TWOFOLD APPREHENSION OF CHRIST AS LORD AND AS THE LIVING STONE
Note that the words in verse 7, “He is precious”, should read: “To you therefore who believe is the preciousness”.
You must not expect anything like an exposition of the verses just read. We have no desire whatever to indulge in expository preaching, even if we had the ability. I can frankly tell you what our desire is; our desire is to speak to you about the Lord Jesus Christ. I am perfectly certain of this, that if the Spirit of God, who is here, who abides with us and dwells in us, if He has His way here tonight, it will be, in His power, a ministry of Christ to our hearts. In this way Christianity is very simple. The heart is not divided with a multiplicity of objects, neither is the mind distracted in attempting to grasp many different things. Christianity is Christ. It is Christ to begin with, and it is Christ to go on with—it is Christ from first to last. I am sure it would be impossible to overstate the importance of our being engaged with Christ by the Spirit. I am not going to dwell on the fact that God has revealed Himself in Christ—in our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God, blessed as that is—I am not going to dwell particularly upon the fact that redemption, with all that the word in its widest meaning may embrace, has been accomplished by Christ. But in the scripture I have read, I desire to speak most simply.
The Lord Jesus Christ is presented to us here in a twofold way, and I conceive that the apprehension of Christ in this twofold way is most important. I only speak for the moment of apprehension; but you will find this to be true as we proceed with what we have before us. There are four ‘A’s with regard to growth in Christ. The first ‘A’ is apprehension; there must be apprehension. I do not see how anything like spiritual movement can take place or be accomplished in our souls apart from the apprehension of Christ. Then, following apprehension, there comes appreciation. It is a very simple thing to say, but it is impossible to appreciate one whom you do not apprehend. We apprehend Him, and the light in which we apprehend Him becomes the measure of our appreciation of Him. What a wonderful thing to have, in any measure, an appreciation of Christ! And then there is another ‘A’, and that is the ‘A’ of appropriation. You appropriate Him. I do not think, as we have sometimes been told, that appropriation is a function of faith. Appropriation is by love; it is love that appropriates. Faith apprehends, faith perceives, faith is really the soul coming into the light of Christ. God has only one object to present and that is Christ, and apprehension of Him is the light coming into our souls. Then there is appreciation. And there is a Scripture that will help us as to that. You will find it in Galatians 5: 6: “faith which worketh by love”. That is how faith operates; it is faith working by love that appreciates, and then there is love—affection for Christ. Let me go over it. When there is apprehension and appreciation of Christ, what marks the soul? Affection for Christ. If you apprehend Him and appreciate Him, you love Him. It is this affection for Himself that appropriates. And the result of appropriation is assimilation. You are assimilated to Christ; you become like Christ. That is what God’s heart is set upon with regard to us all at the present time. It is to make us like Christ. Why? Well, Christ has been here; He was under the eye of God on earth for three-and-thirty years, and (I do not know how better to express it) those three-and-thirty years were for God’s heart an unbroken period of feasting and delight. What must it have been for God after four thousand years seeing man on earth according to the flesh? Well, I think you get an intimation of it in Luke 2 with regard to the Lord. There He lies a babe in the manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and there is the communication from the angel of Jehovah to the shepherds. Then suddenly there steps down from the plains of glory a multitude of the heavenly host. What do they say? “Glory to God in the highest”, Luke 2: 14. Ah, God’s time is come! glory to God in the highest! Put that against four thousand years of deep, dark, black dishonour to God! How it stands out! “glory to God in the highest!” “on earth peace!” And then—“good pleasure in men!” Put that beside Genesis 6: 6. God created man. We know what happened. God allowed man outside the garden to go on for about one thousand seven hundred years. There came a moment when God distinctly looked down and took account of man here upon the earth—and what does the Spirit say of it? “It grieved him at his heart”. “It repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth”. Has there been any improvement since the flood? Alas, who can dream of improvement when man according to flesh is in question? The foolishness of this poor world is that they are all dreaming of improvement. The papers tell you things are going to get better; that they are just on the turn; that some little change in the Government will make things all right. That is the old story. What folly! But listen! What did the angelic host say? “Good pleasure in men”. God can look down on that babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger, and there is a point of reconciliation for the heart of God; and the angelic host exclaim, “Good pleasure in men”, in Christ. When one begins to speak about Him where can one stop?
