LUKE 20 AND 21 (NOTES OF A READING)
LUKE 20 AND [p. 209] 21 (NOTES OF A READING)
Luke 20: 39 - 47; Luke 21: 1 - 38
Ques Is there any link between the raising of the relationship of Christ as the Son of David, and the blind man who calls on Him for relief in the end of chapter 18?
CAC Well, I think there was a link, but it would seem that the Lord’s intention was to enlarge greatly the truth of His Person. It was a great thing that the blind man should recognise Jesus as the Son of David, the Messiah. He recognised Him as the One who had opened the eyes of the blind. It was commonly taught by the Jewish rabbis that the opening of the eyes was a miracle reserved for the Messiah, reserved for the Son of David. The Old Testament Scriptures which speak of the opening of the eyes of the blind clearly refer to the days and the power of the Messiah, so that the blind man had the faith of that. He had the faith that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah. No one else could open the eyes. But did you not think that in this temple instruction the Lord’s desire was to give great enlargement to that thought? The scribes and the Pharisees had the thought that the Messiah would be the Son of David, and the blind man had got so far as recognising that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of David. It would appear that as teaching in the temple the Lord would give great enlargement to the thought of His greatness.
Before passing judgment on the temple the Lord gave it its true character as the place of divine teaching. He was just about to pass judgment on it and to say that not one stone should be left upon another. You see, in the sense in which the Lord is found in the temple it is the public side of things. It is not exactly the shrine, it is the public side of things. Before the Lord concluded His ministry of grace to men — which is the theme of Luke’s gospel — He gives the temple its true character as the house of prayer, and the place of divine teaching,
[p. 210] and so divine light is thrown upon the greatest questions that were exercising faith, and exercising the minds of the people generally. Because what you find is that all the people are in the temple. They are all listening, not only the disciples, but all the people are there, showing that this is a public aspect of things. And I think divine teaching is public. It is not confined to the disciples, but it is public. As the Lord says, “And in secret I have spoken nothing” (John 18: 20). The Lord publicly vindicates the truth in respect of divine authority, and in respect to the rights of God, to the government of God and to resurrection; and now, having disposed of these questions, He Himself raises a matter which was far greater than any of the others, the matter of the greatness of His own Person. ‘Son of David’ was not a title great enough. It was a wonderful and blessed title, but it was not great enough.
‘Son of David’ does not describe the true greatness of His Person.
Rem I thought that it was evidently a crisis when the Lord raised this question; the crisis of the whole life on earth.
CAC Yes, and it was the most important question that the Lord had ever propounded. As we get in another gospel, “What think ye concerning the Christ? whose son is he?”
(Matthew 22: 42). It surpasses in importance all the other subjects upon which the Lord had thrown divine light; and the Lord does still publicly throw divine light upon every question; He maintains the temple character of things publicly and I believe He will do so to the end. There will always be, as long as the saints are upon the earth, a public maintenance of teaching in regard to every subject that men have to consider relative to God. I do not think the Lord is ever going to allow that to lapse. That is not what we enjoy privately, but it is public and it is for all the people to listen to.
Rem That seems to be very fine in connection with the present questions amongst the saints.
CAC Yes, the Lord allows questions to arise, and questions relating to the Lord’s Person are the greatest and most important that can ever be raised. Men think they [p. 211] are unimportant, matters of opinion, matters that are not practical, but that shows that men think of things entirely from their own standpoint. When we begin to think of things from God’s standpoint the question of the Person of Christ is the great question. Every other question sinks into insignificance in the presence of the matter of the greatness of the Person of Christ.
He has many titles, Son of David is one of them, but even such a blessed title as Son of David is not great enough to bring out His proper personal glory, and so the Lord raises the question. He does it suggestively. He does not do it dogmatically by saying all that He might have said; and the Lord likes to suggest thoughts to our minds for us to work them out for ourselves. That is the way of the Lord’s teaching. He suggests a thought so that we may follow it out and work it out and reach the completion of it for ourselves. He would rather that we did that than that we were spoon-fed all the time.
Rem I have been struck lately how little the Lord speaks of Himself personally.
CAC Yes; He raises the question of the consideration of Scripture. That is how the Lord would help us; by turning our attention to what has been said in the power of the Holy Spirit. In another gospel He says, “David himself said speaking in the Holy Spirit” (Mark 12: 36). Now what has been said in the Holy Spirit is worth attending to. We shall never get on to a wrong scent if we pay attention to what has been said in the Holy Spirit. We shall get divine thoughts and we shall get them according to divine measurements too, because it is one thing to have a divine thought, and it is quite another thing to have it according to divine measurement. We often have the right thought, but not the right measurement. It is rather like the man who said that the water wagtail was a magpie. He had the colours right, but did not know the size of it! But when you come to think of the Person of Christ, that is of all importance. Not only have I got the right thought, but have I got it in its due proportions — in its [p. 212] magnitude? The scribes and the Pharisees could see, they had got their Bibles, chapter and verse, Christ is the Son of David. Well, the Lord says, stop a minute; listen to what David says about Him, “David ... calls him Lord” (Mark 12: 37). Then He must be something more than Son of David. No man would call his son his Lord. The Lord says, think about it; and He left them thinking about it, and some have been thinking about it ever since.
