CHRIST AS WISDOM AND AS LORD
[p. 147] CHRIST AS WISDOM AND AS LORD
You will find that there are certain distinct landmarks in the ways of God. For instance, the dealings of God with Abraham were a landmark; so too the raising up of David was another landmark in the ways of God. The same is seen in the New Testament. There are certain things that come out which are landmarks in the ways of God, and what is seen in this chapter is one of them. The point at which it occurs was after the stoning of Stephen. The 7th chapter relates that, and in this chapter we get a new point of departure; it is a landmark. What marks it is that it is the first time, so far as I can see, that we get the Lord interfering from heaven in regard to what was going on down here. All that had been going on, as related in the previous eight chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, had been carried out according to the injunctions of the Lord, given to the apostles. They carried them out in the power of the Spirit come down from heaven. But this chapter is extremely important, for we find the Lord directing things from heaven. It is the first intervention, so far as I can see, of the Lord from heaven. In a sense the link between God and the Jew was broken by the stoning of Stephen. Stephen looked up steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus, and witnessed of it and was stoned. The Jews said, “We will not have this man to reign over us”; they deliberately rejected the testimony to Christ, and they avowed their hostility to Him.
Now, in this chapter everything begins from the Lord in heaven, and it gives great light as to the activities of the Lord; the first is the subduing of Saul, the raising up of the one who was the special instrument of the Lord to the gentiles. Then, in the next chapter you get the [p. 148] bringing in of a gentile. What I understand is that the first phase of the history of the church was passed, and things were to come out now in a new light. This is extremely important, in connection with the Lord in heaven, and is what I want to point out. If you look through the previous chapters of this book you will not find any instance of the intervention of the Lord, from heaven. Up to this point Jerusalem and the Jews had been recognised, but now everything in that connection was set aside; the link was broken, and the starting point of everything is the Lord from heaven. The first chapter of the church’s history has come to an end, and things begin entirely anew from the Lord of glory, that is the Lord in heaven. The apostle of the gentiles is raised up, and gentiles are added, as in the next chapter; that is, the church entered on a new chapter, a chapter which has endured to the present day, for the light that we have from God has come to us through Paul. He was the appointed channel to the gentiles, and the administration of the mystery was committed to Paul; he was the instrument raised up here when the starting point is the Lord from glory. The end of it is the church is to be received up in glory. That is the working of things.
I want to speak a little now in regard of the Lord; a very important point; and what meaning the Lord has to us. We have spoken a great deal about Christ, but I take up now the thought of the Lord, and I want to put that in contrast to another light in which Christ is presented to us, and that is as wisdom. My impression is that every one knows Christ as wisdom, before they apprehend Him as Lord. I am not now talking exactly of what people believe. What people believe is one thing, and what they apprehend by the Spirit is another; and so far as I can understand Christ is first apprehended as wisdom, and then it is we are led on to know Him as Lord. All our strength is connected with Christ as Lord. We have to “be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might”. He is a fountain of strength to His people, a strong tower. “The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe”.
