KNOWING CHRIST AS GREATER THAN JONAH AND GREATER THAN SOLOMON
[p. 236] KNOWING CHRIST AS GREATER THAN JONAH AND GREATER THAN SOLOMON
To know “him that is from the beginning” is the highest knowledge we can ever attain to, and it is to this knowledge that we are growing, if we are really progressing. “If these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ”. (2 Peter 1: 8.)
Every believer knows something of Christ; as He says, “I... know my sheep, and am known of mine”. As a sinner, I first know Him as a Saviour, and this is knowing Him in His Jonah aspect. The Lord in Matthew 12 and Luke 11 adduces Jonah as a type of Himself in death. “As Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”. As I am awakened to my distance from God and the fear of judgment, I find relief only in Him who went down into death for me, and bore the judgment of my sins in His own body on the tree. He is the ransom; He died for our sins. I cannot be relieved of the burden and judgment of my sins, but through Him who gave Himself for me. Through His death only can I get remission of my sins. By Him, “All that believe are justified from all things”. There is first a clearing away of all guilt - of every charge against us. “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death”. There is the felt need first of being relieved from every charge - cleared of all the darkness by knowing Him as the light of the world; all the evil atoned for. There can be no peace of conscience until I see that Christ has removed everything that was against me from the holy eye of God; and that I know Him risen from the dead. This question must necessarily first occupy the sinner. The conscience demands it, and the attempt to separate from the world, and to be superior to it, before the [p. 237] conscience has been fully relieved, is at the bottom nothing more than an effort to reach that rest, which is so essential to the conscience, but which it is impossible to reach in this way.
Jonathan cannot think of anything else until Goliath be destroyed; and it was plainly right that he should be occupied with the question of how he could be delivered from this terrible enemy, as long as that enemy was alive. But once Goliath was dead, then Jonathan was free to occupy his heart with his deliverer - with David. Thus it is with the sinner, he must first be in the sense of the forgiveness of all sins, before he can simply and heartily occupy his heart with Christ; and yet the more his heart is occupied with Christ, the more he will be confirmed in the finished work. The more I know Christ in His exaltation, the better I am assured of my acceptance with the Father. I see how my Saviour was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father; I grow in the sense of His unspeakable satisfaction about me a sinner, because my Saviour glorified Him when under the weight and judgment of my sins. I am not only freed from them, but I am led by the Spirit to know my Saviour in the glory of God. Then it is, I for the first time, know Christ as Solomon, the glorified One; and now a new and wondrous scene is opened out to my soul, and with amazing effects. By His death and atonement, I have been cleared of everything against me, as a child of Adam; but now, knowing Christ as the second Adam, the head of a new creation, I begin to see that He introduces me into things far superior to anything even conferred on, or assigned to the first man; so that it is not only the evil and ruin of the first man I am clear of - but I am by the “greater than Solomon” so enriched, and in a so much higher degree that the highest and best things here are superseded; and I am practically superior to them. It is not knowing Christ thus in His Solomon character, that causes saints to be detained by things here, so as to be under the power of them. I do not speak of evil things.
[p. 238] No truehearted saint would argue for the maintenance of what is morally evil, or palpably wrong or unhandsome; but how many argue, because a thing is not wrong, and really no harm in a natural point of view, that therefore they are at liberty to enjoy it And to this argument there is no answer, because all things are lawful, and there is no real way of diverting the heart from this class of things, but by engaging it with what is far higher and greater, and these can be known or participated in only as Christ in glory is known. This twofold experience of Christ is very plainly set forth and illustrated in John 8 and 9.
In chapter 8 the Lord declares Himself as the light of the world. The law condemns the guilty one, but “He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life”. “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death”. All guilt and its penalty are cleared away; but this is not all. In chapter 9 the one who has received his sight discovers that there is nothing in man naturally in any class which can see or comprehend the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father. The neighbours own the effect produced on him by the work of Christ, and hand him over to the Pharisees, the religious class. They call his parents, but the parents decline any responsibility, alleging, “he is of age; ask him”, and eventually the Jews cast him out. “Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” He answers, “Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him”. Now this illustrates how not only is Christ’s salvation known, but how His superiority over everything is made known to the delight and joy of the heart.
This is the practical experience of Philippians 3. There the apostle tells us, “What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge [p. 239] of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ”. He sees in Christ that which supersedes man in his best condition. Paul has seen Christ in glory the “greater than Solomon”, and he counts all things - the very best of man, but rubbish, that Christ may be his gain. In like manner as to the things here (verse 13), he can leave all behind, because he is pressing toward the goal. Christ in glory is the mark to which he is pressing, and in going forward to Him, he necessarily leaves all the things here behind.
Lastly, let us turn to 1 Kings 10, and learn from the Queen of Sheba, the way to attain to the knowledge of Christ as our Solomon.
First, she was intent upon reaching him; the great distance from Sheba to Jerusalem does not deter her. So there must be first purpose of heart, the honest and good heart; the seeking which is sure to find. What we really value, we are sure to receive, but we show that we value it by the way we seek it; we search for it as for hid treasure. The true heart seeks Christ, not merely as a relief but as One who is indispensable to it. This is the first step. The Queen of Sheba comes to Jerusalem. She has reached the place where Solomon is. Next she communes with him of all that is in her heart. She had come to prove him with hard questions. Christ in glory really and fully solves every question to our heart, but we must confide in Him, we must commune with Him of all that is in our heart. We must have the assured sense in our hearts, that He is the wisdom of God, a wisdom entirely different from anything known to us. “There was not any thing hid from the king, which he told her not”.
And now she is entranced with Solomon’s surroundings. It is not with his future glory, but with the present; with all that she sees him then and there connected with, and centre of. For when she “had seen all Solomon’s wisdom, and the house that he had built, and the meat of [p. 240] his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cup-bearers, and his ascent by which he went up unto the house of the Lord; there was no more spirit in her”. Not only is she relieved of every question that pressed upon her heart; but she is so entranced with the things of Solomon, that all other attractions lose their hold on her. The surpassing lustre and beauty of Solomon’s things throw everything of her own kingdom into the shade. There is no sacrifice in the surrender because she has consciously gained so much. When there is an effort to surrender, and the feeling of sacrifice, it is an evidence that the heart has not known Christ as Solomon, has not seen Him in glory. Many a one who walks on in the assurance of the forgiveness of his sins, and even in the certainty of the Father’s constant care, and the enjoyment of the Lord’s tender sympathy, still cannot rise superior to the natural beauties and the attractions here; simply because he has not, like the Queen of Sheba, seen Solomon, he has not seen Christ in glory. Many a saint who truly enjoys Christ in His Jonah aspect, has not as yet learned Him in the Solomon; and until we have learned the latter, there is really no full setting aside of man, and of his things in the assured and ever deepening conviction of how immensely superior Christ is to everything - to any and everything given to the first man. But when one truly learns this, while there is a due appreciation of natural blessings there is independence of them, because of the greater and more perfect ones disclosed to the heart, through Him who secures to us all blessing, to whom be glory for evermore.