INSCRUTABILITY

^[p. 205] INSCRUTABILITY

Matthew 11: 27; Matthew 16: 15 - 17; Matthew 8: 27

I want to speak a little about what is inscrutable, having in view its bearing on what is known of God in Christ. It is of the first importance that in speaking of divine Persons, inscrutability, as attaching to them, should be steadily in our minds. I would like to distinguish between who Christ is and what He is, as Scripture presents Him. The idea can be applied to created things also, reminding us of our limitations and ignorance. In Proverbs 30: 19 reference is made to certain inscrutable things, four in number. That does not mean that they were absolutely inscrutable, but only that the writer accepted his limitations, and admitted there were things beyond his comprehension. But when we come to divine Persons we have a definite statement of inscrutability, and it is intended to bow our hearts in holy admission that limitations imposed, that there is that which is beyond creature ability to grasp. That is what the Lord had in mind in His remarks in Matthew 11.

It was a crucial point, and the Lord turns to His Father and praises Him saying, “I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth”. We are thus admitted to hear Him speak to His Father. He has in mind that His Father is Lord of heaven and earth, and that He disposes of them according to His pleasure. Then He goes on to say, “thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent”. Things are hid from certain persons, a very solemn matter; and then He says, “Yea, Father, for thus has it been well-pleasing in thy sight. All things have been delivered to me by my Father”. So that at the very moment of His rejection by the Jews, the Lord with the utmost restfulness of spirit, indeed joy of spirit, for Luke in his account says, “Jesus rejoiced in spirit”, introduces ^[p. 206] us into this divine economy, that in which the Father is known; He has delivered all things into the hands of His Son.

That is the economy into which, according to the last chapter of this gospel, the disciples were to baptise the nations. The thought is very wide, both in regard to the revelation, and also in what it has in view, the nations. What a moment it was! One is touched in speaking of it, because of the peculiar time it was in the Lord’s path, and the buoyancy and victory that entered into it. Christianity relates to an economy involving the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, that is to say, divine Persons in it together, forming a realm of light and influence, into which nations were to be introduced. The apostle says, “that the offering up of the nations might be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15: 16). It is not simply baptised nations that are offered, but nations sanctified by the Spirit. In this through grace we have part.

But then there is the idea of what is inscrutable brought in here by the Lord, so that His Person should be guarded. There the human mind cannot enter. “No one knows the Son but the Father” (Matthew 11: 27). That stands out in the economy. Luke says, “No one knows who the Son is but the Father” (Luke 10: 22). It is not, as some would have it, that the title is the point. It is not. It is a question of the Person; who is the prominent thought. Every lover of Christ will pay the strictest attention to this.

John’s gospel, written by one who designates himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved”, shows how love for Christ will guard His Person. If I have that love I will use the utmost care to avoid every thought and word which would encroach beyond the boundary thus set, so as not to intrude into things not seen, which have not been declared. We bow humbly and reverently to the inscrutable. “No one knows who the Son is but the Father”. It may seem ^[p. 207] pious to attach names to Him as in absolute Deity, but we cannot go beyond what is revealed. No true lover of Christ will go beyond that. It may be done in ignorance, it has been done in ignorance for centuries, but if the Spirit of God challenges us as to it, and we disregard the challenge, it is very serious.

There are challenges throughout Scripture; it is needful to have our hearts challenged, so the Lord in Matthew 16 inquires what the people were saying about Him. He is raising that question now among us. His eyes are running to and fro throughout Christendom, and He would not have us linked up with the current ideas about Him. We cannot be indifferent to anything in the world that affects Christ, whether against Him or in His favour. We want to take account of everything in His favour that is abroad in the profession. There is still, thank God, much that we can take account of — like the voice of Nicodemus in the council (John 7: 50, 51); it was a voice in favour of Christ, and every lover of Christ will hail the feeblest voice raised in His favour. But there are other voices raised up against Him, a babel of voices are heard in Christendom against Christ. “Who do men say that I the Son of man am?” Theology abroad today is what men are saying about Christ; in principle it is to render the truth, so that the natural mind can understand it. We must be on our guard as to it. The Lord sees the need of correcting His people, but if the correction or adjustments He makes are disregarded, we can no longer plead ignorance. There is the refusal of what the Spirit says.

