EPHESIANS 5 (SUBSTANCE OF TWO READINGS AT TEIGNMOUTH)
[p. 69] EPHESIANS 5 (SUBSTANCE OF TWO READINGS AT TEIGNMOUTH)
The setting of this scripture would suggest that it requires the highest degree of spirituality to take it up. It supposes and requires that the saints shall be filled with the Spirit. As filled with the Spirit there are conditions in which they can realise the gain of the headship of Christ. This section is particularly based on that, there is no movement of the flesh; any movement of the flesh would surely hinder.
“Submitting yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ” means that Christ is owned in the saints, that is, we submit ourselves to one another on that principle, that Christ is in them. So that one would like to move in a spirit of submission to the brethren as owning Christ in them; one would be afraid of doing anything that ran counter to any feeling or thought of the brethren generally, looking at them as having Christ in them. You look for faith and love for Christ in the assembly and for Christ in the saints; that is how faith and love regards them. So that anything out of line with the mind and feelings of the brethren is to be avoided because Christ is in them. There cannot be any cleavage when there is submission, and practically it is the only thing that will save us. We are to be subject, not only to God but to the brethren as animated by Christ; He is vitally in them. That is why we pay great respect to the saints. We are tested in a way by them; that is the test. Some might say, Well, the saints may be wrong! But that is upsetting the whole thing; you have lost all sense of Christ in them. The general sense of the saints is not wrong; it is much more likely that they are in the mind of Christ than that I am [p. 70] when I am indifferent to them.
And is it not as Head that the Lord becomes Saviour? “Saviour of the body” is an oft-discussed scripture, and it finds its solution in seeing that Christ is Head of the assembly and that it is in that character that He is Saviour of the body. That is, it is as coming under headship that there is salvation, whether as to the individual body of the saint or in the extended view of it in the assembly. The salvation comes in in the recognition of the headship of Christ. It is salvation on a positive line, not the keeping from evil; lordship does that but Christ’s blessed headship serves the assembly positively, and it is as entirely shutting out the whole principle of self and the movements of our own wills. Here it is not exactly as in Romans, which is on the line of lordship, but on the line of headship which works in affection and brings about submission on the line of love, a very happy condition. It is an oft-discussed passage; I think the Spirit of God has purposely left it as of very wide application. We want the spirit of it, the reality of it, then everything will be right.
That the assembly is subjected to Christ is a permanent position. The assembly stands in a definite relationship; we are not looked at as moving according to flesh but according to Christ. The assembly that He loves is the assembly that stands in this relationship to Him, not a company of half-converted people! We ought to know the touch of it in assembly. When we have broken bread together and reach in a spiritual way the thought of Christ’s headship, and the relation of the assembly to Him as Head, we should look for His direction to be realised. We sometimes lose our way in the service of the assembly but the recognition of Christ in His headship would preserve us from any uncertainty in our movements. We have little idea of what Christ as Head could be to a wholly spiritual company. That the assembly is [p. 71] subjected to Christ is the fixed position. So it is with wives in relation to husbands; the thing is put absolutely, there is no qualification with it; wives are to obey always, not only when the husband is right. When a woman is married she comes into a certain fixed relation which nothing can change; nothing is optional. The relation of the assembly to Christ is the same. When Eve was brought to Adam it was a divinely determined relationship with which nothing was to interfere. How the assembly is subjected to Christ should be learnt in the assembly, in that sphere, and so it is to be worked out in our relationships. You cannot think of a wife going against her husband in anything unless it is a question of disobeying God; then the superior rights come into action. Would this not have a sanctifying effect upon us if we were spiritual enough to appreciate the moral beauty and excellence of it? Then there are conditions in which God can help us, and will help us. It is, I suppose, as having accepted the defined relationship that we learn in verses 25 - 27 how it works — in Christ. All this underlies headship.
JT senior said some years ago that he thought the Lord saw the assembly in His disciples. It was before Him as a concrete reality in certain persons; He saw it in those persons and loved them. It was not a mere abstract conception that He loved; certain persons were given to Him of the Father and were so attractive that He loved them. I thought it a very happy suggestion. We see particularly in John 17 what they were to Him; and even in the parables in Matthew, the assembly gospel, you get the pearl. It was there; the Lord saw it in the disciples, and it was worth while to secure it. We often dwell on the Romans side of His death, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”, but the work of God effects in the saints that which is attractive to the Lord. All this brings [p. 72] to us the sense of the intimacy and reality of the love of Christ; with all reverence we can say that Christ could not love what was unlovely. The thing is there in principle. The constitution was there in principle in the disciples who surrounded Him, and in that relation He could serve them by delivering Himself up with that in view, the purifying and washing of water by the word, “that he might present the assembly to himself glorious, having no spot, or wrinkle, or any of such things; but that it might be holy and blameless”. If Esther had not been essentially beautiful, all the months of purifying would not have made her so. But it was intended to develop what was there; and so it is with the assembly.
I do not think there is any type in the Old Testament that completely expresses what we get here. What is stated here is so wonderful and unique that it could not find expression fully in any type. It waited for Christ. It was necessary that the Man should appear and that He should be in a condition in which He could have a wife united to Him. It helps if we think of the extraordinary position in which Christ is because He could not have any wife until He was glorified, so that really the assembly is formed out of a glorified Christ. It gives a wonderful thought of the service of the Spirit as having come down from a glorified Christ to form an assembly for eternal union with the wondrous Person from whom He has come. Even the apostle seems at a loss; he says, “This mystery is great”. He expresses holy wonder in the contemplation of it.