Nothing is of more importance than to see that whatever titles the Lord has — and He has many — whatever dignity He has and whatever offices He fills, the greatness and glory and majesty of His Person give character to every one of them. So that we have no right thought of any single character or office which the Lord fills unless we hold it in our minds in connection with the proper greatness of His Person, His glory as a divine Person — as God. There is what He is essentially and personally: He is a divine Person — He is “over all, God blessed for ever” — and whatever offices He takes and whatever title He wears we have always got to hold it in connection with that fundamental truth of His Person; and I think that is very helpful to see in connection with the exercise that has been raised recently in a public way. These questions have been raised before all christendom now. The Messiah had a dignity in relation to David which was greater than being his Son. He was his Son, He came into that place. He was of the seed of David according to the flesh. He was raised up of David’s seed according to promise. It was written that He should sit on the throne of His father David. But then He had a greater dignity than that — He was David’s Lord. And that really involves the whole sacred mystery of the incarnation.
I think the Lord indicated in the previous section that God was going to secure everything on the platform of resurrection; everything was to be retained permanently for God on that platform, even Christ Himself. Publicly God had lost everything that He had ever brought into the world, but He [p. 213] was going to lose Christ too. That is, all the men of faith had gone into death and been buried, and Christ was about to go into death and to be buried. But the Lord brings out the great truth that nothing was really going to be lost; all was going to be secured in resurrection. The sons of God would be sons of the resurrection; they would be set up in perpetuity of holiness. But everything depends upon Christ; nothing that is secured for God in resurrection could be secured apart from Christ, so that the final and great question is that of the greatness of Christ. As we know, He was “marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection of the dead” (Romans 1: 4). Resurrection declared Him to be Son of God; it declared the greatness of His Person.
Ques Do you connect this with Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me”?
CAC Well, there He is seen as Jehovah’s anointed Servant, and He is seen in that character through this gospel very clearly. He is the anointed Vessel of grace. But then behind all that is the truth of His own Person. So that we find, as recorded in this gospel, that though He comes in of the seed of David according to promise, yet He comes in in an altogether miraculous way; He comes in as conceived in the power of the Holy Spirit; not born in any natural way, but coming in by a divine conception, so that He is a divine Person come in flesh. So that “the holy thing” that should be born was to be called Son of God. Therefore, He had a dignity far surpassing that of David. A son in Scripture is not regarded as being his father’s equal, but in the Lord’s case He was David’s Lord: not only his son, but his Lord. He was greater than David inasmuch as divine glory attached to Him. He was One for David to worship and to adore.
Rem One would like to have some sense in one’s soul what it must have meant to the Lord when He repeated to the scribes, “Sit at my right hand”.
CAC Yes, surely, and it covers the whole present period; the “until” has stretched out a long time as we speak — nearly two thousand years — and it is the great distinctive feature of the present time that the Messiah, after being rejected on earth and put to death, is exalted to the very highest place in the universe, sitting at God’s right hand; everything must be subdued to Him; everything adverse must be His footstool — that must be so — but His greatness comes out in the place where He sits. He sits at the right hand of God, as Hebrews 1 says, He “set himself down”. That is more wonderful still. He “set himself down on the right hand of the greatness on high” — He did it Himself. Not only that, God calls Him to sit there. But in His own personal greatness He set Himself down there. What a Person!
Rem He delights in hearts that accord Him that place.
CAC Yes, indeed. If we accord Him that place we shall be too much out of love with the man who likes long clothing and chief seats for him to be prominent and bring himself into evidence. That is the religious man. How petty and how mean and sordid the religious man looks, if you have had a vision of the greatness of Christ.
The Lord does not need to give you an extended picture of it. The Lord came into the place of the Son of David, but we can all see clearly that in doing that He came into a place that was in itself less than His own full personal glory. We can see that Son of David would not describe His full greatness. He came into that place, but He was greater than the place He came into. Now we may also say that as to His title Son of God, He was found here as Son of God in manhood, but even that great and glorious title, far surpassing as it does the Son of David, does not cover the full glory of His Person.
