THE UNIQUENESS OF CHRISTIANITY

Robert Gray

John 17: 3–6; Genesis 24: 61–67; John 20: 16–18

What is in mind in reading these scriptures is to try to convey some impression of the greatness of Christianity. We hear of it often, ‘the greatness of Christianity’; it is a wellknown phrase, but when tests come, the question that rises with each one of us is, ‘How great is it to me? What effect does it have on my thinking, on my conduct, on my walk with my brethren’? And when I speak of Christianity in its scope, what is really in mind is Christ, because Christianity is Christ in expression, and it is not just distinctive, but first of all it is unique. There is no other thing to be compared with it. Persons in the world talk about comparative religion. There is no such thing in the eyes of a true Christian. Christianity presents a living Saviour, not merely memories of dead heroes and their sayings. Christianity is for now, because there is a living Man in heaven and He is speaking to us now, by the Holy Spirit. Hence we have the answers to the questions that arise and press upon us. The exercises as we speak of them, that occur in our localities and in our houses. There is an answer. You say, ‘There will be an answer some day’. Well, that is true too. God will have the last word. But there are resources that are available in Christianity so that there is an answer to what may come in amongst us.

I want to say this first before embarking on John 17. When God began with the creation He made the heavens and the earth, the initial creation. That is what Genesis 1 verse 1 speaks about, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. And then something came in. Failure came in and there was some attack of the enemy and Genesis 1 from verse 2 onward is a work of recovery. If we could use these words reverently, God laid hold of what was there and put it back in its place. For instance, God says, “let the dry land appear” (Genesis 1: 9). Now there was not any dry land, but God said, ‘let it appear’. The truth is that the dry land, the fruitful land, the productive land was under water because of the difficulty that had come in. God said, let it appear’, and so it did. Then as time went on, as God went on in His work, He brought forth what was fruitful. But what I want to say about that area of things, is that in all of that, that is chapter 1 of Genesis. God made the expanse and that is a word that would convey to us that God made for Himself room in which to operate. That is the expanse is actually called ‘heavens’ in Genesis 1, but God made a sphere of things, in which He could work. Into that He brought man. He brought the creation as we know it, the present creation, and He put man in it and He worked with man. Now, in the history of the Old Testament, failure came in. God took up Israel, failure came in, things lapsed till the sorry state of things that Malachi speaks of, and God intervened again in Christ.

Now you might say this is a long introduction but there is point to it because I do want to convey to you that Christianity is truly special and unique. As a result of Christ coming in, and His finished work, God was free to work again through Christ, but this time He introduced new creation. And in that sphere of things God is working now. He is working in the assembly. He is not working in great business concourses or other affairs of men, although He may intervene in blessing and through the gospel. The Holy Spirit is actually operating to produce the assembly to be suitable for the heart of Christ. Think of this, that what God is doing by His Spirit, at the present time is going to last for eternity. What He is doing in your soul and mine has eternal value. We will not develop in eternity. We develop now. We grow now in divine things, in our knowledge and appreciation of God, and in our capacity to respond to God. That is happening now. And that is what makes this sphere of things, the assembly, so very very important. We talked about it in the reading, and it is not in any sense to detract from the importance of the place our blessed Lord Jesus has, for God will head up all things in the Christ. That is what God is going to do, and that is what will surely happen, God will head up all things in the Christ.

But what He is working towards now is to bring about conditions in persons like you and me that will be suitable to be with Christ as forming part of His assembly. We are just ordinary people, we are nobody special or prominent in the world or anything like that, but in that material God is working. And He is not bringing anything ordinary out of the saints. What He is doing is eternal in its value, it is precious to Him and it is delightful to Christ. Well you say, ‘That is fine’. Yes it is, but have you any sense that it is happening here? Have you any sense in your own soul that God is working with you? You say, ‘Well, how would I know’? If you find yourself struggling against things that you would rather be rid of, things you would rather leave behind. “For I do not practice the good that I will; but the evil I do not will, that I do”, Romans 7: 19. Have your heard that before. The good things I want to do, I cannot, I fail. And the bad things that I do not want to do, I slip into them instead. Is that your life, your history? It certainly was mine. If anything of that line of things is going through your mind I would say, ‘Take courage’, because it is a sure sign that God is working with you, and the work of God in you is beginning to assert itself. You say, ‘How would I know if God is working in me?’ That is one sure way. If you are finding yourself desirous of doing right things, and maybe not able to bring them to fruition, go on. We all go through it, and I am not so old that I have forgotten what it was like to be young, and to have things in my mind and heart that I would not tell anybody. You would not confide in anybody but you struggle and struggle and struggle. Well do not give up courage.