I will speak a little first in regard to wisdom. It is a great point to apprehend Christ as wisdom and I would refer you as to it to a verse or two in Scripture: Luke 7: 35; 1 Corinthians 1: 30, 31; John 6:35; John 6:51; John 6:61-63. I dare say you will not at first see any particular connection between these passages, but I think I can show you a connection as it strikes my own mind. To begin with, Christ is God’s wisdom. The force which I attach to wisdom is resource, and Christ is in that way the resource of God. He is spoken of, 1 Corinthians 1, as the wisdom of God and the power of God. He is the wisdom of God as being the means by which God could put Himself in contact with man in order that God might establish here what was according to His mind, and bring to naught all that existed. It was before the mind of God to establish what was according to Himself here. Christ is the wisdom of God, and the power of God, so that God might accomplish all His will. The will of God could not have been accomplished if God had not found a way to put Himself in contact with man; but at the same time Christ is the power of God for the setting aside of all that existed and held authority over the mind of man. Now in the same chapter we read that Christ is made wisdom to us, that is, He is resource to us, and it is an important point to apprehend how Christ is this. He is resource for man, not that we might accomplish the purposes of our will, because we have no right purpose to accomplish, but He is resource to us to lead us into the way of righteousness. The point for God was to accomplish His will because His will is good and perfect and acceptable; but on the other hand the point, in regard to man, was to guide him into the way of righteousness. You get a beautiful expression in Proverbs 8, “I lead in the way of righteousness”, that is what wisdom says, “in the midst of the paths of judgement: That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasures”. If you follow me, you will see how the application of wisdom is very different for God to what it is for man. The point with God was to accomplish the purposes of His goodness, and Christ was His resource to that end; on the other hand, Christ is wisdom to man, because man being lawless and alienated from God, needed what would direct him into the way of righteousness, what would bring him into the recognition of Christ as Lord. Now if Christ is wisdom to us, then what appears to me is that He must be accessible to man and that at every step, that is, that He should come within the reach of our appropriation. If He were not accessible to us, He would not be within the reach of our appropriation. Now this has all come out in Christ down here, and gone up. There are three points at which Christ is available to us; the first is in incarnation, the second is in death, and the third is as ascended up where He was before; at every one of those points Christ is wisdom to us, for He is available to us at each, and He furnishes exactly that of which man stands in need. It would not be any particular wisdom to give man what man does not need. If a man were to bestow on me a million of money there would not be any wisdom in it, because I do not need it and it would not be any real benefit to me. Christ has become available to every kind of man to supply to man exactly that of which man stands in need, and therefore He is wisdom to man. Wisdom is available to us as we apprehend Him at every point, and you see the wonderful grace of God that has made Christ wisdom to us. The apostle says, God hath made Christ “unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption”. The first point is wisdom because, as I said, the point of wisdom in regard to us is to lead us in the way of righteousness.
Now just a word in regard of these three points. The first point in which Christ is available to us is in that He has become man, to bring into the view of man all the grace that heaven could devise. That is, the grace that [p. 151] Christ presents to you as become man, if your eyes are opened to apprehend Him as living bread from heaven. If I say ‘all’, there is nothing left out. There is no grace which heaven could devise in regard to man but was presented to man in the living bread come down from heaven; therefore the Lord Jesus said, “he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst”. The manna that came down to the children of Israel in the wilderness was the expression of God’s grace to them, but that was only figurative; the Lord says, “Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world”.
Men had the opportunity of seeing, when the Lord Jesus was here on earth, the disposition of God toward man. He was like the sun in heaven. He was the covenant of God, the witness to man of what the thought of God was toward him, and it was goodness and grace beyond all bound. You get that idea in the miracle with which John 6 opens, that is, the feeding of the multitude. The five loaves and two fishes sufficed not only for the feeding of the multitude, but there was an abundance over. Now we all know Christ in that light. I am sure every heart delights in the thought of incarnation, the living bread come down from heaven as witness to man of the grace of heaven. While man was as perverse and corrupt and contrary as he could be, serving lusts and pleasures, the Lord Jesus Christ became man that He might be available as food to man.
The next point is He gives His flesh for the life of the world. I have spoken of His being the expression of the grace of God because man needed grace. The law was no use to man, “the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ”. Man in the condition in which he was wanted grace, and that came by Christ. But man was also under liabilities by the judgement of God, and needed not only to get light as to the mind of God in [p. 152] regard to him, but to be relieved of the liabilities under which he was; and therefore the Lord Jesus says, “The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world”. He was about to take up the liabilities under which man was, in order that man might be delivered, and that is the second point at which Christ is available to man. We eat His flesh and drink His blood, that is, we appropriate in that way the grace which is manifest in the death of Christ.
