THE PERFECTION OF JESUS AND OF HIS WORK
N. T. Meek
1 John 3: 10–12, (from “Whoever”); Genesis 5: 21–24; 6: 9; 7: 11–16
I desire to speak, dear friends, about Abel and Enoch and Noah from the point of view that they are typical, in some degree, of the Lord Jesus. None of the men that illuminate the pages of the Old Testament is great enough fully to represent the Lord Jesus, but they bring out, to a greater or less degree, some feature of that blessed Man. Therefore they are worth looking at, and so in a sense, every present believer should be worth looking at.
Now Abel represents one whose works were righteous. That is what is said of him in John’s epistle, “his works were a righteous”. Can you think of anyone of whom that could be said in an absolute way, that what they did, all that they did, all that was outwardly manifest in them was, right? I think you would be hard put, dear friend, to think of anyone in the compass of your observation of whom it could be said that all that was manifest in them, even when they were under pressure, was right. It could be said of Jesus, but I do not
think you could find it so of anyone else, not even of David, or of Moses. I am saying this because unless you have righteousness you have really got nothing. If there is, an element of flaw in the terms of the gospel or in the Person of whom the gospel speaks, the whole plan of salvation is flawed, and Abel is a type of One whose works were righteous. Yet his brother slew him; you say, He typifies the Jew; they took Jesus and they slew Him. Yes, that, is quite correct. I suppose in the history, in all that they had done, the way they had turned aside from Jehovah, the way they had dealt with His prophets, the way they had shut their ears to God’s entreaty, the way they had sacrificed to the Baals, and so on, there was never so great a sin in Israel as when they slew Jesus.
There has been One here, dear friend, who was righteous in the most absolute way—One who was greater than Abel. He is “Jesus Christ the righteous”. Now that is a very blessed thing to my soul that one Person has been here and all that He has done publicly was absolutely right. We often have to generalise, but we can be specific about Jesus and use a word that we can rarely use of others—‘absolute’. He was absolutely righteous. When He was here as a Boy, when He was here as a young Man, whether He was at home or whether He was labouring at the carpentry, everything that He did and every act that He did, everything that could be observed, was right. There was not a flaw in it. There was nothing that could be justifiably criticised. When He began His public service and He came under pressure from the scribes and Pharisees, who tried to trip Him up, who tried to catch Him in His words, who tried to get Him into situations where, for example, they said, Should we pay the tax, or not?—in every situation He did what was absolutely right. I say again, dear friend, that is something to get hold of, something that I would love you to get hold of—that there has been one Person here, and all that He did, in God’s eye and in man’s eye, was absolutely right.
Enoch, he represents Jesus too, but from a slightly different aspect. The life of Enoch appears largely to have been a secret, hidden life. It was not a public life, generally speaking. It says he walked with God. Now if you think of that, the only way that would be possible morally would be that he should be in accord with God. One does not think of Enoch being a great public figure in his day, one thinks of him as representing the hidden side of a man’s life.
Now there are persons who have managed, to a large extent, as far as their public acts go, to appear righteous. I have to qualify it, notice, by saying ‘to a large extent’, for no one has reached that absolutely. But who are they whose lives have been, as men say, of outward uprightness and apparent rectitude, who could stand investigation of their hidden life? All have failed in relation to their secret lives. How many secret sins we have known, how many times we have had to confess that our minds have gone into that realm of sin. How much error, how much that I know is not according to God, has entered into my mind! Enoch represents the Lord Jesus in His secret life and He was absolutely perfect there as well.
We sing, ‘No thought of His e’er moved apart from Thine’. That was the life of Jesus, dear friends, a life that was always in consonance with His Father, a life that was never broken into until the time came when He was forsaken on the cross, a life that in that period of thirty-three years was absolutely pure, absolutely perfect, absolutely delightful to God—His was a life of which it could be said in the most absolute and entire way, He walked with God. Now you might ask me why I am saying all this. I am saying it because if you have not got a perfect Saviour you have not got a perfect salvation, in fact you have no salvation at all. You must be absolutely sure of your ground, dear friend, and for that you need a perfect Saviour. You may search high and low, you may search through all the books of history, but the only Person you will find to reach that requirement is Jesus. I wonder if you have made Him your Saviour?
When we come to Noah you notice how things are often cumulative in Scripture; there is a moral link between these men, between Abel and Enoch and Noah, and it says of Noah that he was “a just man”. We might say it would not be very different from saying he was a righteous man, and then it also says, he walked with God. But then he did something, else, he did something that Enoch did not do. Abel may represent the suffering Jesus, the One who suffered at the hand of man—He was perfect even in His suffering. As a boy I often used to think of the gospel story and I wished that when the time came for Jesus to be apprehended He had acted in His power and met the Roman Empire with all its force and smashed it to smithereens. I would have liked to have seen an exhibition of His power. I would have liked to have seen Him work a miracle. I would have liked to have seen the whole Sanhedrim and the whole lot of His opposers cut down. That is what I would have liked—that is natural thinking, mental thinking, but it is not God’s way. Mr. Darby wrote, ‘He works no miracle that He may not die, but He works a miracle by dying’ (‘Letters’ Vol.1, p.281). That was Jesus.
