ELEVATION

Ephesians 1: 13-14; 2: 17-18; 3: 14-19; 6: 17-18.

We were speaking together this morning of the great elevation which this epistle to the Ephesians sets before us, and it is very noticeable what a place the Holy Spirit has in the epistle. He is mentioned in every chapter, and one is counting on the Lord’s grace to enable me to say a little about the way in which He is presented in these four chapters I have read. The great elevation that marks the truth presented in the epistle to the Ephesians is, I believe, because God Himself is not only the source of the thoughts unfolded in this epistle, but He Himself is the standard of them.

What I mean by that is that you will notice the constant recurrence of the words “according to” in this epistle, and especially in the first chapter. For instance we have in verse 5, “according to the good pleasure of his will”, and then in verse 9, “according to his good pleasure which he purposed in himself”, and then again, verse 11, “being marked out beforehand according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his own will”, and then further in verse 19, “what the surpassing greatness of his power towards us who believe, according to the working of the might of his strength”. So that the thoughts of blessing and glory which this epistle presents are not based on any consideration of need on our side, but they proceed wholly and solely from God Himself, and the measure or standard of them is according to the good pleasure of His will, and according to the power that He is able to exert in order to give effect to His will, and therefore, dear brethren, we can well understand the things which come to us on that level are bound to be great; it is a question of the riches of God’s grace, that all is according to that, and we need to be prepared to yield ourselves to grace, and to be bowed in the presence of it, for there is nothing more calculated to promote a spirit of worship as to find ourselves consciously in the presence of the blessèd God, and in the presence of what He Himself, from His own side, is pleased to bring to pass for His own pleasure. But then, that being so, we find that One of the Godhead, that is the Person of the Holy Spirit, is brought before us as coming in to give effect in us to all that God has been pleased to mark out for us, so that there should be no failure on our side to enter fully into all that love has prepared. That is an immense gain, an immense comfort, that things are not being left to ourselves, but that One of the Godhead Himself has come in in order that every thought of God might be effectively made good and become fruitful in our selves, and hence, dear brethren, the more that we take account of these things the more we come to it that glory all belongs to God, as Mr Darby’s hymn so happily put it—

O Mind divine, so must it be,

That glory all belongs to God

—that is what it is all leading up to, that glory should all be attributed to God, and yet we, through grace, are to become the vessel in which that glory is attributed to God, and not in any mechanical way, but as having intelligence and affections and feelings that are stirred by the way that God has come out to us, and stirred in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so we find, in this first allusion to the Holy Spirit that He is called “the Holy Spirit of promise”. Having believed in the Christ, it says, “ye have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”. There is something very affecting about the thought of being sealed, for it means that God has placed His mark upon us, a mark of ownership, a very blessed thought that we may go through this world in the sense of having been sealed, that God has put His own mark upon us, and one may say, with confidence, takes account of us with pleasure, those whom He has sealed. But then the Holy Spirit of promise is a peculiarly affecting reference. Remember how in Luke 24 the Lord said to them, “behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but do ye remain in the city till ye be clothed with power from on high”. That is what He said—“the promise of my Father”, and then in Acts 1 we have that they were commanded not to depart from Jerusalem, but “to await the promise of the Father, which (said He) ye have heard of me”. So that the Lord had spoken to the disciples about the coming of the Holy Spirit. This word in Acts turns our thoughts back to the way the Lord speaks of the Comforter in the 14th, 15th and 16th chapters of John’s gospel. His words are recorded there, He says, “which ye have heard of me”. The Lord has prepared the ground in the hearts of the disciples, so they should learn to appreciate the Spirit, the Comforter. Indeed, He said: “It is profitable for you that I go away; for if I do not go away the Comforter will not come to you; but if I go I will send him to you”, as though the Lord would say, you cannot afford to be without the knowledge of the Comforter, as though that would be the final thing, the knowledge of the Father, the knowledge of the Son, but now also the knowledge of the Comforter—the Holy Spirit.

