in connection with filling out the position of the service of God acceptably in the assembly, to make God Himself, the Father and the Son and the Spirit, indispensable to us, that there should be no room for ourselves; yet it is ourselves having part in these wonderful things in the liberty of sonship, but it is intended that we should be shut up to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, that we should be satisfied with God. And the more we learn God, the more there will be real power for worship in the assembly.

Now the ground being cleared, according to what the Lord says in verses 31 and 32, the Lord is now free to open out what is connected with the Father’s purpose. So He says, “Let not your heart be troubled.” It is as though the whole position has been met and we can now rest, so to speak, in God and in Christ, and in the Spirit too, for what we have to learn as to ourselves does not in any sense affect what it is that God is bringing in now, and to which we are called. So the Lord says, “Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe on God, believe also on me.” That is, Christ Himself is now to be kept steadily before our hearts. As we were having this afternoon, that is God’s commandment that we believe on the name of His Son. Jesus Christ, all the renown that attaches to Him as the One who has come forth from God, Who has accomplished redemption, and now has gone back to God. All that is to be before our hearts, and the Lord says, “Believe also on me.” That is, He is now presenting Himself in the new position He was taking up in the Father’s presence as an object by which our hearts are to be held. “In my Father’s house there are many abodes; were it not so, I had told you.” The Lord says just sufficient to show us that there is great expansiveness, wonderful extent in the realm of God’s purpose and of the Father’s pleasure. He says, “Many abodes,” but He does not proceed to say anything more about them, but just tells us there are many. Then He concentrates on the one abode. He says, “I go to prepare you a place; and if I go and shall prepare you a place, I am coming again and shall receive you to myself, that where I am ye also may be.” There are two things in those words of the Lord’s dear brethren; one is the distinctiveness of the place, and that is that it is where He is we are to be; and the other is the personal love of Christ, that He is coming again to receive us to Himself. Those are the two things, things that we know well, things that are easy to say, but things that we might well carry in our hearts, let the impress of them deepen with us, that there is a distinctive place prepared for those of the assembly. It is purely of divine sovereignty that it is so; you might say, it seems extraordinary that we should have a better place than Abraham, or than Moses, or than Daniel, or some of the outstanding characters of the Old Testament, but so it is. But that is just God’s sovereignty, and we are to be impressed with grace and the wonderfulness of the sovereignty of love, that He is pleased to give to those called in this dispensation to be the body of Christ, the object of the love of Christ, the family which is to be where Christ is. No other family has that position. Every family will have its own appointed place as ordered of the Father, but our place is that “Where I am ye may be also.” The Lord would have the sense of it sink into our hearts. Then the sense, too, that there is His present love, “I am coming again.” That is as though the thing is present to His mind, as though it might take place today, or now. The Lord says, “I am coming again and shall receive you to myself, that where I am ye also may be.” But now as we get the sense of that, dear brethren, what is the result? It is all intended to work out in the greatest liberty and joy and fulness of response to the blessed God.

The Lord does not present Himself as supreme in relation to this. He says, “My Father’s house”; He is directing attention to His Father, as He says later on in this chapter, “My Father is greater than I.” He presents the Father as the great source of all these great thoughts of love. He is the One Himself who effectuates them, and the Spirit makes it good in us and gives us power to enter into them and move in them in the liberty that is proper to us; but the great source of all is the Father, God known in the blessedness of that name as Father. So, as our thoughts and hearts come under the impress of these things, as we learn them in the movements of Christ, we become freshly impressed with the wondrous grace in which God is known by us at the present time. Not now grace connected with the meeting of need, though great grace has been called into activity in the doing of that, but grace that is pleased to give His creature man such a place in nearness to Himself, in union with Christ, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. It is as though we are embraced in God; it is a question of God and the blessedness of God and love that is in God in designing these things and bringing them to pass so that we might have our part through grace in the response to the blessed God that has moved in this way.

These things are to be learned in the movements of Christ, the first movement that I have sought to speak of being to impress us with love amongst ourselves, that we may learn how it acts; then the subsequent movements impressing us with the divine glory first meeting every issue that is raised, then going steadily forward and accomplishing its own thoughts in this glorious Man who is in the Father’s presence and whose love for the assembly is this, that He says, “I am coming again ... that where I am ye also may be.”

May the Lord help us to follow these movements. What I have said is well known to us all and a simple line, but it is well that we should become impressed with the glory of the movements of Christ, and take time to consider them and follow them in our hearts, and as we do I think we shall become a little more impressed with the blessedness of divine glory.