CHRIST IN US
[p. 127] CHRIST IN US
John 14:20; John 1:35, 36; John 4:28, 29; John 6: 66 - 69; John 9: 35 - 38; John 12: 3
My subject, dear brethren, is Christ in us. These verses treat of this subject, John presenting it more fully and more varied perhaps than any other. One of the lines of thought pervading John’s ministry is fixity, having the end in mind, at least the Spirit having the end in mind, when there would be a great up-turning, thrones shaking and falling and ancient institutions rocked to pieces, a turning of the world upside down. This great ministry had in mind fixity for the Lord’s people. Those who believe are to be like mount Zion, are to be like the earth, in that sense which God has founded for ever. And so the Lord in this verse in chapter 14 speaks about a day, “that day”. It alludes to the day of the Spirit, for fixity in the sense in which I am speaking of it is not simply by faith but requires the Spirit. The Lord had this in mind in introducing this great subject of the Comforter. He proceeds in the passage to speak of certain results of His presence. The world did not know Him, did not see Him, but the disciples should see Him and they knew Him, He dwelt with them and should be in them. The Lord therefore, dear brethren, marks off the saints, in the thought of the disciples, sharply from the world, for the world did not see and could not know what the disciples saw and knew. We are marked off sharply from the world in the Lord’s mind. The apostle tells us that the Lord has in mind in discipline that we should not be associated or identified with the world even publicly in the judgment of God, for “On this account many among you are weak and infirm, and a good many are fallen asleep”. How many of the Corinthian saints would be the subject of concern! Look around on the sick ones and those that had fallen asleep. Think of them, the word being that they should not be judged with the world. The Lord is concerned that no governmental action of God should be forced to identify His people with the world. Sometimes in His service here He had to speak to His disciples and the multitude as if there was no difference, “O unbelieving generation!” (Mark 9: 19), as if He included them all, and the disciples were just occupied with defending themselves against others and the poor boy afflicted by demons was unhelped. So the Lord marks us off here sharply, as I said, and “In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you”, John 14: 20. The Lord is anticipating the day in which this fixity should be known to us, to the saints. It is to be taken abstractly in the verse read because the Lord does not say, In that day ye shall know that I shall be in my Father; no, it is the present. It is a fixture, as any fixture is in the creation, in the mind of God. There are great fixed principles in the creation, without them the creation could not subsist, and this verse, as I understand it, is in the Lord’s mind, such a thing as that. The day was coming when the saints should know it, not by investigation, but the presence of the Spirit and the accompaniments of that presence should bring out this great fact that there is a great spiritual fixity that no earthquakes or storms or upheavals can touch. And the mention of it, dear brethren, is to the end that we should come into it. I mean by knowledge. I proceed now to show the varieties in which the idea is seen in John; how Christ is in believers, the variety of features in which He is in believers.
I take up John the baptist first as he is one of the ideals of the Spirit in this gospel. Let no one think that the end of the dispensation may not develop [p. 129] features of the work of God as great as at the beginning. John belonged to the previous dispensation and there was no one born of woman greater than he. The Lord says, There is no one greater than John the baptist, and yet He says one of the least in the kingdom is greater than he, that is, he does not come up to the level of our dispensation. “From the days of John the baptist”, the Lord says, “until now, the kingdom of the heavens is taken by violence”, Matthew 11: 12. It could stand it. No institution can stand violence more and maintain itself, but it is not violence in an adverse sense but in a friendly appreciative sense,”the violent seize on it”. John the baptist set out that thought of energetic condition amongst the people of God. Lethargy is abhorrent to John. He is a man of doing, he is a man of action, a man that will make the most of what is available to him. He appropriated Christ as far as he could. This evangelist leaves him saying, “He must increase, but I must decrease. He who comes from above is above all. He who has his origin in the earth is of the earth, and speaks as of the earth”, John 3: 30, 31. Christ came from heaven, John accepts his earthly setting but he himself knowing of the heavenly. The Spirit of God shows how he laid hold of it, how he valued that, the heavenly Man, and rejoiced to hear the voice of the Bridegroom; his joy was fulfilled, he was not complaining. The evangelist John does not mention any of John the baptist’s weaknesses. He omits telling us that he sent a message to Jesus questioning whether He was the Christ. He leaves him saying that his joy is fulfilled. Would that that should be taken on by every christian! for christianity is not to promote a joyless people. Let me assure you that christianity is intended to promote joy. Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I will say, Rejoice”, Philippians 4: 4. John the baptist laid hold of that thought.
