GOD'S INHERITANCE IN THE SAINTS
GOD’S INHERITANCE IN THE SAINTS
1 Thessalonians 1: 2, 3; 1 Thessalonians 3: 12, 13; Ephesians 1: 4, 5
It is in mind to speak about the saints as before God. We have to take account of ourselves as before God. We read in Deuteronomy 32: 9, that “Jehovah’s portion is his people”, and that “Jacob the lot of his inheritance”, and I desire to show how that thought is developed in the New Testament epistles. The Thessalonians may be taken to represent the saints in the state of normal childhood, for they were but a few weeks old spiritually when this letter was written, and in that way they afford perhaps the most interesting company of believers that you can find in the Scriptures.
You will remember how that when the apostle in his labours visited Thessalonica, he spent three sabbath days in preaching in the synagogue; and how that it is said that certain believed the word, and consorted with Paul and Silas, and of the worshipping Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few. The company, therefore, was made up of believing Jews and Greeks, among whom were some of the chief women. The apostle had to move on in his service, but he moved on with considerable concern as to the work at Thessalonica, lest he had laboured in vain. But the visit of Timothy brought to light that instead of his labour being in vain, it had been a great success. Not only had they believed savingly, but they had come to take account of each other in love. They had indeed taken form as an assembly, so that in writing to them Paul addresses them in that way, as an “assembly of Thessalonians”, not a set of converts, but an assembly; they are addressed uniquely. There is no other company in the Scriptures addressed in this fashion, and it is because, as I understand it, that God would through [p. 454] the letter of the apostle disclose to them what a place they had in His affections. They had become in fact, as the letter says, “beloved of God”.
Now one would not suggest that every saint is not beloved of God, because we are. Love in God rises above our ways, even as in Corinthians when their ways were fleshly. God loved the Corinthians, but Paul had to write to them in a corrective way. In the Thessalonians there was that which was loveable, and the exercise with one is as to whether one is loveable. Love in God takes account of each one, and sets itself upon us, even though unlovely in many respects, but this epistle indicates a state of loveliness in youthful Christians. In this letter, therefore, God lets us into His thoughts as to what He looks for in young believers, and one is free to address oneself to young believers.
You will remember that John in writing his first letter addresses himself to believers under three heads. The first set are called fathers, then he addresses young men, and then finally little children. The whole letter could be read by either set. I have no doubt the fathers could enjoy what was said to the little ones, and said to the young men, and thus the fathers would get more out of the letter than the little ones; but the little ones were not forgotten, and they are addressed as a class; and God has a great deal in the freshness and vigour that mark the young believer normally; He looks for it. If you have lost it through years, and grey hairs have come, He has not forgotten it; He says, “I remember for thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness” (Jeremiah 2: 2).
Now the Thessalonians correspond in that way with the beginnings of Israel’s history. We see in them the kindness of youth, and the love of espousals, and so I desire to dwell for a moment upon them [p. 455] before I pass on to Ephesians. The apostle had constant remembrance of them. “We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you at our prayers”, was his opening word in writing.
It is a great thing to get a good start, and so you find it says in John that the Lord went away beyond the Jordan to the place where John baptised at first, and many believed on him there. See John 10: 40 - 42. That was a good place to believe on Him, where John baptised at the first.
It is an immense thing to get a right apprehension of God in Christ, for that is what this epistle indicates; it is God, but God in Christ. The light of the knowledge of God in Christ shone into their hearts, and they turned to that God. God came before their souls, and they turned to Him from idols, and then further it says, “to await his Son from the heavens”. It was God’s Son. You see how the babes are set up in the light of the knowledge of God in Christ, and the Christ who has made God known is His Son, not the Son, but His Son. You are thus in the light of holy relationships, the Father and the Son. As I said, many believed on Him where John baptised at the first. The first principles were dominant there, and so, as John says to the little ones, “If what ye have heard from the beginning abides in you, ye also shall abide in the Son, and in the Father” (1 John 2: 24). That is how the little ones are set up, so that these Thessalonians, young believers as they were, had the Father, and they had the Son, and hence the work of faith; that is the next thing.
