ONE FLOCK, ONE SHEPHERD
[p. 32] ONE FLOCK, ONE SHEPHERD
I was remarking last time, that all the scriptures given to instruct us in Christianity lead up to the principle of unity. Of course, all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable; but there are certain scriptures which especially address themselves to us as Christians. And I think you will find that all such tend to the realisation of unity. I do not think that it is possible to attach too much importance to the thought of unity in connection with Christianity. What is the character of the unity is another matter; it has its own proper character. It is not a unity in the flesh; it is described in scripture as “the unity of the Spirit”; it has that character. Unity is what we are led on to in this gospel; and this is seen in what the Lord says in this chapter, “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one flock, one shepherd”.
I just make this remark in passing, that John never gives us, so far as I know, what Paul does, the great system of profession. Paul gives us two great truths in connection with the church; the one is its identification as Christ’s body, and the other its aspect as God’s house. God’s house, I have always thought, and still think, is founded on profession. It began in a few saints being gathered together by the testimony of the resurrection of Christ, and the Spirit of God came down and dwelt in them and among them. But among the Gentiles, at all events, the house of God has been formed by profession; and Jew and Gentile have been builded together in the Lord for a habitation of God through the Spirit. Now I do not think you will find that John ever gives you the outward system, and I do [p. 33] not say that he gives you the truth of the body; it is not exactly his line; but he gives you what runs parallel with the truth of the body, and that is, “one flock, one shepherd”. The truth of the one body, as I understand it, is given to us in scripture to show us the real power of unity. And so I get a corresponding truth here in John, that there is one flock, one shepherd. I do not think the one flock was in itself to be patent or evident to men any more than the one shepherd; but I think the effect of it was to be patent, that the world was to witness a unity, the spring of which it was impossible for them to understand. But I am anticipating a little, and will come to that presently.
Israel was God’s flock, and in a certain sense Jehovah was the shepherd; that, I think, was patent to the nations; it was a flock in that sense, after the flesh. But that was never intended to be the character of the one flock and the one shepherd. None the less the one flock and the one shepherd are a great reality. So with the church: the house of God, the external system of profession is patent to the world, all know it; the world recognises Christianity as a system of profession; but they know nothing about the body, the truth of the body is the mystery. It has often been said that a mystery is something which is known to the initiated; it is made known to saints.
Before we pass on to the features of this chapter, I may just refer to what has been before us on former occasions, which as I judge is introductory. I do not think you can really understand the character of the one flock if you do not take it up in connection with what had been presented in the preceding chapters. What is unfolded in this chapter as to the one flock, is dependent on what is unfolded in the previous chapters. My object has been so far to give you the characteristics of this present time,
[p. 34] this dispensation, if you like to call it so. We have had two things a good deal before us — Jesus glorified, and the Spirit given. The present time, it has been often noticed, is the time of the Spirit. “The Spirit was not yet”, it says; that is, the time was not yet come for the Spirit to be here, “because that Jesus was not yet glorified”; but consequent upon Jesus being glorified the Spirit has been given. I was saying last time what an immensity it is to man that the Spirit should have been given, that man down here upon earth should be the vessel of the Spirit; it is the most wonderful change which could have been brought to pass. But the giving of the Spirit depended upon the great truth of Jesus being personally glorified; and man, in a certain sense, is glorified here in the fact of the Spirit having been given to indwell him. I do not enlarge on it, but there was the Spirit’s time coming, consequent upon Jesus being glorified; and another truth connected with it is this, that man is the vessel of the Spirit, for the Spirit does not dwell here apart from a vessel.
Another point necessary to it which came before us last time was the light; the Lord takes that ground in chapters 8 and 9, “I am the light of the world”. I tried to show what I judge to be the significance of this, namely, that you need to apprehend the character of the light that has come in. In a sense the law was the light of the Jew; but Christ says, “I am the light of the world”, for He came here to declare God. It is true that Christ was a minister of the circumcision, to confirm the promises made to the fathers: He came thus to the Jew, but He was “the light of the world”. If God reveal Himself in love, He does so in relation to the world. There were two things Christ came here for, to make known what God was, and to make good the Father’s counsels of grace. It has often [p. 35] been said that you must not confound nature and counsels — God has His counsels, and they connect themselves with the name of “Father”; but at the same time there is the nature of God — “God so loved the world”: that verse does not convey the idea of His counsels, but of His nature. When it is a question of God’s counsels, the name of Father is brought in, “The Father seeketh such to worship him”, because it is to accomplish His counsels of grace; “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him”: that is, there are counsels of grace in which the Father draws to the Son. But at the same time there is the truth, “God is love”; this is what God is in His nature, and not a question of the counsels of His grace. And Christ came here to make known, in the midst of the world, the nature of God. If you apprehend that, you can well understand the Lord saying, “I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life”.