And so the presence of the Holy Spirit here is a matter of promise; as the Lord says: “the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name”, the thought being that in the presence of the great things which divine love has called us to for God’s own pleasure, we are not left at our own charges. So the Holy Spirit has been promised, and has come according to promise, in order that we might be brought fully into all that God has in mind for us. And that involves the greatest conceivable elevation. I think every one of us must feel how little we really know of it, and yet it is here; it is within our reach in the Holy Spirit. The power to bring us into the thoughts that God has formed regarding us is entirely equal to those thoughts themselves. It is God Himself that has undertaken to bring His saints into these things, and hence the question is, dear brethren, whether we have yet learned to avail ourselves of the Holy Spirit in the full way in which He has come within our range. All the apostles speak of it; Jude says, “Praying in the Holy Spirit”; Peter tells us that the Holy Spirit has been sent from heaven, come on a definite mission, as the Lord says, “He shall guide you into all the truth”. So that if, on the one hand, we have the most exalted thoughts unfolded to us in the epistle to the Ephesians, we are to understand that not one single element of those thoughts is to be left unappropriated by us. As the Lord said to Joshua, “Every place whereon the sole of your foot shall tread have I given to you”. It is a question of entering into possession of all the thoughts of God, and the Holy Spirit of promise has come in in order that that might be made good.

James also speaks of the Holy Spirit. He says: “Does the Spirit which has taken his abode in us desire enviously”. He is speaking, perhaps, more of the individual side than on the side of what the Spirit is to us as the Comforter collectively, but he uses that affecting expression, that He has taken His abode in us; nothing greater, in a sense, than that, that one of the Godhead should have been pleased to come in and take up His abode in us; in each believer on one hand and then the assembly also, and that is a most striking thing for each of us to take account of, and it necessitates, dear brethren, that we should be concerned as to real subjection to the Spirit and real sensitiveness as to all that His presence requires, and a readiness to hear His voice and to follow. All that is involved in the fact that the Holy Spirit has taken His abode in us. And so it says here that “having believed, ye have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the earnest of our inheritance to the redemption of the acquired possession”. He is the earnest of it; that means something substantial, not, indeed, the full measure of what we shall enter into at the coming of the Lord, but a real foretaste of it; not simply light, but something substantial entered upon in the power of the Holy Spirit. And so the earnest, dear brethren, is what should be in evidence in our assembly service. That is, it is a question of entering into the truth, not as merely having light, but as proving the power of it, and finding in the Spirit not only the intelligence but the liberty to move in these things.

So that John in Revelation says; “I became in the Spirit on the Lord’s day”. He says that in chapter 1, and then in chapter 4 when he hears the voice saying, “Come up here”, it says, “Immediately I became in the Spirit”, as though John had learned, at any rate, how to avail himself of the Holy Spirit who was dwelling in him. So the Spirit gave him power to move in divine things. I say again, not merely light, but substantiality in intelligence and liberty, moving in it in a real way. And so also John in his epistle says, “The Spirit is the truth”. Another important thing for us to bear in mind, that however valuable light may be, and the spiritual intelligence that the Spirit would give us, the Spirit Himself is the truth. That is we are to move in the truth in liberty and the intelligence and the dignity and the power that come alone from the Spirit, and as moving in the truth in the Spirit, the truth becomes a reality to us.

And so I trust all this, dear brethren, will help to impress us with the great importance to us of the Holy Spirit. We have in this chapter the Father first—“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”, presented as the source of these things of which we have been speaking, and then we have Christ brought in, presented as “the Beloved”, and the One in whom we have redemption through His blood, a most affecting thought, the blood of the Beloved, and then He is presented also as the Christ, the one who effects all God’s will and in whom all things are to be headed up in heaven and on earth, and then we have the Holy Spirit, as though this chapter presents to us the whole Godhead, moving together in wonderful unity in relation to divine counsels, and we ourselves, dear brethren, are the subjects of those counsels, and we have been taken up for the praise of the glory of God’s grace. That is, all is intended to go back in praise to God; intelligent, affectionate, feeling praise, and hence, as I have said already, the Holy Spirit Himself comes in in order that there should be no discrepancy between the light of God’s thoughts on the one hand and the answer to them on our part on the other.