[p. 130] I want to show the feature in which Christ appears in him at the outset. Much, of course, is said about him and by him in the chapter that I cannot touch upon. The point I wish to bring forward as foundational in the structure I would seek to build up in this address is that Christ was in John sacrificially. He calls Him the Lamb of God as he sees Him. Earlier he said He is “preferred before me, for he was before me”, John 1: 15. He said also he was not worthy to stoop down and to unlatch His shoe. But when he sees Him coming to him he says, “Behold the Lamb of God”. It is a question of movement. The sacrificial thought is conveyed in movement. When Adam gave names to the creatures you may be sure the sacrificial idea would be there. Noah was to know the clean from the unclean creatures. Doubtless their names would carry down something to him as to this and there can be no doubt that the lamb carried with it a sacrificial thought, “the Lamb of God”. Adam could not connect any creatures specifically as above others with God, but now we have the “Lamb of God”. John is able to designate Him as he sees Him coming to him and so it is that every believer foundationally has some conception of Christ coming to him. It may be we have not thought of this. When he saw Him coming to him he said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. It was the movement undoubtedly. What is said of John is to bring out his qualities.
How alert he was in all his sensibilities! So when he saw Him coming to him he says, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. What a thought! That is to say, Christ was in him in that way. How essential that would be, for what was John’s ministry, what was the ministry of any save in the light of this great transaction, the taking away of the sin of the world — not putting it down by military power yet, but taking it away. It is in the [p. 131] character of the Lamb, taking away the sin of the world. That, dear brethren, is the first thought, and then as he stands, for I believe the standing in verse 35, of this great servant signifies that a Greater had come in to take on the service of God. So that it is now a question of standing and letting a Greater take on the service. This is the thought, it is practical. If a greater appears in one’s vision the spirit of John would lead you to give way to him not to rival him. It is a question of God’s ordering and He knows better than we. He selects his men, but Jesus stands out pre-eminently, John says, “preferred before me”. That is a question of God’s mind. If one is preferred before me it is for me to take a second place. John the evangelist was always ready to do that, too, always ‘Peter and John’. I believe he learnt it from this great idea of John the baptist. “First, Simon, who was called Peter”. John recognised that, so he is standing now and admiringly looking at Jesus as He walked, not now coming to him but walking, for it is sacrificial dignity in the walk. As in the book of Proverbs gaits of creatures like the lion and the horse and so on, indicative of God’s intent in each one — Adam, no doubt, saw that and named them accordingly. God never altered a name given by Adam. God would be delighted in the instinct and intelligence in Adam, as head. He named the creatures according to what they were in the mind of God. You can see them coming to Noah and how Noah would value them. They came two by two into the ark. What intelligence was manifest! What a sight for heaven! As they come two by two, with perfect understanding, as you might say, of the need of propagation in the new world, as it were, “male and female”, it says. The new world is to be replete with life all according to the original thought of God, nothing by accident. So this walk of the Lamb is very beautiful for it calls for the exclamatory word here, “Behold the Lamb of God!” by one in whom Christ is in this sense. He is there in a fixed way in John and John calls attention to Him. We have often noticed the astronomical characteristics in John and this is one of them. A great planet may call attention to something greater, it denotes the position of something else. So it is that John denotes something else from himself. He is not shining in his own glory but for the glory of Another. Well, that is the first great thought a foundational one, and if we are to come into this great matter of Christ in us it is to see that He is to be apprehended sacrificially.
In the case of this woman of Samaria my thought is that He is in her prophetically. If He is in me sacrificially, if I apprehend Him in that light and cherish the thought and would not give up for worlds that thought of His being in me, I owe all to Him on that ground — sacrificial ground; then the next thing is that I must be searched as to whether there is anything incompatible in me. For if He is to be in me sacrificially surely it is due to Him that there should be no rival thing in me, nothing in me to dispute His place there. And so the woman in the course of the conversation which we have sought to dwell upon profitably, she says to Him, “I see that thou art a prophet”, John 4: 19. It is a question of perception now and surely all the power of perception that we have is called into action if Christ be in us. Paul says, “if Christ be in you, the body is dead on account of sin” — all that is negative, “but the Spirit life on account of righteousness”, Romans 8: 10. That comes out in John 4, a question of the Spirit and of a believer in Christ discerning, perceiving that Jesus in serving her is a prophet. If He has to deal with the sin of the world, all the magnitude of the thing, He is certainly going to deal with it in me and will not tolerate it in me. “If Christ be in you, the body is dead on account of sin”, that is to say, it is the [p. 133] sequential thing, it is incompatible that it should be otherwise. “The body is dead”, meaning it has ceased to respond to the natural desires of the flesh. And the Spirit is life, a positive thing in view of righteousness, now there is to be movement. It indeed implies that I am in the body but I do not go into that side. This woman in John 4 is the best example you can get of Christ in the believer; the body is dead. She is searched through and through and she has not a word to say in justification of her whole course, it is exposed to her and she abominates it. “Come, see a man who told me all things I had ever done: is not he the Christ?” Christ is in her. Her body is dead, she left her waterpot, but took the waterpot on herself, went back herself full. The Spirit is life in view of righteousness. If there was never a righteous act in her history there is now going to be. The Spirit is life and if Christ be in us, dear brethren, there will be righteousness. It is the order of God and if Christ be in us the body is dead, it has ceased to respond to the desires of the flesh. The body is dead. And “they that are of the Christ have crucified the flesh with the passions and the lusts”, Galatians 5: 24. She goes back into the city, the men have