I will tell you one thing. The safe thing to do is to keep on praying. Keep on praying! There are times you get so sickened with your own experiences that you feel ashamed to pray. Well, that was like the man in the temple. He would not even lift up his eyes to heaven. He just said, “O God, have compassion on me, the sinner”, Luke 18: 13. Well, if that is all you can say, say that, but keep your contact open with God. You say, ‘a few minutes ago we you saying that Christianity was wonderful, unique and special’. Yes it is but it does not just fall into your lap like that. That is what the world wants. There are times when I go in and buy a newspaper and there is a notice that says I could win one million pounds on the front of the till. That is what men want. They want instant results and they want them without cost and they just vanish. What God is doing, He is doing for ever. You think of that when you are struggling. Why does not God make things easier? Why does He not solve our problems? Well, He has it in his hands to do that, but He would set our minds and hearts on Christ first, and that is where faith comes in. We have been reading at home through the Psalms, and it is remarkable the way that faith gleams in some of the psalms. It is in them all of course, but when a person is down and feels that things are going wrong and he is struggling and yet he turns to God, that is faith. Faith is not just a vague hope that everything will be all right. It will be all right through God’s grace, if you are saved, but faith would cling to God when things are difficult and not working out.

But come to Romans 8 where the help of the Holy Spirit comes in. And this is one of the things that I want to touch on. We have the power available to overcome what is in our hearts and in our minds. We have it, if we have the Spirit. We have to learn, you know, how to make way for the Holy Spirit because God does not want automatons. That is He does not want you to be like a machine, where you press a button and it does what you want it to do. God is not looking for that. God is looking for persons who love Him, and show their love by calling on Him, and show their dependence by trusting in Him. They show their felt weakness by telling Him what was quoted from Psalm 119, after all these many verses, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep—seek thy servant” (Psalm 119: 176). Would God listen? Of course He listens and that is when God will help you, when you feel your weakness.

What really was in my mind was what the Lord says in John 17: 6, “I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world. They were thine, and thou gavest them me”. One of the things we learn in Christianity is how to love. We may say, that is a feature of the natural, and it is. Natural love is right and proper in its place. But the idea of love has been so debauched in the world and spoiled that we have to come to Scripture, and we have to come to divine Persons to find out how it really operates. One great example is, “God so loved the world” (John 3: 16), that is very fine. But the greatest example of divine love shines when you see divine Persons working with each other, as in John 17. That is love, the Lord speaking unhinderedly to His Father. It has been pointed out in ministry, He did not have to modify His prayer in John 17 because it was not affected by the state of those who were listening. The Lord was not speaking to the disciples, He was speaking to His Father, and so He said all that was in His heart.

What a prayer it is. What things the Lord asked for for His own! But I just wanted to dwell on this, “I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world. They were thine, and thou gavest them me”. “They were thine”. That was the Father’s—and “thou gavest them me”. Nobody consulted them, the men, it was a transaction between the Father and Christ. I know this relates first of all to the disciples, but I think we can extend this thought, to ourselves, because the Lord says elsewhere, “No one can come to me except the Father who has sent me draw him”, John 6: 44. Did you know that? If you are converted, that was the Father’s work. I do not want to confuse children. The Father did not die for you. The Lord Jesus died on the cross to save you from your sins, but it was the Father’s work in your heart that drew you to Christ. Does that not appeal to you? that you and I, and everybody here who is saved, is the object of a transaction between divine Persons which really we had no part in. “They were thine”—the Father’s work—“Thou gavest them me”. Would it be too much to say that the Father thought of you when you came to Christ? Of course He did. The Father loves you. The Father knows you. The Father has great things in mind for you, and I do not want to becloud this by adding too many words to it. I want to leave the impression that Christianity is unique, and it is unique, because it involves the work of divine Persons, initially, among Themselves. I know they came out and the Father has been made known in Christ, is declared in Christ. The Holy Spirit has come and the Lord says, “ye know him”, John 14: 17. These are wonderful things, to think that we are the objects of divine work that brings us within the scope of divine arrangements.