Now when we come to chapter 2, the Spirit is presented in relation to actual access to the Father. In one sense you might say that in chapter 1 we have the unfolding of divine thoughts and the Spirit’s service in relation to them, but when you come to chapter 2 it is a question of actual access, and the Holy Spirit is presented as one Spirit, the stress is on the “one Spirit”, that is to say, the Holy Spirit in His power and ability to unify the saints in the service of God. And that is a most important matter, that the saints should be really unified in the service of God, for it is not so many separate brethren each individually moving in the Spirit, but the saints unified, “through him”, it says, that is through Christ, “we have both access by one Spirit to the Father”. The setting, of course, is that in the assembly, at the outset at any rate, there were Jews and Gentiles, and the question was, and a very practical question, how the Jew and the Gentile could merge together and move as one in the service of the blessed God in the assembly, a very practical question, as you may imagine. We have not now the question in that acute form; that is to say, we have practically no Jews in the assembly now, but then in another way we have got the question in an acute form, and that is how can the different brethren, different in natural characteristics, different in their outlook, different in their measure of intelligence and so on, how can they merge as one in the service of the blessed God? The answer is in the Holy Spirit, but there has to be the basis for it in our souls, dear brethren, if we are to move together without any hindrance, without anything working underneath that prevents the most complete unification in love so as to move together as one in the service of God. And hence we have the cross brought in, how important the cross is. It means judicially the ending of the man, whether the man is the Jew or whether he is the Gentile, whether he is learned or whether he is unlearned, whatever features mark him naturally, the cross is the end of it all, and if we are glad to appropriate the cross and the moral import of it in regard to ourselves, we should be equally glad to appropriate it in regard of our brethren, for that is the secret of it, the learning to appropriate the moral import and power of the cross, the way Christ has taken in order that the man himself should be ended. If the man is ended then his natural features go, and we are entitled to disregard those natural features and to take account of one another according to what we are as born of God and as having received the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the ascended Man, and as the subjects of the work of God. Surely we are dignified enough if we view one another in that light. We can well afford to take account of one another in that light, and rejoice that the cross of Christ entitles us to close our eyes to all else.

And so, dear brethren, with that in our minds the Holy Spirit comes in as positive power. It says, “through him” (that is, through Christ)—recognising, as must always be recognised, the mediatorial position in which our Lord Jesus Christ stands, and will stand eternally in view of the service of God, recognising that, it says, “through him we have both” (that is, Jew and Gentile, or whatever we may be in our natural differences) “access by one Spirit to the Father”. And so it says in 1 Corinthians “in the power of one Spirit have we have all been baptised into one body”, that is, submerged, and merged positively in the Spirit, and have all been given to drink of one Spirit”. And so this matter, dear brethren, of real unification in the Spirit is a most essential matter if there is to be the service of God in the assembly, for the assembly is an entity, to move as one under the impulse of Christ, the assembly is the body of Christ, and therefore the urgent need that we should be thoroughly together in love, because there must be no disunity, and if there is disunity the movements of the assembly in the service of God will be so much hampered. And so we have, as I said, the cross of Christ on the one hand and indeed the impelling influence of love as seen in the cross, and then the positive power of the Holy Spirit, so that we may move together as one in access to the Father.

Now when we come to chapter 3 it is perhaps one of the greatest presentations of the Holy Spirit that we have in scripture, and the apostle prays; he says; “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom” (that is, the Father) “every family in the heavens and on earth is named, in order that he may give you according to the riches of his glory”—note the ‘according to’ and the ‘riches of his glory’; how the Spirit of God through Paul uses superlative expressions in this epistle, as though to impress us with the sense that everything is superlative, because it is according to God, and it must be superlative, and we could never rise to what is superlative save in the power of the Spirit of God, and so he says, “that he may give you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power by his Spirit in the inner man”—that is, the Father’s Spirit. It is most touching how the Holy Spirit will take on different characters in order to give effect to the pleasure of God, and here He is presented as the Father’s Spirit—“to be strengthened with power in the inner man; that the Christ may dwell, through faith, in your hearts”.

