SPIRITUAL MANHOOD
[p. 147] SPIRITUAL MANHOOD
The thought in my mind is that our growing up to spiritual manhood is a simple matter to those whose affections are commanded by the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When He was here the Lord was forming His disciples in the features of spiritual manhood, and the result of His influence was their coming to realise that there was no one with whom He could be compared. There was variety of opinion about Him, but here (verse 20) He challenges the disciples as to what they could say of Him. And the challenge is continually brought to us as to what our hearts can really say as to His Person. Peter says He is “the Christ of God”. The Lord had an unrivalled place in their affections, and this confession was an opportunity for Him to point out the character of the testimony, to speak of that to which He was about to come. He was free to tell them of His sufferings and subsequent glory and what would involve on their part suffering and the losing of their lives for His sake, and that they would need not to be ashamed of Him or His words. That is, He was preparing their hearts for the suffering time when the features of manhood would be necessary. It is all very well to be babes, to be carried, but such are no good as support to the testimony.
So the Lord takes chosen men in this instance, and He permits them to see Him glorified, and the two greatest servants in the Old Testament, Moses and Elias, with Him glorified, speaking with Him and standing with Him. It was surely to impress their hearts with the great favour that was there. They were from day to day, from week to week, and from year to year in the presence of a light that never shone on Moses and Elias; they were more highly favoured in walking with the Son of God than these saints were.
[p. 148] These two men seen in glory are not occupied with it, they are speaking with the Lord of His departure that He was to accomplish at Jerusalem. That is something greater than the glory of the kingdom. They had understood God’s ways with them, had come to maturity and so understood that the whole kingdom glory rested on His decease that was to be accomplished. I cannot but suggest that this is a feature of spiritual manhood.
When the disciples got the Spirit they must have loved to contemplate these two great and chosen servants of God, borne along in their ministry and prophetic word by the Spirit, so that they are in the glory in a glorified condition, not occupied with it but with what was the basis of it all. How far has the death of our Lord established itself in our souls, so that we are not absorbed with the full glory of the kingdom, but with His death? All is based on the precious and unspeakable value of his death, and it must be so if we are presented “unblamable and irreproachable”, as these two men were. They had something greater in their hearts than kingdom glory — the marvellous death through which He would bring it all about, the basis on which the world to come stands, and on which the world of bliss stands for eternity.
The vision fades, Moses and Elias depart (the kingdom glory must give place to something in which they have no part), and the cloud overshadowed the disciples, “and they feared as they entered into the cloud”. They could not possibly understand it, so that it occasioned fear. But it was a blessed indication that all that Moses and Elias could know of the kingdom glory was to give place to something transcendently wonderful. They were not only shadowed by the cloud, but enveloped in it, referring no doubt to what was coming in in the ministry of Paul and John, to the economy of the Father and the Son. It was, as Peter says, “The excellent glory” — the surpassing glory. It is the place we have in connection with the beloved Son, the place in the Father’s love in association with His Son. We can understand how [p. 149] spiritual manhood is necessary for it; the very perfection of it is seen in the beloved Son. But we reach it by steps: the Saviour, the Lord, the Christ precede it in our apprehension. We are to see the wonderful place of the Son in the affections of the Father, and we are called into the participation of it. John’s gospel and first epistle unfold it — John’s gospel in chapters 17 and 20 leads us up to the pinnacle of it. John writes as a man, he speaks of “men”, accrediting them with receiving the words He had given them of the Father. He looks at them in the new period as having the Spirit, grown up to the apprehension of the great divine thoughts.
The question is how far we are capacitated to enter into the things we have in the faith of our souls. As having our place in the economy of the Father and the Son, we have something that infinitely surpasses the kingdom glory. “The glory which thou hast given me I have given them” — the cloud of glory envelops the saints as we enter in. It requires manhood that rises up to the most cherished thoughts of divine Persons. How marvellous that we should be able to rise up to the heights of our greatest privileges, and cause pleasure to the Father and the Son by entering into Their thoughts. May we be helped in that direction for Their praise.