Now Eve did not need any sanctifying or purifying so she does not give you in type what you get here. There is a precious service of Christ for the assembly, He “delivered himself up for it”; that is the great underlying fact; His love has gone to the extreme point. But then there is this service going on which seems to be illustrated in the [p. 73] book of Esther: in verse 12 of chapter 2 we read that when every maiden’s turn came after the twelve months for purification, six months with oil of myrrh and six months with spices, “whatever she desired was given her to go with her out of the house of the women to the king’s house”. It is a beautiful illustration of it, six months with oil of myrrh speaking of all the fragrance of His suffering love, then six months with spices; and then it is suggested that something depends on her own exercise in desiring things, because whatever she desired was given her. I think that is a beautiful touch, that the Spirit of God contemplates that there will be special desires on the part of the saints composing the assembly that “whatever she desired was given her”. The two go together. The active service of Christ is not without intelligent exercise on the part of the assembly so that there are desires. Whatever she desires is given her. I like that; it gives us something to pray for. This is what is going on at the present time; it is not past history but current history! This is peculiarly the time when this is going on.
I thought that the sanctifying and purifying were brought out here to enhance before us the precious service of Christ. I do not think it is to occupy us exactly with defects on the part of the wife any more than the purifying of the women suggests defects. They were very choice maidens who were selected, and any thought of defect or defilement is not quite suggested. The assembly must necessarily be brought up to this glorious condition to be presented glorious. It is rather the thought of excellence and beauty conferred than defilement removed. The process in Esther is not to make an ugly woman beautiful or a defiled person clean; the idea of such to be queen would not enter into it, but a superlative excellence was to be conferred. If we are to be united to a glorified Man, what must be the standard of beauty and [p. 74] preparedness and fitness? But it is all looked at as the service of love. In John 17 the Lord says, “I sanctify myself for them, that they also may be sanctified by truth” (verse 19), and that is after He has told the Father twice, “They are not of the world, as I am not of the world”, John 17: 14, 16. Think of Him repeating it, saying it twice to the Father!
As to the type one cannot doubt for a moment that Adam was the most perfect man that ever stood on earth, and it is equally true that Eve was the most perfect woman — the workmanship of God. He built her. It suggests a most skilful workmanship on God’s part. And she answered most perfectly to Adam, there was not anything lacking. Well, that is what the assembly is to Christ. We were saying that the most exalted degree of spirituality is needed to understand this passage, because it follows immediately on being filled with the Spirit which is necessary to take it in. Still, that does not prevent us from having a peep at it; we should never read anything if we were up to it before contemplating it! It is difficult for us to take in the thought of being formed out of Christ as Eve was out of Adam. The formation of Eve out of Adam is without question the most extraordinary thing that God ever did. He could give extension in an extraordinary way. If we can take it in, God has before Him a blessed Man who has been through death and resurrection, and who is now glorified; and God can take what is purely of that glorified Man and give it extension in the assembly, so that when the moment comes for presentation there will not be anything there but what came out of Christ. You might say, ‘I cannot understand it!’ Well, it is God’s thought; He says, ‘That is what I am going to do’.
All moral excellence enters into this. “Holy and blameless” would suggest the completeness of the assembly [p. 75] morally. When Eve was formed out of Adam he was an innocent man, moral features were not there; he did not know good from evil. But Christ, out of whom the assembly is formed, is One in whom every moral question has been developed and glorified, and so she must have corresponding moral features. Christ loved righteousness and hated iniquity and it is in that character that He has companions, as we see in Hebrews; so the assembly will be marked eternally by these features.
When we come to the divine side of things, God has instituted the marriage relation to convey thoughts that we could not have entered into without the relation, that is, the family relation and the relation of husband and wife. God has provided a suitable setting in human affairs to illustrate His wonderful thoughts; we could not have taken them in otherwise. The thought of husband and wife is introduced of necessity first, and then consequent on that you get the family thought. Satan’s object is always to darken the divine thought. He is always working to bring in conditions contrary to God’s mind, so that the husband and wife do not always get on well together; the children are often disobedient to their parents, and that darkens the divine thought. The world would be justified in mocking at the testimony of such. But the divine thought is that these great matters connected with the assembly should come into spiritual reality; it is the time of the formation of the assembly. I suppose it would be, and often is, realised after we have broken bread together. The Lord shows how He has delivered Himself up for us, and under the influence of that we should understand there is this washing of water by the word and sanctifying; that is, the Lord would bring something before us as together that would displace natural and human thoughts and fill us with a sense of what the assembly is to Him.
[p. 76] I think we should be exercised that there ought to be ministry from the Lord when we are in assembly. We do not often get a word from the Lord — I state it as a fact — and we are missing something. We should look for the service of the Lord in this way. It must be due to a want of looking to the Lord to apply the word, this “washing of water by the word”, so that all human and natural thoughts might be washed away and we are left under the pure and holy influence of the word of the Christ. “Let the word of the Christ dwell in you richly, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another”, Colossians 3: 16. It comes in in that connection. Perhaps sometimes we think that what we say to the Lord is more important than what He says to us. There is an extraordinary sense of self-importance in that. What we could say to the Lord could never come up to what He could say to us. There is nothing whatever said here of the service of the assembly to the Lord.