no influence over her any more, she has power over them for good. She left her waterpot, as much as to say it is not an external thing after all, but she herself is a vessel for the Spirit of God. A mighty triumph, now, Christ in her. She is full of Christ. As she went back into the city I believe her face would be aglow because she had met One who could meet all her soul’s difficulties, her whole history was told and she is now a vessel because He is in her. Instead of other men (she had had five husbands), one Man now, “that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God”, Romans 7: 3. Christ is in her and she makes it known so powerfully that the men are moved and obey, they immediately go to Christ. “Is not he the Christ?” she says. Now I go to Peter and the third phase is that Christ is in Peter here as the Holy One of God, an allusion, I believe, to Aaron who is called of old the “saint of Jehovah”, Psalm 106: 16. It is now time surely to think of serving God. The matter has been touched in the conversation between the Lord and the woman of Samaria so that the instruction is accumulative. Now it is in Peter’s mind but first he says, “thou hast words of life eternal”. Christ is in him in that light, that He has “words of life eternal”. All must come to futility apart from the great abiding thought and blessing of eternal life. There is nobody else to go to. If I follow a leader, even like Methuselah, he would die. The man would come under death. There must be the great matter of eternal life. It would have finality and permanency in view, and then he said moreover “we” meaning himself and the others — for the Lord addresses the twelve, a great administrative number — and Peter answers saying, “we have believed and known that thou art the holy one of God”, as you might say the true Aaron of God. What service we are going to have with such an Aaron as that One who has the words of eternal life! He does not terminate by reason of death. No, our Priest lives in the power of indissoluble life. “Such a high priest became us, holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and become higher than the heavens”; and the writer to the Hebrews says, “We have such a one high priest who has sat down on the right hand of the throne of the greatness in the heavens; minister of the holy places and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord has pitched, and not man”, Hebrews 8: 1, 2. What services we shall have! The Lord is helping as to that, too, in the most encouraging way, as one has opportunity of seeing it, as the Lord is helping us as to the service of God and if we are to understand it and take part in it we must understand [p. 135] this feature of Christ in us as the Holy One of God. It is a fixed matter that the service of God proceeds in those who serve Him in spirit and truth, those who boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh and worship by the Spirit.
The next is chapter 9. What is to be observed is Christ is in this man, who had once been blind, as the Son of God. The context shows that the Lord had in mind that He should be in this man in this character. A point comes in our histories when the Lord says, ‘I have come into your matters definitely and I want you to understand that I am to be in you in a certain relation. It is essential that it should be so’. He came into this man’s circumstances at a given point. He did not come in before. He opened his eyes by a certain process, but we hear no more of Jesus speaking to him until he is cast out by the religious men of the world. Then He says, as it were, ‘I will come in now to your circumstances’. When He heard that they had cast him out He finds him. I want the brethren to think of this and see if it does not fit in with your experience. The Lord says constantly, “am I now come”. In Joshua it was at a given point at Jericho where it was needed. Much had preceded the incident and much had preceded this incident, too, in the man’s history. So it is much precedes in each of our histories, when the Lord comes in in this specific way and says, ‘I want now to be in you in a certain relation. It is essential to your present welfare; it is to your blessing and essential to My testimony that I am to be in you as the Son of God’. What a thought that is! He says to him after finding him, “dost thou believe on the Son of God?” That is the question asked by the Lord. I do not think there is one in this room that the Lord would not ask that question did He have the opportunity. The man is an outcast religiously; the Lord is honouring the fact. He honours every little bit of [p. 136] suffering for Him, but when one is formally excommunicated because he is faithful to Christ, that is a great matter to Him. The Lord says, ‘I want to consolidate that’. This man would never seek to get back into the associations out of which he had been cast. He says, ‘I will hold him where he is’, as Aaron’s speaking held the children of Israel in the wilderness. The Lord would help you in the outcast’s place. He will support and fortify you in it, consolidate you in that position. That is the point here. He is to be in this man as the Son of God and that makes the man for ever a fixture. “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” 1 John 5: 5. He is to be in this man as the Son of God and that makes this man a victor to be qualified against all attacks. After excommunication they think that they have lost something and they may hold out a bait to get him back but the Lord says, ‘I will hold this man’. I will consolidate this victory; He says, ‘I want to be in you as the Son of God’. The man says, “who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?” I am ready for that. Thank God He is helping greatly on this point. It is because I believe some are ready for it. This man is ready for Him. The Lord loves when we are ready for a great feature of the truth which He would bring to us. The Lord says, “Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee”, thus crediting him with soul history. There is much earlier in the chapter more than we can name ourselves. You take the men of faith in Hebrews 11, there is not one perhaps in that whole list who would have said in his days that he was a man of faith. It takes years to bring it out, so here the Lord says, “Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe”. John’s way is to make real believers ready for every feature of the truth. I do not believe this man would have ever made any headway had he [p. 137] not accepted this new great feature of the truth — the sonship of Christ. He believed and not only that but he worshipped Him. The Son of God is God. He is an Object of worship and faith discerns it, the man worshipped Him. Now you can see, dear brethren, how all this is constructive and it is intended to make real christians, real believers and real worshippers too. For now we have the subject of worship in chapter 4, minister of the sanctuary in chapter 6, and a worshipper of the Son of God in chapter 9, the Son of God in a man and he is a worshipper.