Now what I want to put before you simply is the twofold way in which He is spoken of. I repeat, it is not my thought at the present time to dwell upon the revelation of God in Him. “No one has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”, John 1: 18. God has been perfectly declared, perfectly made known, perfectly revealed in Him who is the image of the invisible God, who is the brightness, the effulgence, the outshining of God’s glory, and the “exact expression” of God’s substance. He has accomplished the work of redemption. He has taken up the question of sin. He has answered according to the glory of God, and God has reaped a revenue of glory from the atoning death of the Lord that He never could have reaped from an eternity of Adam in innocence. If one might venture to say it, God is richer in glory since the cross than ever before. It is not only that there has been compensation for all the dark shame and dishonour of sin, but God is richer in glory than He ever was before. Christ died. God raised Him, and let Peter tell what we want to express, in the end of his discourse on the day of Pentecost when he said: “Let the whole house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him, this Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ”, Acts 2: 36.
I want to speak of Him as Lord for a moment. He has not only been down here and revealed God and accomplished that wonderful work of atonement or redemption on the cross, in which God has been perfectly glorified and the whole question of sin has been taken up and definitely settled, but He has secured, so to speak, for man, all the grace that fills the heart of God. And now God has raised Him up, and exalted Him, and made Him Lord. What does that mean? It means this—that God has made Him the Administrator of all the grace that fills the heart of God, and which God is so free to dispense on the ground, not only in the light of the revelation of Himself, but on the ground of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ is the Administrator of that grace, and that is all gathered up in that beautiful expression in verse 3 of the chapter which I have read: “If indeed ye have tasted that the Lord is good”. “The Lord is good”.
Now, you will find in this first Epistle of Peter, all through the first chapter, culminating in the third verse of the second chapter, that the Lord Jesus Christ is presented as Lord. That is what He is on God’s side man-ward in the administration of the grace of the heart of God. And so we get redemption and “being born again”. Let me tell you, “born again” in 1 Peter is not the same expression in the Greek that is translated in John 3 “born again”. “Born again” in John 3 is really ‘born anew’, but in the first Epistle of Peter it stands for the whole work of God in the soul that constitutes a person a Christian. There is redemption—the great work for them; and there is “born again”, the great work in them. Chapter 2 opens in a very simple and yet a very instructive way. It says, “Wherefore”. (That word “wherefore” is built up on what precedes, on all that comes out in chapter 1.) “Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings”—five things. Wherefore laying all these things aside. Why lay them aside? Because they are the miserable workings and activities of the flesh. Although you are redeemed, although you are born again, there must be the work of God in you—there is not a shadow of doubt cast upon that—there is no question about it. Take the word “know”—K-N-O-W—“Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things ... But with the precious blood of Christ ...”—and so, as “born again”, we are to love one another with a pure heart fervently, there is no shadow of a question—no doubt upon either the work for you or the work in you. Then why are we to lay these things aside? Because it is a question of growth—of spiritual growth; and if these things are allowed there can be no growth, no progress, no movement. I am solemnly impressed with this fact that a great many Christians are spiritually like the Galatians—they are stopped! That is the word. He says “Ye ran well, who has stopped you?” Well, you say, the judaising teachers were used of the enemy. But how were they “stopped”? By the flesh. I am solemnly convinced that a great many Christians—and they are Christians—have been redeemed, they have been born again; there is the work of Christ for them and the work of God in them; unquestionably they are Christians—yet I am impressed that a great many are “stopped”. And a good many get stopped by these five things.
“Wherefore laying aside all malice”. Come, we had better look into the looking-glass straight. Look straight into it! Then it will show you up just as you are. Malice! Guile! What is guile? Guile is saying things that are true to hide the truth. That is guile. You cannot indulge the flesh in any way and go on with God—you are stopped. Then hypocrisies! There is a difference between guile and hypocrisy. Guile is like the woman we are told about at the well. “I have no husband” (John 4: 17), she said. That was true, but it was not all the truth. The truth was she had had five husbands, and the man she had then was not her husband. Now hypocrisy is pretending to something that is not at all true. What is the next? “And envies”. You have to guard against that. And what is the last? “Evil speaking”. Are you going to spread slander and evil reports about your brethren? So much the worse. “Evil speaking” is a work of the devil and a great hindrance to growing up to salvation.