Now with regard to the concluding verses of chapter 9, I was saying last time that if divine light came into this world in fulness, as it did in Christ, of necessity it brought everything to an issue. That is what the Lord, I judge, means by the expression “For judgment I am come into this world”. Two things are connected with it which I dwelt on; “That they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind”. Bear in mind what I mentioned in the last lecture, that in the very nature of things, if man takes the ground of seeing, he rejects revelation. Until Christ came man took the ground, more or less, of expectation, not of seeing. When Christ came, men took other ground, and began to say, “We see”. In the nature of things, if man says “We see”, he does not want a revelation from God; he rejects it. And that is [p. 36] the real reason why the religious, scientific, and literary leaders of the present day largely reject revelation, because they say “We see”; they take the ground of being competent. When Christ was here, the scribes and Pharisees were really infidel at heart; they began to say “We see”; they were competent, and rejected Christ’s word. But there is another thing, “That they which see not might see”; the testimony and evidence that Christ brought of the goodness of God were used of God to the opening of the eyes of men, as seen in the case of the blind man in chapter 9. The grace of God has come down to man here in this world, to take account of him in his miserable condition, and of every effect of sin under which he laboured; and the fact of the grace of God having in this way visited this world in the Person of God’s Son is used to open the eyes of those who never saw. They accept the exposure and are touched and affected by the grace; it is the very thing they want; the Spirit of God makes everything to them of the wonderful goodness of God in visiting this world in the Person of His blessed Son.
I am now coming to the putting forth of the sheep from the fold, and the formation of the one flock; and I desire to make plain to you, by the grace of God, two or three of the characteristics which mark the sheep. But first we get the thought of Christ entering the fold and leading out the sheep. You will notice that in chapter 10 the ground of the Lord’s action is not His rejection by the Jews. The two previous chapters bring out His rejection both as to His word and His work; but His leaving the fold was not exactly a question of His rejection by them, but that when He puts forth His own sheep He goes before them. And the reason is simple; His going before them is by death. The sheep could not leave the fold until Christ left the [p. 37] fold, and He actually left it in His death. His death is looked at through all this chapter as a necessity; I may quote the Lord’s own words; He says, referring to His life, “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father”. I think this an important point in connection with His leaving the fold. He came into the fold; but if the sheep were to be relieved of the pressure of death which lay upon them as the judgment of God, of necessity Christ must leave the fold. No one takes His life from Him. All through the chapter, when the Lord speaks of laying down His life, He lays it down, I will not say voluntarily, because that is not perfectly right: but He lays it down of Himself, He does it in obedience; “This commandment have I received of my Father”. He is the first to leave the fold; no one could leave the fold until He left it. We get a type of it in the previous chapters. In chapter 8 Christ’s word, the expression of what He was, had been rejected by the Jews, and the Lord leaves them; and in chapter 9 the man who was the subject of His work is excommunicated from the synagogue. Still the time had not yet come to leave the fold until the shepherd left it; He says so expressly: “When he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them”.
Now just a word about the fold, as being a point of importance. I think the fold was the enclosure, the system of ordinances, in which the people of God were kept up to a point — the apostle Paul says, “the law was our schoolmaster up to Christ”; but the law never justified anybody. It could not; those under it could not be justified as long as they were in the fold; they were to be justified by the faith of Christ. Death being upon man, he could not be justified except by blood. “Without shedding of blood is no remission”. On the day of atonement the blood had to be carried into the holiest of all, because death lay upon man; and God could not approach man, nor could man approach God, without blood; that is, man had to recognise the sentence of death which was upon him. The great force and importance of blood in the Old Testament is that it witnesses the fact of death.
Christ had entered into the fold, and that in a legitimate way; but He did not enter it to abide there, nor to leave the sheep there. There were in God’s counsels sheep down here, and Christ came to where the sheep were. The sheep heard His voice; that was the first thing. Think what the voice of Christ was when He was here upon earth, and what was the effect of that voice! What it was to Lazarus, for instance; “Lazarus, come forth”. It was the voice of the Son of God, and His voice reached the dead. So, too, I might speak of other things; the Lord cast out devils: how? By His word. But the point here is that the sheep know His voice, they know the character of His voice. It is a wonderful voice that speaks here in this world; I believe the sheep felt it to be the voice of One that had power over all ill, of One that had come here with divine power over man’s last enemy — death: “They know his voice”. There was no good for man down here save in the advent of One who could bind man’s great enemy in his stronghold, namely, death. That is exactly what Christ could do, and what He proved He could do; and the sheep know His voice, they are conscious that everything has to give way to His voice.