Genesis 24 relates more to the work of the Holy Spirit, although we cannot confine it to that. Really it is a fine type of the way in which divine Persons operate together. The type suggests that we see in Abraham—the Father, and in Isaac—Christ, and in the servant—the Spirit. What a lowly place the Holy Spirit takes. We need to reverence the Holy Spirit. We need to respect Him. Remember when God spoke to Moses about the Angel that went before them, the Israelites. He said, “Be careful in his presence”, Exodus 23: 21. That is one of the great difficulties in Christendom, the Holy Spirit is largely ignored. He is not given the place that is His. It is our privilege and responsibility to give to the Holy Spirit His true place. As we do that we begin to find what a work He has done, and is doing. The Lord was here for thirtythree and one-half years, but the Spirit of God has been here for about two thousand years. Is that not wonderful patience? Wonderful grace! When things were so bad, in the early stages of the Christian church after the apostles were gone and the fathers, then things seemed to decline very rapidly, and the church by about the third century was beginning to show signs of breaking up, the Holy Spirit went on. He went on through all the persecutions, the inquisition, the excesses of the Roman Church. He went on. The occasional hymns that we have from these times give us gleams from the souls of persons in whom the Holy Spirit was free. He went on to the Reformation and then the Lord intervened. And then that began to decline. And then we had the recovery early in the nineteenth century. The Lord intervened again. He came in the third watch or the fourth watch. We are here because of these things, because the Holy Spirit of God sustained the testimony throughout all these long years. He kept it going until now. And we are the objects of His work.

What is He doing? He is forming us to be like Christ. That is what He wants, because what the Lord Jesus is looking for, really, is what is of Himself. He says in the song, you know, “Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice”, Song of Songs 2: 14. Well you say, that is a lovely reference to the Lord with His loved one. Yes, but what does it mean today? When the Lord says, prophetically, in that Song of Songs, “Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice”, does it not convey to you that He is looking for a response? He does not just say, ‘Well, speak to Me’, am not being irreverent. He says, “Let me see thy countenance”. Will He see features of Himself in you? There is no time like the Supper when we are able to respond, and respond in an, if I could use the word carefully, uninhibited way. We have had the loaf—the obedience of Jesus; we have had the cup—the love of God involving the New Covenant. What do we do then? We embark with the Lord Himself on a journey, and He leads us on. We speak about the relationship of brethren, then union with the assembly. These are not phases. These are part of the service and we go on freighted with the wealth of these things. And then we have the address to the Holy Spirit, and finally worship of the Father and God. Is it just routine? I appeal to you, beloved brother, beloved sister, these things are a vital part of our lives. These are things that will engage us in eternity. These are the things that make us special. That is, these experiences build up in us what is pleasing to God.

Well, the Holy Spirit (typified by the servant) had been with Rebecca and had told her, no doubt, about Isaac, and all the wealth that was there in Abraham’s house. But she came to the point when she said, “Who is the man that is walking in the fields to meet us?” The servant said, “That is my master”! Now that to my mind is very like the end of Revelation where it says, “the Spirit and the bride say, Come”, Revelation 22: 17. That suggests that there is a vessel that has her eye on Christ, and she is formed after Him, and she can speak in concert with the Holy Spirit. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come”. Do you think that is going on now? I believe it is. There are persons who are exercised that the Lord’s will might be done. There are persons who are looking for the Lord Jesus to come, and looking for the help of the Holy Spirit to guide us in view of that day.

In John 20: 16 the Lord addressed Mary. How would you know if the Lord was speaking to you? Could you recognise Him? I think we do. He did not have to explain who He was, or where He had been. He spoke her name. And that was enough. I think He saw in her something potentially of assembly character, something that He was looking for and longing for. He said, “Mary”, and that went right to her heart. And what she said was in a sense similar in that she said, “Rabboni, which means Teacher”. It has said that there is a touch, a hint there, of worship. Her whole being, her eyes, her heart, her gaze was wrapped up in Him. Here He is—a Man looked for and longed for. “Jesus says to her, Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”. What the Lord was telling her was that this great work that had been going on, that had involved the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, this great redemptive work, the work really that involved the whole Economy was coming to fruition. And the glory of it was that she was included. She was part of it, not divinity, never that. She was a creature and the Lord’s brethren were creatures too, but they were included. We sometimes get a touch of that on a Lord’s day morning. We are not there as onlookers, spectators, looking at a wondrous spectacle, we are part of it. We are part of it because He loves us, and because we are in His heart, and because He is in His Father’s heart; “as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us”, John 17: 21. Oh brethren, what a privilege Christianity is, to be part of it, to be in it for Christ, and to be conscious that we have been taken up by Him for His own glory. May the Lord bless the word.

Address at Aberdeen, Scotland
26 May 2012

EDITOR’S NOTE

Due to a health problem I feel the time has come when the editing and publishing of this periodical should be passed into other hands. This has been a matter of prayer and I am very thankful that Mr John Brown has been exercised to be available for this service. If the Lord will, he will take over responsibility for the book as from the June 2013 issue. Correspondence should be addressed to him at,

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