Now, lay aside these evil things and seek something else; you want something that will positively minister to your spiritual growth. And so, in the next verse, we find: “As newborn babes desire earnestly the pure mental milk of the word”. What is the matter with our appetites? Here is a mother that has got an interesting family. Meal-time comes and she spreads the table with good wholesome food. The children are called, but one little child says to her mother—“I have no appetite”. An inquiry takes place; there is an investigation. What is the matter with the child? What is the matter with some of us that we have not got an appetite for the pure mental milk of the word? We have spoilt our appetites by allowing the flesh. “As newborn babes desire earnestly the pure mental milk of the word, that by it ye may grow up to salvation”. Ah! that is the point, and is it not a definite point? I was going to say a climax. “If indeed ye have tasted that the Lord is good”. You know Him as Lord; you are in the good of His Lordship; you have tasted of His goodness. If you set an apple on the table and ask my opinion of that apple, I say, First let me have a taste of it. I taste it and I pronounce it a very good apple. How do I know? Because I have tasted it. So “If indeed ye have tasted that the Lord is good”, you know that He is good! That is in connection with salvation—soul-salvation. You are in the good of it and you prove what a wonderful thing it is to taste that the Lord is good! Have you tasted today that the Lord is good? Tell me, what has happened today? Perhaps some of the children are sick. Perhaps something went wrong in the house or in the business. You are tried here and there. How have you got through it all? Did you taste that the Lord is good? Did you prove the reality of soul-salvation? Let me tell you, if you grow to salvation—soul-salvation, you are on the top of your trials, and of your difficulties, and of all your circumstances. If your trials and difficulties and circumstances are on the top of you, you have not grown to salvation, you are not in the good of the Lord. “If indeed ye have tasted that the Lord is good”. It is a lovely word. It is very simple, because one finds this (and I am sure in speaking thus I am only expressing what every Christian in this room would express)—as we go on in our life down here things do not become less real; they become more real to you, in that way, because you begin to take account of things in relation to God, in relation to the Lord Jesus Christ, and in proportion as you do, you find things very real. I may say that things are more real to me now since last Saturday. What about last Saturday? you say. Well, I just crossed the line of three-score years and ten last Saturday6. Things are much more real to me now than they were twenty or thirty years ago. You take a more intelligent, a more sober account of things here than you did when you were younger, if you are growing up to salvation. It is a wonderful thing to grow to salvation.
In chapter 1: 8 the apostle says: “whom, having not seen, ye love; on whom though not now looking, but believing, ye exult with joy unspeakable ...”. My brethren and sisters, are you much acquainted with the joy that is “unspeakable”? I used to be a Methodist parson, but when you get this kind of joy there is no use going to a class meeting. You could not tell the joy; it is unspeakable. “Joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving”. What? “receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls”, chap 1: 8. That is a wonderful thing to “grow up” to. It is not that my trials and difficulties cease. It is not that I begin to go to heaven, hovering about ten feet above all the ordinary things down here? No, no. Things become more real to us as we grow old. There is not one of us but is being tested day by day. Some days the test may seem extra strong, but never a day goes over our heads in our journey here but what we are morally tested. One would not wish it otherwise. When you find Christians chafing under their trials and circumstances, they are all wrong; they are not tasting that the Lord is good. When you grow to salvation and taste that the Lord is good you can “boast in tribulation”.
But I must go on. You have come to a wonderful point in your spiritual history. What about the next verse? “To whom coming”. It is like crossing a line, and more than that. We may speak of things in type in the history of the children of Israel, and they may in a way furnish an illustration; yet one feels they fall short of the greatness, the immensity, the importance of what verse 4 indicates. It was a wonderful day when the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea; and a wonderful day when they crossed the Jordan! But what a wonderful day it is in our spiritual history when we have come into the good of what the Lord is! We have grown to salvation; we have tasted that the Lord is good. But what next? “To whom coming, a living stone”. Who do we come to? To the same Person; you begin with Christ, you go on with Christ; it is Christ all the way through, all along the way; it is Christ everywhere and all the time.
But I wish I could indicate to you in a simple scriptural way what this fourth verse indicates. It indicates that there is a new apprehension of Christ in your soul. “To whom coming ...”. Is it that you come to Him as a Redeemer, a Saviour? No. But to a living stone. That is the wonderful thing. We have been so slow. We have not all profited as we should have profited by what the Lord has given us for twenty years past. I remember a beloved brother—now with the Lord, a devoted servant of the Lord—whom the Lord enabled at one time when the truth was in question to write a four-page paper on the Person of Christ7, in which he affirmed just one thing—that in scripture Christ is sometimes presented as Man, distinct and apart from what He is as a divine Person. What he denied was that the truth of Christ’s Person consisted in the union in Him of God and man, alluding to the theological doctrine: ‘very God, very Man—one Christ’. He called attention to the fact that a great many Christians failed in their apprehension of incarnation, and he pointed out where the failure lay. The failure was to see that in incarnation Christ had taken a distinct place as Man God-ward. Having taken a distinct place as Man God-ward, He is the pattern of our blessing. What do you come to now? “To whom coming ...”. Before it was Christ on God’s side man-ward; now it is Christ on our side God-ward. It is a complete transition in the apprehension of Christ in your soul. And what a wonderful moment that is when we come to Him—the living Stone! when we begin to apprehend what Christ is as Man God-ward! It has often been said—and I say it for myself under the profound conviction that it is true—that we never learn truth of any sort outside of Christ. You may look at the saints, you may look at yourself until you sink down into doubt, and fear, and uncertainty; there is only one way to learn the truth of God really, and that is, to learn it in Christ. Why is it that we are so slow even now to apprehend our proper blessing? I will tell you. It is because we are so slow to apprehend Christ in the place He has taken as Man God-ward. Take the truth of the assembly. We may have good believers’ meetings on Sunday mornings, and we may thank God for what He has done, and anticipate all that is to come; but all the time we may be missing the truth of the assembly.