So that when we think of the proper glory of His Person, we have to think of Him as in absolute equality with God, and as being God. He was on equality with God; so that He did not need to snatch at it, or reach after it as if it were something above or beyond Him. It really and essentially belonged to Him, because He was God. Therefore if you [p. 215] think of Him in His proper dignity and glory you rise above even the thought of Father and Son, because there is disparity between Father and Son. The Son is never looked at in Scripture as being on an equality with His Father. The terms are not co-equal; they are relative, but not co-equal. In Scripture the thought of a son is first that he is begotten; then he comes under the care and instruction of his father, and under the obedience and service of his father, and he is a pleasure to his father because he serves him and he loves his father; and the quality of love in a father is different from the quality of love in a son. It must be so, because love in a father is conjoined with authority. Love in a son is conjoined with obedience. It is so all through Scripture, so that there is a certain subordination with a son. He serves his father. That is the idea. The Lord has come into a place where He is the object of the Father’s love and He receives everything from the Father in subjection and obedience, and He pleases the Father in everything that He does. He completes the wonderful services which the Father entrusted to Him. He takes everything from the Father. Now, there is not quite coequality in that. The Lord is in a place of subjection, receiving all from the Father, and doing all for the Father, and finally is glorified by the Father. The Father does everything for Him. But when you go right back into the truth of His Person He is absolutely on equality with the other divine Persons, and you could not carry the thought of Father and Son into that because there is not equality between father and son; they are never supposed in Scripture to be relationships that are on absolute equality. You would upset the whole teaching of Scripture to think so. The wonderful thing is that the One who was so great, so majestic in His own Person, who was God, as Scripture says, and in the form of God, should come into the place and into the relationship which was characterised by obedient affection and subjection to the will of the Father, and that He should carry that right through; and it is all magnified before our hearts as we think [p. 216] of the greatness of the One who came into that place. It all belongs to the transcendency of His stoop of grace, so that we may know God. So that really the truth of the Lord’s Person is the greatest truth in Scripture.
Ques What is meant by the expression “sons of the resurrection”?
CAC It seems to me that Scripture makes it clear that the Lord came in the depth of His love into the place of sonship in view of men having the place of sonship. It says, “God sent forth his Son, come of woman, come under law, that he might redeem those under law, that we might receive sonship” (Galatians 4: 4, 5). That sets out the place that God’s own Son was found in, in view of bringing men into sonship.
And this was to be of an eternal order. It was really secured in Christ in resurrection. It was all there in His Person before death, but then it was not permanent after the flesh. Death came in upon it. But in resurrection things take a permanent character, and they are going to take a permanent character in the sons of the resurrection. That is a blessed thing, so that the sons of God are sons of the resurrection. Paul says, ‘That is what I am set for’, “If any way I arrive at the resurrection from among the dead” (Philippians 3: 11). So that the result will be in full answer to the original thought of divine love before the foundation of the world. We were chosen in Christ that we might be holy and without blame before God in love, and were marked out for sonship through Jesus Christ. That is the end that God had in view when He sent forth His Son; the Son accomplished redemption and He is raised and glorified, and He is going to be the firstborn among many brethren, and all the many brethren will be sons of God. And they will be sons of the resurrection too. God will triumph in that way. But the Person who did it all is no less than God.
He is, as one of our hymns now says, ‘of full Deity possessed’ (11:2), and that is the greatness of His Person.
Yes, there is nothing more precious than that we should get a true thought of the greatness of Christ. It is greatly to be desired. A simple and humble soul, with no learning of [p. 217] this world at all, who has a true, even if feeble, sense of the greatness of Christ, is most acceptable to heaven: heaven delights in such a soul. And so you find that such a soul as that can be commanded. We could not have a true sense of the greatness of Christ without being commanded by it.
So that the poor widow comes upon the scene as far greater in the estimation of heaven than the temple and all the consecrated gifts. Not one stone was going to be left upon another in the temple. All that public system was going to disappear, and all the right gifts which men had ostentatiously given were going to disappear. But this poor widow brought something there that was an imperishable adornment of the temple, and which will have its place in the eternal temple. She had an appreciation of the blessed God. That was more to God than all the costly gifts that Solomon presented when the temple was consecrated. I suppose it was the best day in the history of the temple! And the Lord would not have missed for anything being there to see those two mites, which is a farthing, thrown into the treasury. It was worth coming from heaven to see a woman who was so dominated by devotion to God that all her living went into the treasury of God. What a spectacle for angels and for the blessed God Himself! Now, morally, that is the result of apprehending the greatness of Christ. The result is, if we get the right thought of the greatness of Christ, well, He is worthy of the utmost devotion of every heart that knows Him. And so this woman, this great figure, is a greater figure in the history of the temple than Solomon. What was thought of her?