Now when we remember, dear brethren, that the Father is presented as the Originator of these great thoughts of love, and the One of whom “every family in heaven and on earth is named”, I think we can understand that as it is the Father’s Spirit who is operating in our inner man, He is able to bring the Father’s thoughts into our hearts, the Father’s thoughts as to Christ, the Father’s feelings as to Christ, and the Father’s thoughts as to all the families. It is a question of the Spirit of the One who has conceived these things, having His own place in our hearts, and His operations have in view, first of all, that the Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith.

We can easily see, dear brethren, that if the Christ Himself is dwelling in our hearts by faith we shall not have very great difficulty in understanding something of “the breadth and length and depth and height”. It refers to the whole expanse of glory and blessing which the Father has in His mind to bring in, and it is all centred in the Christ, and hence if the Christ dwells in our hearts we shall not have very much difficulty in getting some impression of the whole extent of glory that centres in Him. It is a question of the affections of a true wife, the Christ dwelling in our hearts means that we have in our souls the sense that the assembly is united to Christ, and that all that He has as Man we are to enter into with Him, and therefore if the One who loves the assembly, and whom the assembly loves, is really in our hearts, then the whole extent of His interests will likewise come into our hearts. It is an immense thing if we get in our souls the sense that divine grace has linked us up with Christ, that our “life is hid” it says, “with the Christ in God”. Just as Adam had the woman brought to him in the position of headship in which God had placed him, so the assembly has been given to the Christ, and as the woman was given to Adam and found her place alongside of Adam, she would understand that she was with him in the whole system over which he was appointed as head, and she would share with him the whole of the interests which were Adam’s, she would be his helpmate in that position, and that is the idea, dear brethren, that the first chapter presents the exalted position in which Christ has been placed by the blessed God, and then it says, “gave him to be head over all things to the assembly, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all”. And so we are inseparably bound up with the Christ, and the thought is that the interests of the Christ and all that centres in Him are to be our interests, and as we are strengthened by the Father’s Spirit in the inner man it means that the Father’s own thoughts and the Father’s own feelings can be brought into our hearts by the Spirit of the Father. And so you remember that at the end of John 17 the Lord says, speaking to the Father, “that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them”—the love with which the Father loves Christ may be in us, that is a wonderful thing.

You might say how can that be possible, but the answer is, The Father’s Spirit makes it possible, “that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them”, that is to say, the Father would bring us so thoroughly into accord with His own thoughts and His own joys that we are to be capable, in some degree, of having in us the very love with which He loved Christ and the secret of it is, I believe, that we are to be strengthened with might by the Father’s Spirit in the inner man. If we ponder these things, dear brethren, we cannot but be impressed with the wonderful nearness to God into which the assembly is brought; not, indeed, as we have often said, having any part in Deity, but brought as near to Deity as the creature can be. But God is pleased that it should be so, and He is pleased that we should be brought into such nearness to himself as to be able to enter feelingly with Him into His own chief joys, and that is possible by the Father’s Spirit. We get a kind of inkling of it in Peter’s account of the scene on the holy mount, when he says that they were with Him (that is, with Christ) on the holy mount, and they heard such a voice (the Father’s voice), saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight”. It is the Father drawing Peter and James and John into His own feelings in regard of Christ. What could be more precious; what could be greater grace than that, that we should be found in that position in relation to the Father, and it is possible for us as strengthened with might by the Father’s Spirit in the inner man. But then the Lord also said, “And I in them”. That is to say, we are to have, in some sense, an appreciation by the Father’s Spirit of His love for Christ, and the joy He finds in man as before Him in Christ, and thus, you might say, in the assembly, but then also “I in them”, that is to say, the assembly is to be the vessel in which the response to that love finds expression, as the Lord said, “in the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praises”. And so in relation to that the Holy Spirit (not that we get it in this passage, but I mention it in passing) is pleased to take another character, that of the Spirit of God’s Son, so that the response to God in the assembly should be in every way worthy of Him as being the expression of Christ’s own praises. I think there is nothing more interesting than to see the different characters, if one may use that expression, which the Holy Spirit, Himself God, is pleased to take in the economy into which God has entered, in order that the full thoughts of God should be entered upon by His saints, and that an answer worthy of God should be secured from them.