Now, I want you to bear in mind three things, which you can put together, as marking this present moment, and describing the blessings of the sheep: the sheep are relieved of the judgment of death under which they lay: it being now the time of the Spirit,
[p. 39] the Spirit dwells in them: and they are in the light of God revealed in Christ. You cannot understand the privileges of the sheep, if you do not apprehend those three things; they are the marks of the moment. Death is annulled, so that man can be free here of the judgment of God in the very place where he was under that judgment; and the proof of this is that the believer receives the gift of the Spirit, he has the seal of God upon him, and is in the light as God has been pleased to reveal Himself in the Son. The love of God is shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given to him; that is, his heart is full of divine light by the revelation of God in His blessed Son. The passage in Romans to which I have just referred shows you how God has been pleased to display His love in His Son; and now the Holy Ghost has come to dwell in the believer to make the love of God effective in his heart. Those are the privileges of the sheep; they have left the fold by faith in Christ, they have come away from the system of ordinances in order to be justified by Christ, and are in the fulness of the light which Christ has been pleased to bring, in the presence of the love of God.
What I see in people all around (and in myself too) is how little practical confidence they have in God as to circumstances and their pathway through this world; and I will tell you why — it is because they do not know Him. I am perfectly confident that if our hearts were in the light of the revelation which God has given of Himself, the practical effect would be that we should be full of confidence. “Perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment”. You know as well as I do that people in the circumstances of this life turn to all sorts of human resources and schemes, because of not knowing the love of God; their hearts have not learnt to trust in God. I think I begin to see how great a [p. 40] thing it is to trust God. If God has brought you into the presence of Himself revealed in perfect love (and He has) your heart can afford to trust in Him. “This is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us”; our hearts are full of confidence because we are in the presence of God.
The next point I want to dwell upon is in the seventh and following verses: “Then said Jesus to them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture”. Now you have got the sheep entering in by the door; I understand it to mean that one enters in by the faith of Christ dead and risen, one is saved. That is, there is the realisation of deliverance from death and Satan’s power. The believer goes in and out, that is, he has perfect liberty; and he finds pasture. He gets three things, salvation, liberty and pasture, and that in the presence of divine light, into which he is brought in the grace of God and in the power of the Holy Ghost that dwells in him. The secret of it all is this, that the sheep are no longer dependent on the system of ordinances, but are kept by a power within. It is a total mistake to suppose that the recognition of the power that dwells in the Christian will lead him to self occupation. It will do nothing of the kind, because the Spirit in the Christian corresponds to Christ presented to his faith; the Spirit is “the truth” in the Christian; but Christ is “the truth” as to revelation, and therefore the Spirit always leads to Christ. You cannot understand anything about yourself, or your blessing or privilege, except as you learn it in Christ. He leads us into it by the Spirit. But it is a very important point to recognise [p. 41] that there is this mighty power in you, and that you are kept by it. I believe it to be a point of great moment for Christians to apprehend that by Christ’s work death is no longer upon them as penalty; and the proof of it is that they are indwelt by the Holy Ghost. The effect is that they are in divine light, in the light of God as revealed in Christ, they are saved, they go in and out — they have liberty, and they find pasture.
But now in the fourteenth verse we get to a further point in regard to the sheep. “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine, as the Father knoweth me, and I also know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep”. I believe this passage indicates that the sheep are formed in the reality of the divine nature. And I am more and more convinced that this is the work of the Spirit in the believer, to form him practically in the divine nature; that just as he has had part in the flesh and in man’s ruin, so now, being enlightened and indwelt, he is formed in the divine nature. “He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous”; and he loves according to Christ. Apart from that thought I doubt if you can understand the passage: “I know my sheep and am known of mine” — that is in the divine nature — “as the Father knoweth me and I know the Father”. The Father knows the Son and the Son knows the Father in the reciprocity of divine affections, if I may use the expression. And so it is in regard to Christ and the sheep; He knows His sheep and He is known of them in the reality of the divine nature in which they have been formed by the Holy Ghost given to them. It is a wonderful work of grace, and I think it is a great step beyond the previous passage. You see the same thought of the divine nature in Paul’s doctrine; he speaks of the having put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness [p. 42] and holiness of truth; that is, the believer is made partaker by the Spirit’s work within him of the divine nature, and it is in that he knows Christ and is known of Christ.