What are we doing, beloved? You see, we are left here, we are baptised into the light of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit — a wonderful heritage of light! But what are we to be in that light? We are to develop into sons of light, and the first great thing is your body. That is how the truth is developed in Romans; the members are to be yielded unto God [p. 456] as instruments of righteousness. In Romans the body is to be presented to God a living sacrifice. So we get here the work of faith. What are we doing? Are we working, for the brethren to take note of us? I know well enough how it is for young people, and even with older ones, how we do work for wages; that is to say, we look for approval, we look for recognition. Now the work of faith is not that, the work of faith has God in view; so he says, “Remembering unceasingly your work of faith, and labour of love, and enduring constancy of hope, of our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and our Father”. How lovely this company was in that way. There was in it the evidence of life in its beginnings. It worked out in the way of taking account of God.
Such is the picture the Spirit of God gives us of a company of Christians a few weeks old. And the apostle goes on in chapter 3 to introduce the subject of holiness, which I would dwell on for a moment. If you have life in activity the great thing is to give it a lead. Life springs up of itself, the principle of it is spontaneity, but it has to get a lead. There has to be formation, the growth has to be according to the pattern. So the apostle is that pattern primarily, and then the Lord Jesus, and then God Himself. And one of the most serious considerations I know of today for the elder brethren is that so many young ones are coming on. What kind of pattern are we setting?
Now the apostle calls attention in chapter 2 to what he was amongst them. He cared for them as a nurse her own children. We may be sure, as elder ones, that God holds us accountable for what has come to us. What comes to us has not come from our children but from our fathers. It has come in that way; “the father to the children shall make known thy truth” (Isaiah 38: 19). Therefore it is a question for those who are elders as to whether we are exponents of what has come down to us.
[p. 457] These young believers became models because they were patterned on a model. Who was the model? Paul was the model. “Ye became our imitators, and of the Lord”. As they imitated the one through whom the light came, he passed them on to Christ. That is the principle of a model. This is important, dear brethren; it has to be taken up; God is graciously working, and young ones are getting light, and taking their stand with the saints; what about models for them? You say, Christ is the Model; thank God! He is, the Same yesterday, today, and to the ages to come, but He is in heaven. So the apostle John says, “I write to you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning”. To the little ones he says, “if what ye have heard from the beginning abides in you: ye also shall abide in the Son and in the Father”, but to the fathers he says, “ye have known him that is from the beginning”. We are to be models as acquainted with Him; not simply with that which is from the beginning, but with Him. It is the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Himself as from the beginning, that constitutes us models for others, and so the apostle calls attention to the fact that he regarded the Thessalonians as did a nurse her own children. That is to say, he exercised the skill of the nurse with the affections of the mother.
We may be sure that this is necessary at the present time. The young are coming in (thank God for it!), but the great point is the model, and then he goes on to say that he was like a nursing father. There was in his service in those few weeks among them the instincts of the mother and the skill of the nurse, the maternal side; but there was also the paternal side. So that he says, “as a father his own children” we admonished every one of you. And then he says, You became imitators of God, and lastly of ‘the assemblies of God’.
[p. 458] Now I mention these facts for the young, because they show the development of life in us, and I would specially call attention to the imitation of assemblies, for we are so sectional and so national. Now the Thessalonians were Greeks, most of them, and as Greeks naturally prejudiced against the Jews. But the evidence of life was so present with them that the normal effect of it was that they overcame their national instincts, and they became “imitators of the assemblies of God which are in Judaea in Christ Jesus”. They might have gone elsewhere for assemblies to pattern themselves on, but the apostle says “ye, brethren, have become imitators of the assemblies of God which are in Judaea in Christ Jesus”. These assemblies were not established by Paul, but doubtless, by the labours of the twelve. There is not much evidence that the Thessalonians knew Peter and John and James, so that there was clear evidence of the power of life, in that they overcame all national feeling and instincts, and so on, in order to pattern themselves on assemblies so far away as Judaea. There is in it the catholic principle which one feels is so important, because God in these days is calling attention to His house. The house of God naturally extends beyond all national boundaries, it includes all the saints, and the Thessalonians, young though they were, understood how to overcome national or social prejudices in imitation of the assemblies of God; God was their link.