I go onto another point. What I have said did not meet the case entirely. There is another thing which man wanted, and that is, living water, the Spirit, that he might live. So we get the third point. The Lord Jesus said, “What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?” Why does He go up where He was before? He adds immediately, “It is the Spirit which quickens”. It was to give the Spirit to man, that man might be quickened. There is no good in the flesh, and Christ bore man’s liabilities not to set man up again in the flesh, but that He might go on high to impart the Spirit to man. I trust you will be able to discern how perfectly Christ is wisdom to us. Read that verse in Luke 7, in which the Lord says, “wisdom is justified of all her children”. The woman of the city who was a sinner was an example. Wisdom became available to her because Christ was there, was the expression of the grace of God, and she availed herself of wisdom, and was a child of wisdom. She availed herself of the resource that was there. Simon the Pharisee was not a child of wisdom. He began to entertain fears and misgivings in regard to the Lord. Christ was as accessible to him as to the woman, but Simon never availed himself of the wisdom that God placed within his reach.
Now we have all this knowledge of Christ incarnate, the living bread come down from heaven, to express to us the grace of heaven. We have eaten His flesh and drunk His blood; that is, we have appropriated the One who was offered to take up our liabilities that we might be [p. 153] free from curse and death and wrath in the eye of God; and we have proof that He is gone up where He was before, in that He has imparted to us the Spirit, and by the Spirit we are quickened into life.
There is not one of these points that you can do without. They go to make up perfect wisdom. You could not do without an incarnate Christ because if you had not an incarnate Christ, you would not have the light of heaven. You could not do without the death of Christ because without it you will still be under liabilities; and you could not do without the Spirit, because without Him you would still be in moral death. Therefore in regard to each point at which I have attempted to present Christ He is an absolute necessity to us, but then He is available at each point, and we have all learned to appropriate Him in that way. Now I understand the object of it all is to bring us to the Lord.
And now I will speak a word or two about the Lord, as the end for which Christ is wisdom to us is to direct us to the Lord. We confess Christ as Lord with the mouth. Christ as Lord presents to us the thought of kingdom; that is, I take it, the idea connected with Him as Lord. As Lord He brings before us the authority of God. Now I am going to say a word or two about the kingdom. I dare say people in this country do not know very much about kingdom, but you may get kingdom under the name of a republic. Kingdom really means government. In a country where we have a kingdom we have a king. Where there is a republic they still have a government. The object of government is this: on the one hand, to provide security for life and property within, and on the other to protect from enemies without. Of course there may be other things that come within the function of government, but these are the two main objects in establishing kingdom. Now in the kingdom of God the same principles hold good. Christ is Lord at the present time, because there is a tender plant down here, and that plant has to be sheltered and secured from evils [p. 154] within, and to be protected from enemies without. That is the object for which God has been pleased to establish His kingdom here.
I could not tell you how many times the expression “Lord” occurs in Acts 9. It is the Lord from beginning to end, and the Lord was providing for the security of His tender plant. He had it in view. In the beginning of the chapter we see the power of the Lord, that is, His subduing power; there are two things which mark Christ as Lord; that is, He supports and at the same time He subdues. Now I think you will find that in human kingdoms. Human kingdom really means support. There is support in any well-ordered kingdom for everything that is right. Kings are not a terror to doers of good, but a support to what is right; and another object in kingdom is to subdue enemies. Now these two things come out in the Lord: He subjugates and He supports. You get an instance of it in this chapter in regard to the apostle. Saul was a great enemy of the tender plant and would have rooted it up if he could. He hated it, and did all he could against it. He was the apostle of persecution. But the Lord did not intend that that plant should be rooted up. All that was here in the power of the Holy Spirit was very precious in the eye of the Lord, and the Lord protected it, and the way He took to protect it in this instance was in the subjugation of the greatest enemy. The power of the Lord comes out in subjugating Saul. The Lord speaks to him from glory and Saul is subdued in a moment. Very wonderful to think of the power of the Lord. There are many powers in the world that we regard as being wonderful. You get a great navy well equipped; it could do wonderful things in the way of destruction: ships sunk and thousands killed and men filled with wonder and admiration at the power that man has; but do you think all the armies or all the navies of the world would ever have subdued Saul? I do not think they would. He was a man fearless of death. But the Lord did in two or three words, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” There [p. 155] was a power greater than all power and authority of man put together. But Saul had to be brought into the assembly and Ananias was the instrument through whom Saul was to be brought in, and Ananias did not like it. He had heard ill of Saul. Ananias had to be subdued, “Go thy way”. Then at the end of the chapter you find other things. Aeneas is made whole and many believed on the Lord. Dorcas is raised up and so again others turn to the Lord. Through the chapter, from beginning to end, you get the mighty subjugating power of the Lord from glory. One way in which the Lord is presented to us, is as subduing. We get that thought in the epistle to the Philippians, “we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself”. Now that is a wonderful working. The Lord is “able to subdue all things unto himself;” able to subdue a man like Saul, and many another as in this chapter.