There is the idea in Scripture of showing a thing, which is stronger than speaking of it. The Lord said, “that the dead rise, even Moses shewed in the section of the bush” (Luke 20: 37). Martha speaks of the resurrection on the last day, but that was not the outcome of having been shown. The Lord in His word to her showed her the resurrection, it was there ^[p. 208] before her, He was it. So if there is a showing, a calling attention to a thing by the Spirit, we can no longer plead ignorance. The disciple whom Jesus loved is the one used of the Lord to bring out who He is. He shows us in the plainest possible language who He is. Luke quotes the Lord saying, “No one knows who the Son is;” it is a question of the Person. The designation “The Word”, as characterising One who expressed the mind of God, obviously applies primarily to Christ as Man, and hence precludes its application to Him as a title in pre-incarnate Deity. John uses it as so understood in telling us of our Lord’s eternal personality and His part in Deity in the past. His titles are important, and have to be understood, but as regards His Person, it is inscrutable, a question of no one knows who He is.

Hence John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1: 1). He was God. John was taken up by the Lord when doctrinal degeneracy had set in. Theology sought to guard the truth of His Person, applying names and thoughts to Christ before He became flesh, which Scripture does not warrant. But the truth cannot be stated and preserved save by the Spirit of God. Nothing is trustworthy but what is introduced and maintained through faith and love in the power of the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 1: 13, 14), and especially what is in regard to the Person of Christ. The Lord breathed into the disciples in view of trustworthiness, for He confided in them as to the remission and retention of sins. So the beloved disciple is taken up by the Spirit of God to meet the darkness and bring out the glory of Christ’s Person; to lift the great truth as to Him out of the hands of men into the hands of those who love Christ. That is the position today. It is a question of lovers of Christ, those who “Keep, by the Holy Spirit which dwells in us, the good deposit entrusted” (2 Timothy 1: 14). The truth is to ^[p. 209] be lifted out of the hands of men and maintained in the hearts of those who love Christ.

Then we get what He became. Who the Word is, is the point in the early verses of John 1, and then we get what He became. Hence it says, “The Word became flesh” (John 1: 14). That is what He became, and on it hangs the working out of all the divine thoughts. To understand these thoughts we must know what Christ became. He “became flesh”. What grace! Gabriel says to Mary, “the holy thing”. There never had been such a Babe before. He was absolutely unique. “The holy thing also which shall be born shall be called Son of God”. In Luke it was the holy Thing and what would develop in it, it would work itself out. You get the expression in Matthew 4: 16, “has light sprung up”. That refers to what began to shine out in Jesus in His ministry. It has to be taken account of. So in Luke, He “shall be called Son of God”. It was what would be seen, what would come out. It all came out there. It is a matter to meditate on because we are to grow in our apprehension of Christ. I may be able to quote Scripture, but how far have I grown in the knowledge of Christ? Have I apprehended what is there? What have I discerned in Him?

In Matthew and Luke it is a Babe, whose growth and path I am to follow, so that I may arrive in my soul at the knowledge of the Person. The Person is there, there is no change in Him, but I grow in the apprehension of Him. But meeting error as to Him, you must have John’s gospel, where you get the Person brought into evidence at the very outset. He is no mere phase of the Deity, a destructive doctrine brought in early by Sabellius, it is a Person eternally there, with God in the beginning; He was God. The doctrine of Sabellius is dreadful error, corresponding with modern Unitarianism. John 1 refutes this in the most positive way.

In Matthew 8 the question is, “What sort of man is this?” What sort of man is He? Have you ever asked that question? The Spirit of God in recording that question had in view that it should have an answer in the saints in all times. When you arrive at that point you come to see that He was a Man entirely different from every other man. What sort of man was He? and how far am I like Him? He is the sort of man that is going to inhabit eternity, there will be no other kind of man there. That is what Paul laboured for in Corinth. He insisted in his ministry on the order of man seen in Christ. So he says, “Other foundation can no man lay besides that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3: 11). That is the kind of man that stands the test in the assembly. John says, “The Word became flesh, and dwelt [tabernacled] among us”. He did not live in a palace, He ‘tabernacled’, He was near to men, went in and out among men. What would you have seen if you had lived next door to Jesus? There were some that saw, and contemplated Him. “We have contemplated his glory, a glory as of an only begotten with a father” (John 1: 14). Natural eyes would see little there, just an ordinary man who did the most ordinary things amongst men. He said, “I am in the midst of you as one that serves” (Luke 22: 27). He would do the most ordinary things. Some were attracted to Him and came to love Him, they began to see something of the kind of man He was, and then they saw He had relations as an only begotten with His Father. In His everyday life He turned to His Father. Although dwelling among men, He lived with His Father, and they saw Him in this relation. Let no one say that that is what we get in John 1: 1; it is in verse 14, and is no question of what He was in the past eternity, but His relations with His Father as a Man. Such had never been seen before. His relations were as of an only begotten Son; He spoke to His Father with ^[p. 211] liberty and they saw it. Think of Him thus with His Father!