The element of holiness is introduced, and I would remark on it for the young, because in our beginnings as believers our motives are apt to be very mixed; hence the importance of understanding holiness. We have the word in chapter 3, “the Lord make you to exceed and abound in love one toward another, and toward all, even as we also towards you, in order to the confirming of your hearts unblameable in holiness before our God and Father, at the [p. 459] coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints”. The element of holiness must be present, and this leads me to say a word about Israel in the wilderness, because as the people took their position before mount Sinai in Exodus 19, the question of holiness necessarily arose. God was proposing to dwell with them, and if He is to dwell it must be according to His nature. Righteousness is present, and righteousness judges sin with authority; it faces sin, and deals with it. We have to learn that. It says, “The body is dead on account of sin, but the Spirit life on account of righteousness” (Romans 8: 10). There is no more important lesson to learn, than that we have the Holy Spirit in view of righteousness; in the power of His presence we can judge sin with authority.
But then holiness repels it, shrinks from sin, it shrinks from evil, hence God sets up an enclosure in which He is to dwell, but He is to dwell there in holiness, in holy love. The Lord Jesus is presented to us in the epistle to the Corinthians as bringing in the love of God to our hearts. The apostle says, God had made him and others competent as ministers, not of the letter, but of spirit, for letter kills, but the Spirit quickens. And he says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit”. I would like you to understand that the Lord Jesus has not only made love effective in dying, He has not only attested it in His death, but He makes it effective in our souls. One of the most precious services the Lord renders to us at the present time is to make the love of God effective in our souls. In dying He said “Thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel” (Psalm 22: 3). He did not forget that God was dealing in righteousness. He was dealing authoritatively in righteousness when Jesus died, but He was dealing in holiness, and the Lord recognised that. He says, “Thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel”. He said that on the cross. How then is He to praise in the [p. 460] midst of the assembly, to praise such a God as that? How, except by bringing the holy love of God into our hearts, so that we not only judge sin but we abhor it, we recoil from it. There is already in our souls by the administration of Christ, in the gift of the Spirit, a holy love. The love of God in us is a holy love — “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given unto us” (Romans 5: 5).
It is in virtue therefore of the administration of Christ, the love of God being shed abroad in our hearts by the Spirit, that we are constituted suited for the abode of God. And in keeping with that there is the administration of the Father, the Father of our spirits: “Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live?” (Hebrews 12: 9). But how live? Live in holiness, so that we are chastened by the Father of spirits that we should live in holiness. Then it adds, without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Difficulties will arise, crises come up among the saints. Who knows His way? He who has holiness, and he who has holiness sees the Lord. It is a question of where the Lord is in the crisis, and who sees Him but he who has holiness so, beloved, the importance of holiness in a practical way is apparent, but it is specially apparent at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so he says, “You, may the Lord make to exceed and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we also towards you, in order to the confirming of your hearts unblameable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints”. What a word that is! To have our hearts confirmed in holiness, confirmed in it, at a time when we shall need it — that is to say, when the Lord comes with all His saints, for He is coming with them all. This thought appeared very early in Scripture, for it is said by Jude that Enoch prophesied of the Lord coming with the “holy myriads”. When He comes with these, beloved, we shall need holiness. It will be a wonderful time, and this is before our God and Father, so the saints come in there before our God and Father with hearts confirmed in holiness.
