LIVING FEATURES IN BELIEVERS
Everyone secured by the gospel is intended by God to find his place in the assembly and to be marked by spiritual vitality, as Peter says, “yourselves also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house”, 1 Pet 2: 5. The early part of John’s gospel has in mind that individual believers should so experience the service of the Son and of the Spirit that they are able to move in the things of God with affection, intelligence, and power.
John, in his gospel, makes much of the individual, but all with a view to his functioning in the assembly. In the first chapter we read of two disciples who, as the result of the words of John the baptist, followed Jesus. One of them, Andrew by name, went and found his brother Simon and brought him to Jesus; and Jesus looked on him and said, “Thou art Simon, the son of Jonas; thou shalt be called Cephas”. When souls are brought to Christ, the Lord would give each a name, and He would give understanding that each has a place to fill: the work of God, indeed, carries with it certain potentialities which, when developed, will result in each answering to his name. The first thing that has to be learned is that even God Himself can make nothing of the flesh. It is a sober lesson, but it has to be learned. Flesh—what man is naturally—even at its best, was fully tested by the coming of the Lord Jesus into the world as “the true light”. He came to His own “and his own received him not”. There could not be a clearer demonstration of the utter inability of the natural man at his best to appreciate divine light when presented to him. But there were those who received Him, who were born of God. If we have received Him, we are to understand that it is because God has sovereignly wrought in us.
God loves the thought of a world, a great system of life in infinite variety, moving under His eye for His pleasure; and the first world, which was spoiled by sin, was but a testimony to what would be brought in by a spiritual order of things. He set Adam over it as head, and brought the woman to him, and she was to be with the man in headship over the world. This is what God intends to bring in in a spiritual sense in Christ and the assembly.
Nicodemus, a man of great reputation among the Jews, came to Jesus, who told him that he must be born anew. All that Nicodemus was in his natural ability and attainments, and the position he filled, was of no account: and in order to enforce this the Lord said, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh”—it could never be anything else. If God begins to work in us He has in view from the very start what is spiritual.
In order that we might learn what the flesh is, God has been pleased to record the incident of the brazen serpent in the history of Israel. It was nearly forty years after they left Egypt that they murmured, not only against Moses, but against God. They loathed the manna. Flesh, even in the believer, will loathe the heavenly grace which marked Christ here, for it does not minister to fleshly tastes at all. What works in the flesh is the poison of the serpent, and it cannot be eradicated. God does not intend to reform it; He judges it and sets it aside, never to be revived. We should come to a definite understanding before God of the true character of the flesh, for then only shall we refuse it completely and appreciate the fact that the Holy Spirit is to be to us life, and power and intelligence.
Think of what it must have been to Christ to be made sin! He knew no sin, and He was essentially holy in His Person; yet He was made sin, and that for us, that He might bear the condemnation of sin. God has in mind that all who believe should be introduced into a new order of life and blessing: He has eternal life in mind for every believer.
The Lord speaks to the woman in John 4 in order to win her confidence, and then says, “the water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life”. That is an attractive proposition and it applies to everyone to whom the Spirit is given. It makes you entirely independent of the world around, and completely superior to the flesh; you find your life in that which is eternal, which death cannot touch. At the end of Philippians Paul says, “I have learnt in those circumstances in which I am, to be satisfied in myself”. It is a remarkable statement. There he was, an old man and in prison, and much going on that was a great test to his spirit. It was what the Holy Spirit was to the apostle, as a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.
It was no wonder that the woman said, “Sir, give me this water!” The Lord loves to see someone really in earnest, someone willing to go in for spiritual things and to prove what the Holy Spirit can be to him or her. He then said, “Go, call thy husband, and come here”. The Lord knows what is hindering us from getting the gain of the Spirit, and He can put His finger on it just as precisely as He did with the woman. He is the One who was made sin for us on the cross. It was the expression of the depth of His love, and if He has gone that length for us He is certainly prepared to help us into the enjoyment of the things of God, and the Spirit is the power to enter into what God has for us.