In Matthew 16 He raises the question with the disciples as to what men were saying about Him. “Who do men say that I the Son of man am?” And Peter says, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”. Now that statement of Peter’s was not based simply on what they had seen in the Lord’s path and service. The disciples had seen Him with His Father, they acknowledged Him to be the Son, because of certain things He did. But that is not what is alluded to here. This comes into the realm of revelation, which belongs peculiarly to the assembly. All that the apostles had is assembly property, all that Mary had is assembly property, nothing is lost. But the idea of revelation is special; here we have the realm of revelation, not declaration; they are different words.

John 1: 18 is declaration, but here in Matthew 16 it is revelation. It was the Father making known to Peter who the Person was who was there before their eyes. It was not a question of His eternal relations, although His eternal personality underlies all, it was what was there — who the Son of man was, involving the new office and relation He had taken; what He was down here. Who is He? He is “the Christ, the Son of the living God”. Peter got this revelation. Among other great things, it is to remind us of what the assembly is. She is built on the foundation of Peter’s confession, and is of the material indicated in him. The Lord says, “thou art Peter” — a stone. It is not simply what we get by objective teaching, it is something further — revelation. No one can be rightly in the assembly without the understanding of the realm of revelation. The idea of declaration is seen earlier. God was seen in our Lord’s general testimony; in His service He was proved to be Emmanuel — “God with us”. The revelation is not ^[p. 212] of what He was before incarnation, but of the relation in which He stood to God as Man.

As to His relations before incarnation, He was then in the form of God, and it is said, “No one has seen God at any time” (John 1: 18). Let us take that in. Scripture is Scripture, and should ever have its weight with us. “Dwelling in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen, nor is able to see” (1 Timothy 6: 16); is not what was revealed to Peter. What He was, — the anointed Man, “the Christ”, then “the Son of the living God”. We are in the midst of a profession which is generally dead, hence the importance of having the light of, and getting into the realm of revelation, and apprehending Christ as revealed to Peter. He has brought in what is living, and establishes things in a living way. This is not unknown to us. We have practical knowledge of a living state of things, of living affections that flow out of the fact that Christ is the Son of the living God, and that He is in manhood. The Lord says to Peter, as making his confession, “Blessed art thou”. How much do we know about that word?

In Psalm 32: 1 the young believer begins with blessing. “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered”. Here the Lord says, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona”. There was none like Peter at that moment in the Lord’s mind. “Flesh and blood has not revealed it to thee, but my Father, who is in heavens”. It is outside the realm of flesh and blood. Paul said, “it pleased God ... to reveal his Son in me”. That is more inward. Here it is “to thee”. It was in an objective sense, but affecting Peter inwardly, so that he states what he apprehended. Peter was in the realm of revelation, and he tells the Lord what He was: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”, and the Lord says, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona”.

Then the Lord goes on to say, “thou art Peter,

^[p. 213] and on this rock I will build my assembly”. Now we come to material, what Peter was in relation to the assembly. It is that blessed Person apprehended in manhood, what He is as a foundation for our souls to get on to. You get certainty now. You may be convinced by what is said to you, but certainty in a spiritual sense is in the apprehension of the significance of the word “rock”, and the word “Peter”. While the revelation to Peter involves the Lord’s eternal personality, as I said, it is not His position or relation in the Deity that is in view. Although in the inscrutability of His Person the latter remain, what was made known to Peter is what He then was as Man; otherwise He could not be the foundation of the assembly, nor could Peter correspond with Him as material for it.

I have only imperfectly expressed what was before me, but you will see the importance of recognising the truth of who andwhat Christ is entering into His position as Man down here, and into His position as risen and glorified; the importance of apprehending Him in that way, while ever keeping inviolable His eternal personality, His part in the Deity, plainly told us in John 1, but which is nevertheless inscrutable, as He Himself declares, “No one knows the Son but the Father”.