Now I pass on to Ephesians, because we have there the full thought of God for us, and what you will see in Ephesians is that it is a question of what is before the foundation of the world. I do not suppose any one of us can take in the idea of eternity, I know we cannot, and God takes account of that. It is something to be realised, not defined, nor compassed, and so we have “before” here, as it says, “according as he has chosen us in him before the world’s foundation”. We are thus led into the thought of God in regard of us; He had in view that He should have an inheritance. I do not know of anything so interesting to contemplate as God’s inheritance. The apostle recognising the difficulty of saints laying hold of it prays to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory. I would that I could convey to you something about that, the Father of glory. He prays to Him, that the saints might have the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him. Not revelation, but the spirit of it in the knowledge of Him, “that ye should know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints”.
Now this is not spoken to children, it is not the beginnings of life; no, it is sonship now. Before the foundation of the world God had sons before Him, and so He says, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him” (Hosea 11: 1). He loved him in his youth, but He says, “Out of Egypt I called my son”. He had sonship before Him for them. “Let my son go”, He says, not ‘My child’. The child is loveable, but the son serves; the son reciprocates intelligently the affections of the Father, hence He calls His son, He would [p. 462] have His son before Him, He would have His son to serve Him, and so He brought them out that He might bring them in. He led them out by the hand, as He says, “I it was that taught Ephraim to walk, — He took them upon his arms” (Hosea 11: 3). That was the beginning, but in going into Canaan it is another matter; it is a question of recognising the Lord Jesus as moving that way. He has been here, He has gone there. How has He gone there? It is for us to discover that spiritually. He went through death.
The title of Psalm 22 speaks of the ‘hind of the morning’. It refers to the response among the saints to Christ in His movements amongst His people. It is love active, active invisibly to the natural eye, for the world saw Him no more; it refers to the movements of Christ known spiritually. Now in John 20: 17 He says, “I ascend”. “Go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”. What a word! That is for sons; it supposes intelligent affection, which the Lord would develop in us, so that we might see the Lord as He has gone up.
You remember how Elisha coveted a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. It was a wonderful desire, an intelligent desire, a desire appreciated by Elijah, so he says, “If thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so to thee” (2 Kings 2: 10). If you see me go up. That is the thing; have we seen Christ go up? We often dwell on the coming down, the wonderful descent of love, but what about the going up? When the queen of Sheba had seen Solomon’s ascent by which he went up into the house of Jehovah, there was no more spirit in her. Paul does not say only, “He that descended is the same who has also ascended up;” but that He “descended into the lower parts of the earth;” that was in love. Let every one who has gift remember that, the descent [p. 463] precedes the ascent; but He ascended too, far above all the heavens, and it is for us to see the nature of that. So Elijah says, ‘If you see me when I am taken up it shall be granted unto you’. The apostle Paul shows how it is in the appreciation of Christ going up that we become acquainted with what is becoming to that scene.
Referring again to Israel, directly they crossed the Jordan, as you all know, the manna ceased. It ceased on the morrow after the passover, and then they ate the old corn. It abounded in the land, it was the store corn, it was carried forward from the previous harvest. Paul was caught up into the third heaven, and heard unspeakable words. It is a wonderful subject of inquiry, the manner of Christ’s going up, what He is there before God, that we might know the pre-world thought of God, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Predestinated unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself; it is all before Him; so that the Lord’s portion is His people; “the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints”. It is only as we apprehend Christ going up, and what He is there in His own domain, that we understand what we are, that we should be before God holy and without blame in love.
I have often said that the Christian does not go up alone, nor would he desire it. The more we love, the more we desire to have the brethren every inch of the way. We are quickened together with Christ, raised up together, and made to sit down in the heavenlies in Christ. We are there in love, we would not have it otherwise. If we love the Lord’s people we want them all there. We are made to sit down together there; it is final; we are to sit down in Christ, in full dignity, before God.
Well, I hope I have indicated something of what there is for God in His people.