One word more. It is in the divine nature that we become one flock. Now you come to the great truth, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold” — that is, I suppose, to be gathered in from the Gentiles — “them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one flock, one shepherd”. I believe it to be one flock in the divine nature, not a body, patent and evident in the world; I do not think that is the idea of it; but it is very near akin to Paul’s truth of the one body; “We being many are one body in Christ”. This is an abstract expression; in Christ we are one body, and members one of another. So here, it is one flock and one shepherd; but the Lord does not bring out the truth of one flock and one shepherd until He had previously brought out the truth of the divine nature which is to characterise the sheep. I believe that the idea of the knowledge which is spoken of is of knowledge between kindred natures, not mere acquaintance. There are plenty of people with whom I am acquainted; but if I want to know a person intimately, there must be the possibility of affections of a kindred nature. And I think it is that into which the believer is brought in connection with Christ, as the Father knows Him and He also knows the Father.
Now we have come to the secret of unity. Unity rests in a sense on other grounds; but unity is accentuated by the consciousness that we are one flock, and that there is one shepherd. The one flock gives as I have said the secret of unity. Just as with the apostle Paul, the mystery of the one body is revealed that we may know the secret of unity, so in John the secret of unity lies for Christians in [p. 43] the divine nature. You will not have true unity in any other way; unity cannot be in the flesh, it is in the Spirit; and in the very nature of what we are, and what we partake of, we become one. The new man is treated of as one, you “put on the new man”, “where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all”: it is the divine nature; and it is in the divine nature that we are “one body in Christ, and members one of another”. While the world was to see the unity, Christians understood it; the world could not understand anything about the one flock and the one shepherd, but they could see the effect in the sheep. We find the Lord praying for it in chapter 17; “That they all may be 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”.
I will just say one word in regard to ourselves at the present time. We have to look at all these truths more or less in an abstract way, but as speaking of things existing. Although unity in the assembly is completely broken up (who will dare to say it is not), yet the flock is here; it has not ceased to be. It is just as true now as when this was written; there is the one flock and the one shepherd; but saints have lost the idea of it, and have all gone off into great independent ecclesiastical bodies and the like. And what is it that has brought you and me and perhaps most of us here, out of all these things around? I will tell you we found that scripture laid upon us the obligation to unity, and we saw that all that with which we were identified was inconsistent with the thought of unity. That brought us out of them, and I trust none of us will ever go back to them. Our standing apart from them is so far a protest against them; for in their very nature they deny the principle [p. 44] which is of all moment as governing the conduct of saints, that is, unity. Now I have sometimes wondered, as being apart from all these things, what authority have I in Scripture as to my course here? I see my warrant to separate, that I am justified in purging myself from “vessels to dishonour”, and in getting apart from all that practically denies unity; but what afterwards? I have been really exercised in my mind sometimes as to whether I ought not to stand completely alone; for we have all separated from these things individually, we have not separated in a mass; and what warrant have we in scripture for going on in company with others? Well, I thank God that I get a positive scriptural warrant; but I think it contemplates a fellowship which is based on moral principles, and which is not in character ecclesiastical: that is, you are to “follow righteousness, faith, love, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart”. I am quite willing to be instructed, but I know of no warrant for our fellowship outside the established order of Christendom except that; and the foundation of that fellowship is as I said moral: “righteousness, faith, love and peace” are certainly moral qualities, which we are to follow “with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart”. When I say moral I mean in contrast to ecclesiastical. I believe we have been greatly hampered by assuming to make an ecclesiastical basis of fellowship instead of seeing that the true basis of fellowship for those who have separated from all these things is moral.
There is one word more. If you come into that fellowship and are thus bound together, the question arises, How are you to be guided as to carrying out practically your fellowship? You are to be guided by the light for this moment, and the only light for the moment is the light that scripture has given to [p. 45] us in regard to the order of the church of God. It is a fellowship in which there is no pretension, which is founded upon moral principles, and is ordered by the light which God has given us in regard to the church. It is a difficult thing, without setting up any kind of ecclesiastical pretension, to go on simply in such fellowship, and to avoid talking, as I deprecated last time, about being on this ground or that ground. The more simple we are, and the more we appreciate the real basis of our fellowship, the more we shall welcome all the light which God has been pleased to give us by His blessed Spirit as to the true order of the church of God, without assuming anything whatever; for assumption in the present state of Christendom, and of those who have been brought out in the last fifty or sixty years, is totally out of place. I pray God that He may give us to see the great truth of the one flock and the one shepherd, and to see the security of the sheep. They have to fulfil their path down here; but the Lord says, “They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand”. The sheep have to go into the world, and to meet the difficulties and opposition and enmity there; but in the midst of all that, they are kept in the Father’s hand. When you come to the one flock and the one shepherd it is another matter, because I think the one flock exists in connection with the one shepherd, in the blessed truth of the divine nature. It is a great thing to recognise that the one flock is here, and that no one can prevail against it; but we do not want to be gathered on the ground of the one flock, but to recognise the truth of the one flock, and to thank God He has given to us a fellowship in which we can enjoy and delight in all the truth of the church of God.