And so the apostle prays here, to come back to this passage, that we might be strengthened with power by the Father’s Spirit in the inner man, that the Christ may dwell through faith in our hearts, being rooted and founded in love, in order that we may be fully able to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height. Now how much of it do we know, dear brethren, and if we are conscious that our measure is small, do we do what Paul did, bow our knees before the Father and ask on these lines, because the Lord in His word to His disciples in the closing chapters of John was emphatic about the importance of asking. He says, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall come to pass to you”. “If ye abide in me” will deliver us practically from all lawlessness so that we are pleasing to God, and Christ’s words abiding in us will give us intelligence so that we know what to ask, and the lord says: “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall come to pass to you”. So that though the range of things into which we are brought is immense, we need not fear the immensity of it, if only we will take up the attitude which Paul took up, and bow our knees before the Father and pray on these lines. And then he says: “to know the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge”, it does indeed surpass knowledge, and that is a comfort to us, that eternity will not suffice to give us the full knowledge of the love of the Christ, it surpasses knowledge, and yet it may be known, and it is as knowing the love of the Christ that we are sustained in these great things, because we enter upon them with Christ, and not without Him; it is God’s pleasure to give us all things with Christ—“How shall he not also with him grant us all things”, and so it says in Corinthians: “all are yours and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s”. That is the secret of it, that all things are ours because we are Christ’s, and so we are to know the love of the Christ, and it is, as I say, in the knowledge and enjoyment of the love of the Christ and as held by it that we find ourselves able to fill our part in this wonderful realm of glory in which the assembly has such a distinguished place.

Well, now, I would say a word or two in closing on chapter 6, because there we come to what is very important. I might say in passing that we have in chapter 4, “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which ye have been sealed for the day of redemption”, and in chapter 5 we have, “be filled with the Spirit”. We are reminded in that way of the seal, as though to give us an incentive not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God. He has indeed taken up His abode in us, and He is not going to leave us, wonderful grace that the Spirit will never leave us; even though He is grieved He does not leave us, although we lose the sense of His power and do not get it back until we have judged ourselves. It is a most affecting thing that He remains with us right through, as the Lord says, “that he may be with you for ever”, and hence we can understand the appeal “grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption”.

But now we come to chapter 6 where it is a question of the conflict, because I suppose if Satan sees the saints having desires in relation to what is heavenly, having desires in the direction of entering upon the elevation of which we have been speaking, we may rest assured that the enemy will attack. He will not cease to attack. It is not exactly that we ourselves are the object of his hatred so much, as that God is the object of his hatred, and his effort is to rob God of His present pleasure in the saints. He cannot rob God of having His pleasure in us eternally, but he is bent upon robbing God of His present pleasure in the saints, and if he sees the saints in any degree moving after heavenly things, then the enemy will be constantly attacking, and hence the apostle tells us that we are to put on the panoply of God, a complete thought; not simply one or two items of armour, but a complete set of armour, a panoply, we are to put it on, and as you read down the different features of armour you understand that they refer to subjective conditions in ourselves, and that is a most important matter. The armour really deals with moral conditions, because if we fail in that which is moral we shall certainly be hindered in regard of that which is spiritual, and hence the enemy’s constant effort is to get in through some weakness on our part in relation to what is moral. And so the armour consists of moral features maintained in our souls, and so it says, for instance, we are to have girt about our loins with truth. It is what we ourselves do, we are to gird about our loins with truth, and we are to put on the breast-plate of righteousness, and we are to see that we have our feet shed with the preparation of the gospel of peace, the preparation of it.