He goes on to speak of the Father seeking worshippers, as though He would say to this woman, You are wanted as a worshipper of God. In eternity the assembly is to be the great vessel of intelligent worship, “To him be glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages”, Eph 3: 21. The assembly is to be capable, as moving under the impulse of Christ, of ascribing continually fresh appreciations of the glories of the blessed God as He will be known. But we are to be formed with ability to worship now, and to have the knowledge of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It says, “For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God”.
In John 6 the Lord is prepared to become food to us. It is a most touching thing that the Son and the Spirit are prepared to be so available to the individual believer. He says, “I am the bread of life: he that comes to me shall never hunger, and he that believes on me shall never thirst at any time”. What do you find marking saints who are really bright? What causes the brightness? It is feeding on Christ. He shows that if we are to appropriate Him, we must first appropriate His death by eating His flesh and drinking His blood, as understanding that He came into manhood and died, closing up in His death the flesh-and-blood condition and opening up a new order of life in which we are to have part with Him in the Spirit. He has left this scene, and ascended up where He was before, in order to open up an entirely new scene for us. Have we some sense that there is a world, outside of this world, centring in Christ? He would carry us in our thoughts and affections far from this world and even from that which is connected with the natural order of life, so that we should find our life and satisfaction in spiritual and heavenly things. We have to fill out our time here, and God does not intend that natural relationships and affections should be disowned, but He does intend that the spiritual should have the first place with us.
In the beginning of the Acts the Spirit came to a people who were waiting and dependent, characterised by prayer. We are to understand that it is the Spirit who makes things living to us. In John 7 the Lord speaks of what the Spirit would be to the individual believer as making him a source of refreshment to those around; “out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”. Everything depends on the Spirit for the inward satisfaction of the believer himself, and then for refreshment for others around. The flow of living water is from those who are characterized by believing in Christ, not simply those who have believed in the past. Chapter 4 deals with the gift of the Spirit by Christ, but chapter 7 deals with the reception of the Spirit. If some distinguished person were coming to your house you would make preparations to receive him worthily of his status. The more we are characterised by affording Him the place which is His due, the more we shall be marked by rivers of living water flowing out from us, so that we can be a testimony to God, to Christ and to the Holy Spirit. The assembly is composed of living persons, and if it is to answer to God’s thoughts, it is important that everyone should be in it livingly: the secret of that is in the Spirit being appreciated and our souls being fed with the food which Christ has provided for us.
LONDON
From Words of Truth 1952
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OUR OUTLOOK
I wish to say a word as to the importance of having the same outlook as the Lord. There is nothing so calculated to make us content, and to enable us to go through in steadiness and quietness till the Lord comes, as having the same outlook as the Lord. Paul says to Timothy, “Think of what I say, for the Lord will give thee understanding in all things”. And then he says, “Remember Jesus Christ raised from among the dead”; that is, victory is seen already in Christ and the position is assured. He is “of the seed of David”; the coming kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ is near. We are to have the sense of that in our souls. He is of the seed of David, the One as to whom the angel said to Mary when he came to announce the impending birth of Christ, “of his kingdom there shall not be an end”. It is not now a question of the approach of the time of His birth, but it is a question of the time being near for the establishment of the kingdom, and we are to remember Him raised from among the dead. Though the worst opposition has been exercised against Him, the Lord is apprehended by faith as completely victorious over it, so that there is nothing now to hinder the establishment of the kingdom, and the moment for it is near. He says, “Remember Jesus Christ raised from among the dead, of the seed of David, according to my glad tidings, in which I suffer even unto bonds as an evil-doer”. The present moment is a time of suffering. Suffering has characterised the testimony of God all down the ages. It commenced in Abel, who suffered for the truth’s sake, and it has marked the testimony of God in greater or less degree all along and will continue to do so until the Lord comes. And Paul was suffering, “even unto bonds as an evil doer”; “but”, he says, “the word of God is not bound”. The Lord is on high in the place of supreme power and authority and, the Spirit of God being here, the word of God is not bound. The word of God will go on and will accomplish whatever God has in mind to be accomplished through it. So in Acts 12 after it speaks of the death of Herod who had put James, the brother of John, to death, we read, “But the word of God grew and spread itself”. as though there is a certain power connected with the word itself, apart from the activities of man, that causes it to spread itself.