Now Noah represents the Lord Jesus not exactly in His perfection but in another feature and that is His work, because He did something that the others did not do. He provided a means of salvation for mankind. That is what Jesus has done. If there had been no work, I suppose, in a certain sense, the unstained glory of His Person would have remained, but man would have been left in a hopeless, helpless situation—just looking at perfection and unable to get the benefit of it. But this perfect Man of whom we are speaking has wrought a perfect work, and I wonder, dear friend, if you are one of those who have come to take advantage of that work. It says of the creatures that they came to Noah. It has been said that he represents the attractiveness of Jesus. They came to him—it does not say they were forced to go; it does not say they were driven to go; they came to him. He stood, at the door of the ark and they came to him such is the attractiveness of Jesus. You read about it in the gospels (read it well, dear friend, and—let your heart absorb it), the attractiveness of Jesus, blessed Person that He is, so unlike you and me by nature. He is food for the believer’s soul. Someone said, ‘Jesus, of Thee we ne’er would tire; the new and living food’. Even a believer needs food for his soul. Why do we flag, why do we grow weary? It may be because we do not feed enough on Jesus.
So Noah and the ark represent the work of Jesus and I say again, I wonder if you have availed yourself of Him. Even Noah does not bring out the suffering side involved in the work, and I would just like to speak a little about the sufferings of Jesus. It is a very holy subject, a very deep subject. If my sins were to be forgiven somebody must suffer the judgment on them; somebody must bear the penalty. If God was to be righteous and they were to be put away then somebody must pay the price, and that meant that Jesus, that blessed Man who was always so entirely perfect, should suffer the punishment that was due to me, that He should be a Substitute for me, that He should bear my sins in His body on the tree. I wonder if you can say that for yourself, ‘He bore my sins’. It is a wonderful relief to be free of your load of sin, it is a wonderful relief to know that Someone has suffered for them, that Someone has suffered the judgment, because only thus can I be forgiven, it must be in righteousness. It is a wonderful thing to know that if Someone has done it, and if He has done it for me, I will not come under judgment. We have often said this, that God is righteous and if my sins have been put away God will not bring them up again.
I wonder if you have made Him—Jesus—your own; I wonder if you have come to avail yourself of this work that is absolutely without parallel. Men’s works, such as the Thames barrier, men’s bridges, the planes, and the space ships and shuttles—all pale into the tiniest insignificance compared with the work of Jesus. His work is absolutely unique—in the whole history of time no work was ever wrought like it. He came here for the putting away of sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Oh, I say, dear friend, are you in the gain of that? Some can say, with no doubt,
‘Jesus, my Saviour! Thou art mine,
The Father’s gift of love divine;
What Thou hast done, and what Thou art,
Are now the portion of my heart!
They are the words of a believer. There are many such but not too many. You always wish there were more. Please God, there will be more after the preachings across the earth today because, you see, God must honour such a work. He will have His house full and He will do it in righteousness.
Well, I commend these simple words to you, dear friend. Much more could be said about the gospel it is not only a gospel of relief. It is not only a gospel that settles for you the question of your sins, but contained in it is the fact that God has not only provided us an eternal salvation, but He has provided a present one, because believers, generally speaking, are still left in this antagonistic world and they need practical salvation. They will need salvation tomorrow, when they go to work, or when the washing machine breaks down and they feel like venting their feelings—they will need salvation.
One great means that God uses for effectuating that is by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Apart from the Holy Spirit you cannot really have affection for Jesus, not affection according to God, apart from the gift of the Holy Spirit. Neither can you enter in to God’s thoughts, neither can you understand the Scriptures rightly, neither can you get the gain of the Lord’s headship, without the gift and power of the Holy Spirit. Neither can you confess the name of Jesus suitably without the gift of the Holy Spirit. You cannot even say, “Lord Jesus” properly without the gift of the Holy Spirit. The One who has provided a Saviour in Jesus is equally willing to give you the Holy Spirit. He becomes the great means of practical salvation. How often, dear fellow believer, have we broken down, publicly even, in our lives and it is largely, perhaps, attributable to the fact that, temporarily at least, we have lost communion with the Holy Spirit.
Well, may the Lord help us in these things. May we have a sense; a deepened sense, that the perfection of Jesus becomes food for the believer’s soul, becomes his meat and drink. You cannot do without it, dear fellow believer, you cannot do without such food. None of us, however far we may have got in our knowledge of the truth, will ever reach a stage where we will not need to feed on Jesus; and there is such a thing as feeding not only for life but feeding for enjoyment. May the Lord bless the word.
Preaching at Gillingham
27 January 1985