Now I was saying the Lord is using the power and authority which belongs to Him to shelter the tender plant that has been planted here. If you will look at Acts 9: 31, “Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit were multiplied”. The Lord had allowed persecution to come in to a certain extent. There had been a great persecution in connection with Stephen, and it had been allowed to go on to a certain point, but persecution is limited. In speaking to the church at Smyrna the Lord says, “ye shall have tribulation ten days”. Ten days meant a limited period; that is, there was a limitation to the period of persecution; and here the persecution was only allowed to go to a certain extent, and then the Lord comes in in a most extraordinary way to stop it by subduing the persecutor. You would hardly have thought the Lord would act in that way.
[p. 156] You would have thought Saul might have been taken away in judgement, but that is not the character of the dispensation. God does not interfere in judgement in regard of man, but works by taking up the instrument of persecution and making him the apostle of the church. Now that is a blessed thought. And the Lord watches over the plant. We are come to the end of the dispensation, but the plant is still here. It is not manifest in the same way that it was at the beginning, but it is still here under the eye of the Lord, and the Lord is still Lord and has still all authority and power; He watches over the plant and protects it, and this is great gain to us. We little understand how much we are sheltered by the good hand of the Lord. Where it is needed the hand of the Lord can come in that the plant may thrive and grow, that the assemblies might walk in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit and be multiplied.
We all want the apprehension of the Lord in that way; and there is another point, and it is this, there is an application of the Lord to us individually. The Lord comes in, individually subjugating, because He will not tolerate anything in you and me that is contrary to Himself. The Lord’s work is to subjugate every high thought in us, everything which resists Him. But then, we can be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might; He watches over and strengthens everything in us which is of Himself and we can confront everything down here in the power of the Lord. You have no reason whatever to be afraid of anything. There never was a man who was brought face to face with such difficulties as the apostle Paul. He had to stand in the most difficult and trying circumstances, to meet all the power of the world; at the end of his course he could say, “Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear”. The Lord was here for the sake of the testimony and strengthened the apostle that by him the preaching might be fully known. The apostle [p. 157] goes still further in regard to his confidence in the Lord and says, “And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom”.
My conviction is this, that we are sheltered by the Lord, and not only sheltered but strengthened. He knows how, in the most unexpected way, to subjugate the power of evil, in our experience we have been brought face to face with the power of evil, I mean collectively, as seeking to walk together in the truth of the church, to difficulties which we could not surmount, and it has been remarkable how the Lord has interfered and has brought down difficulties which appeared to be sometimes insuperable. The Lord watches carefully over that which is for Himself down here.
I commend to you the study of the chapter. I think you will see the truth of what I said at the beginning. It is a point of departure, but a departure which has continued to the present time. The Lord presents Himself as the Lord of glory, and that is the way He is known to us. Jerusalem is gone out of view. But one word more: it is Christ as wisdom that has directed us to the Lord. It is a most blessed thing that Christ should have come in in that way on the part of God, not only as the wisdom and the power of God to establish all that is of God and to bring to nothing what is not of God, but that He should have become wisdom to us, and that at every step of His course.