Now I turn to the two scriptures in Jeremiah because I believe that they have peculiar application to the present time. The first one, this special word to Baruch, who, I think we may gather, was probably a young man, was given him in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, the king of Judah. That is to say, it was about eighteen years before the final overthrow of Jerusalem and the final captivity of those who were left in it, after eighteen months of famine with all the horrors of a famine in a besieged city. What a time it was, that final overthrow of Jerusalem! It was the final pouring out of God’s wrath upon that with which He had connected His name, which had proved utterly unfaithful, and that has a strong analogy with the present moment, for Christendom is about to come under the most terrible judgment from God. It has professed the name of Christ and has proved worldly and worse than worldly; it is characterised by every form of evil. It is well that we should have this in mind, because God is not likely to prosper things in the world. Just as He took off the chariot wheels from the Egyptians, so I believe He will more and more weaken this world in the efforts it makes to hold His people captive, and its judgment in an intense form is absolutely inevitable.
And hence the word to Baruch is, “Thus saith Jehovah: Behold, what I have built do I overthrow, and what I have planted I pluck up, even this whole land. And seekest thou great things for thyself?” God knew what was in that young man’s heart. He says, “Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not; for behold, I will bring evil upon all flesh, saith Jehovah; but thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou shalt go”. Baruch had identified himself with the testimony; he had committed himself to Jeremiah; he had served Jeremiah in writing his words for him, so that he was in everything committed to the testimony, and yet God saw in that man’s heart that there was just a tendency to seek great things for himself, and He says, “Seek them not”. He will get through as he commits himself to the testimony and goes on identified with the testimony for the moment. He guarantees that he will go through; his life shall be given him for a prey.
Then in the other case (Jeremiah 39) this word to Jeremiah came even later than the word to Baruch, as far as we can gather. It came apparently when the final judgment upon the city was immediately impending and the word is, “Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring my words upon this city for evil, and not for good, and they shall come to pass before thy face in that day”. But then there is the word to Ebed-melech: “I will deliver thee in that day, saith Jehovah; and thou shalt not be given into the hand of the men of whom thou art afraid; for I will certainly save thee, and thou shalt not fall by the sword, but thou shalt have thy life for a prey”—exactly the same expression as was used to Baruch. “Thou shalt have thy life for a prey; for thou hast put thy confidence in me”. Ebed-melech had also identified himself with the testimony for the moment; he was known as a sympathiser with Jeremiah, one who had spoken for him before the king and had been used to draw him up from the dungeon, and God speaks to him in a very similar way, not to look for any improvement in conditions in the city, but he should “have thy life for a prey; for thou hast put thy confidence in me”. And so I believe that at the present time till the Lord comes it is for us to see, old and young alike, that we thoroughly commit ourselves to the word of God and the testimony, whatever it involves, and go through with it. We can rest assured that the Lord will see us through and, as regards making a living, He will, see that what is necessary is provided. For the testimony’s sake the Lord will see to it that the saints have what they need, but it is a good thing for us to have our outlook governed by His. As we go on on these lines we shall be increasingly free to support the testimony of God in all its features, and we shall have the great encouragement that God has pledged Himself to see us through, and we shall be seen through until the Lord comes. May we be helped in this matter! The more we have the Lord’s outlook on things and are affected by it, the more we shall be in full unity. One great element of unity is that we have all the same thing before us and all think the same thing. If we do that there will be unity.
LONDON
1952