What is the reason? We are so slow in the apprehension of Christ as a Man having a special place God-ward; hence we fail to apprehend Him in what He is on our side God-ward; that is the failure. “To whom coming, a living stone, cast away indeed as worthless by men ...”—but mark what follows! “But with God chosen, precious, yourselves also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ”. I would like to state this—God has got His present thoughts about His people. Let us leave the future out for a few moments. I know something about the blessedness of the future. I know what the Scriptures say about it: that there is awaiting us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; I know it. But God has also got His present thoughts about His people down here, and they have come out here. They are twofold. What is the first thought? Worship. What is the second thought? Testimony. “A holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ”. That is worship. And then: “A kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a people for a possession, that ye might set forth ...” down here before men in testimony: what is set forth? Our own greatness? No! “That ye might set forth the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness to his wonderful light”. That is it. These are God’s thoughts; we should answer to them here and now. But the secret of answering to them is the apprehension and the appreciation, and the appropriation and the assimilation of Christ in what He is as Man on our side God-ward. I have noticed (it is a very simple illustration, but I call your attention to it) Matthew and Mark are the only two who, in their gospels, give us an account of what followed the breaking of bread. Luke does not tell you, and Paul does not tell you; but there is twofold—adequate testimony. “In the mouth of two or three witnesses” &c, Matt 18: 16. Matthew testifies, and Mark testifies, and it just illustrates the point. If it is the breaking of bread the Lord is on God’s side. Then the cup “This cup is the new covenant in my blood”, 1 Cor 11: 25. That is not Christ on our side God-ward—that is Christ on God’s side us-ward. What is the new covenant? It is the unfolding of all that God is in His love towards us. But, after the Supper, according to Matthew and Mark, what did He do? He took His place on our side, i.e., with the saints. “When they”—I like that “they”, because you see it is Himself and the company, they are all in that “they”—“when they had sung an hymn”, Matt 26: 30. Do you think He sang? I think He led the singing, and they sang with Him. “And when they had sung an hymn”. Christ comes over on our side God-ward. He says, “In the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praises”, Heb 2: 2. There it is. That is the principle of this passage—“To whom coming, a living stone”. If you and I apprehend Him thus we know what Christ is as Man in relation to the purposes of God. That is not what Christ is as Man on God’s side in relation to our need, but that is what Christ is as Man on our side God-ward in relation to the purposes of God and all the thoughts of God. And so “To whom coming, a living stone”; you apprehend Him, you appreciate Him, you appropriate Him, and you are like Him. How do you know that you become like Him? Because the very same language is used. Is He the living Stone? Well! coming to Him we are living stones. Scripture does not deal in unrealities; it does not deal in mere dogmatic statements. If the Spirit of God speaks of saints as living stones, living stones they are. There is a distinct connection that might be traced. It is the same man who wrote this epistle who in Matthew 16: 13, when the Lord says, “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” replies, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”. “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona [‘Bar’ means ‘son of’]: for flesh and blood has not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And also, I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and on this, rock ...”—the rock is the Father’s revelation of Himself in Peter’s soul. What is Peter? He is a stone. “Thou art Peter”. He is of the same material; he is a living stone—Christ, the Son of the living God, is the eternal rock upon which the assembly stands in all its impregnability, in spite of the gates of hades. Yes, Peter is a living stone; and we are living stones. Have you apprehended Him thus? What a wonderful day it is when the soul apprehends Him in that light! Do you appreciate Him “chosen of God, and precious”? He is precious to God. Is He precious to you? “To you therefore who believe is the preciousness”. And is there the appropriation of Him in love? Is there really the eating of Him? When the Lord says, “I live on account of the Father”, He does not hesitate to say, “he also who eats me shall live also on account of me”, John 6: 57. We appropriate Him, and what is the result of appropriation? Assimilation. He is the living Stone; we are living stones, and as such we are built up a holy priesthood, and as such we come out a royal priesthood.
May God be pleased to encourage us in connection with His thoughts of the blessed Lord Jesus Christ!