You can fancy the condescending smile with which the officiating priest would regard this insignificant trifle. Probably they thought, ‘What a foolish woman, she needs it herself, and it is nothing in this pile of treasure — it is nothing’. They might have smiled as they saw it, but with a smile of contempt. But that which was contemptuous in their eyes was the wonder of heaven. God had succeeded in proving before the universe that He could make a human being love Him with heart, soul, mind and strength, and give all to Him.
God’s great triumph! The temple had to come down after that! It had served its purpose. No wonder that no stone was to be left upon another. Sometimes when a thing reaches the climax of its glory, it goes. God has no object in further retaining it.
Ques What will produce widowed hearts?
CAC Well, she had a profound sense of God’s sufficiency, acquired through experience of having nothing but God. It is wonderful to have nothing but God, and to find that He is sufficient, to find that in saying ‘nothing but God’ you have just said everything. I have heard an old sister say, ‘I have no resource now but the Almighty’, as if she was very badly off! It is really laughable, but that is your heart and mine.
Ques I wondered if this was the climax of Isaiah 61?
CAC Yes, I think it is a climax. I think the Lord reaches a climax here. It is very interesting to see the steps.
You get prayer characterising the temple. Prayer is man in complete dependence on God. And then you get the assertion of divine authority in the way of grace, and on that basis you get the maintenance of all the rights of God as seen in the vineyard which is now entrusted to us; it is given to others; it is given to us to maintain all the rights of God. And then we are to recognise the government of God whether in the world or in the church; we have to recognise the government of God and to be humbled as to it. At the same time we are not to surrender the rights of God, notwithstanding His government. You see everything secured in resurrection for God, and everything resting on the greatness of the Person of Christ, and then you get this devoted heart yielding all to God. It is the most wonderful picture. That is the temple teaching. It puts everything in its right place, so that man gets his right place in dependence and the rights of God are fully owned in every sphere. All is secured in resurrection on the ground of the greatness of the Person of Christ, and then you get a widowed heart bereft of everything as to this world,
[p. 219] with nothing before her but God.
Now a heart with nothing before it but God as revealed in Christ is a heart that is wealthy Godward. So that the Lord could say that she had cast in more than all the rest. They had silver and gold and costly jewels, but only the expression of their poverty Godward. They were really adorning the man that is an offence to God. But here is a poor widow that is filled with God, without a thought of herself. What a triumph! I do not know anything that will be much more interesting in scenes of glory than to get alongside that widow and to ask her how she came to such a blessed apprehension of God! I believe we shall learn it by and by. She is introduced to us as having reached a climax, as having reached the blessedness of God within the human heart; how she reached it is veiled; it is one of the blessed secrets reserved for us by and by. I look forward to having a word with that widow!
Rem All these features are seen as having reached culmination in the city.
CAC Everything culminates there. That city has the glory of God, but then, how did she acquire it? Well, you see she acquired it through the glad tidings. It is very interesting that all this teaching is spoken of as glad tidings. It says in the first verse of the chapter, “And it came to pass on one of the days, as he was teaching the people in the temple, and announcing the glad tidings” — that is the character of it. It is all glad tidings. It is as much as to say, if you take this in you will be supremely happy. The Lord’s proposal is that we should be supremely happy. And I believe the Lord is maintaining this character of things.
Ques How are we to understand Galatians 4: 6: “The Spirit of his Son”?
CAC Nothing is more interesting than to see that it requires the presence of another co-equal divine Person. The Son came to effect redemption so that we might receive sonship, but for us to be in the good of it for the pleasure of God [p. 220] requires that another divine Person should come, and be sent into our hearts. So that in our hearts He might cry ‘Abba, Father’. The Spirit of His Son — how wonderful! That is how we come to be sons of God. Not on the line of nature at all, not on the line of education or development. We receive sonship as a gift and then there is the response — Abba, Father.
And I think you will see in the widow, you might say, one who was really in the spirit of saying, ‘Abba, Father’. I mean as an illustration. Her whole heart is abounding in affection to the blessed God. Now that is the spirit of sonship. It is not merely that we say the words; they are words that we can read and repeat, but that is not the idea. It is that that is the attitude of our hearts. It is the adoring appreciation of the blessed God as known in love, so that the heart is full and can only express itself in saying, ‘Abba, Father’. It is the language of the heart, not of the lips. And it requires the presence of a living Person in our hearts to enable us to do it.
Ques Why is the Spirit sent “in my name”?
CAC “In my name” is that He comes in really on behalf of Christ the Son. He comes in as given by the Father on behalf of Christ the Son. So that what was seen perfectly in Christ is produced by the Spirit in the sons. It is maintained here by the Spirit of God. So that Christ is the true Object, and the Spirit is the true Subject, and the One corresponds perfectly with the Other.