The second chapter that we have already alluded to tells us that coming He preached the glad tidings of peace. How important it is, dear brethren, that we should have the glad tidings of peace in our hearts; the way God has wrought through the cross to set aside every element of disturbance and we are to maintain that in our souls, in our movements in relation to one another, and see that our feet are shed with the preparation of the gospel of peace, and then it says, “having taken the shield of faith with which ye will be able to quench all the inflamed darts of the wicked one”, and then the “helmet of salvation” which I suppose is a preservative for the mind, and then it says “and the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s word”. How important that is, beloved brethren, “the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s word”. We are told how the word of God operates in the epistle to the Hebrews. “The word of God”, it says, “is living and operative, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and penetrating to the division of soul and spirit, both of joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”. What fine distinctions the Holy Spirit can make, and we have got to be prepared for that; it is one of the elements of our safety that we are constantly marked by attention to the Spirit’s voice and the Spirit’s touch, so to speak, because He will make the finest distinctions; He divides between soul and spirit, and between joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and we are to avail ourselves, first of all, of the sword of the Spirit in relation to ourselves, before we can use the sword effectively in relation to others. You remember how we read of the judge Ehud in the book of Judges, the one who learned how to use the sword in delivering power for God’s people, that it says that he made himself a sword having two edges, and it was of a cubit length. But the word ‘cubit’ there means no fixed length, no particular length. That is to say it indicates that he had learned how to use the Spirit of God, the word in the power of the Spirit, against himself first. “Ehud made him”, it says, “a sword having two edges”, and it was of no fixed length, that is to say, it was readily adaptable to anything and everything that he had to meet.

Well, if we accustom ourselves, beloved brethren, to use the sword of the Spirit against ourselves then we shall find that we may have a measure of power in using it offensively against the enemy, and that is what is needed, the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s word. Of course, the presence of the Spirit, and the using of the Spirit by us involves constant dependence, but as dependence is maintained we find as occasion requires that the Spirit of God gives the word that is needed, so that it becomes God’s word, and that is what is needed. The longer we go on in assembly exercises and assembly history, the more we find out that no situation arises for which there is not the word of God. The Spirit of God brings forward just what is needed from the Scriptures with divine authority that effectively meets the attack of the enemy, and that is a most comforting thing, only we have to learn how to use the sword, and we cannot learn how to use the sword effectively if we do not first learn to use it upon ourselves. And so it says: “having … the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s word”. The word of God is a veritable armoury, and it is also a veritable treasury. But here it is the aspect of the armoury; something that can be drawn upon as occasion requires to meet any attack of the enemy.

And then, finally we read: “praying at all seasons, with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit”. That is to say, we have the Spirit brought in now as the power for prayer and supplications. “Praying at all seasons, with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching unto this very thing with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints”. You can see how full the apostle’s heart is, and how he embraces all the saints, and how he urges not only prayer but supplication. Supplication involves that there is intensity of exercise; prayer, I suppose, involves that we have intelligence to know what to ask for, and we ask for it. Supplication means that we are urgent in the matter, and marked by intensity of exercise; intercession means that we have power with God ourselves, and use it on behalf of others, and so there is to be prayer and there is to be supplication, and we are to persevere in these things for all saints. And then as we have had brought before us lately, although it does not come into this chapter, along with our prayer let us see that we do not forget fasting, for it is a question of power.

I have sought, in one’s measure, to bring these things before you, that we may get some impression of what is available now in the Holy Spirit. He has been sent from heaven; He has been sent in Christ’s name, and the Lord has sent Him from with the Father, so that He has been pleased to take up a position in which He is available both to the Father and to the Son, in order that all the thoughts of God, of which we ourselves are the objects, should be entered into by us now in power and reality, and that we should serve God according to the elevation of those thoughts.

Well, may the Lord help us, dear brethren, to avail ourselves of the Spirit more. I am sure we are all having to learn it, and the Lord would have us learn it quickly, because it is a question, before the Lord comes, of the assembly answering fully to the thoughts of God, and of being available to Christ to serve God according to the glory in which He is known.

 

WORTHING

3^rd August 1950

From Ministry of James Taylor—Old Series, vol 185

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