I come now to the last phase, that is Mary of Bethany. Christ is in her as you can understand in all the features of which I have been speaking and she adds the thought of affection; that is, she is the great lover of Jesus and what can all these features be, dear brethren, aside from this — from a real genuine admiration of Jesus, the supreme Object of our hearts? Mary’s history shows that as regards her it was Christ and Christ only, so that as the facts are stated here we have the sequential adverb repeated. “Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment”. She took it. Martha was serving, Christ was in her, too, but not in this way. She had a different, a shallower apprehension of Christ than Mary, although the Lord greatly honoured Martha when He came to Bethany on a previous occasion. Martha met Him outside and He did not go further; He stayed there until Mary came there, showing that He valued Martha and would not allow any preferential thought in regard of the saints. For He loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus, they were all lovable, but then Mary was more lovable and that is what we might do well to think of. There is, dear brethren, such a thing as lovability for the divine eye, the increase of the traits of Jesus under the eye of [p. 138] God. I become more and more lovable and I think that Mary became more and more lovable. She never was more lovely, I venture to say, than she was at this moment.
Now you see the movements; she took the pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, “and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment”. You can see how this exceeds all that we have had, for the fact of Christ being in her leads to the filling of the house with odour. What a contributor she is to the service of the house of God! For that is the thing being led up to in John. We have the subject of worship in chapter 4, minister of the sanctuary in chapter 6, and the worshipper of the Son of God in chapter 9 and we have the house filled by this worshipper, filled with precious odour. The Spirit of God dwells on this in these verses. I believe, as I said, that Mary was never more lovely in the eyes of Jesus. The Song of Songs helps us as to these mutual love matters, how lovableness is seen both in the male and female speakers. The female speaker describes the object of her affections. She is not afraid or ashamed. She does it beautifully, finally she says He is altogether lovely, supremely so. You cannot add to it. But then he says wonderful things about her, about the prince’s daughter. So again in Psalm 45 one of the great Maschil psalms — a teaching psalm — the word is, “So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty”, that good thing, then you are more lovely as you leave your family relations, forsake your father’s house and your own people. So long as you fail to be weaned away from the natural there are blemishes, you are not quite so lovely as you might be unless you have done this. As you abandon all these you are more lovely, “So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty”. Is it not attractive, dear brethren, to abandon all that causes blemishes? We know how much is expended today on beautification of people’s persons, removing natural blemishes, but why take on blemishes? The Lord shows how to remove them. He delineates the kind of beauty that He loves. I think Mary represents all that. She is beautiful in the eyes of Christ and He defends her. We have spoken today of the cloud by day and the fire by night; it is a matter of protection. What is so valuable as the tabernacle, as His saints are under God’s eye? What is so valuable must be protected by the cloud and the protection enables God to have a residence there. The cloud is on the tent in the first reference and then the glory filled the tabernacle, that is the divine residence. What is inside involves all the beautiful texture of the fabrics and the gold and the beautiful embroidery — all that is within. The glory filled all that. “The king’s daughter is all glorious within”. I believe Mary of Bethany is fit for the finest palace of the King and she is so valued in the King’s eyes that He protects her. One begins to criticise her, she knew something about that. Her sister had criticised her before. Alas! for the bitter criticisms current amongst us. But now there is the criticism of Judas, and the Lord graciously extends the wing of His protection over one so valuable. He says, She has kept this until the day of my burial. She must not be interfered with. I believe there is no danger on these lines. We shall be divinely protected by God against the attacks of the enemy and then we shall be thus secured for God that Christ may be in us in all these features, and so fixity is understood and it goes on into eternity where the glory is to be “in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages”.