THE GOSPEL AS BRINGING TO US THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
[p. 429] THE GOSPEL AS BRINGING TO US THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
Romans 3: 21 - 26; Romans 5: 1 - 11
Ques Do you suggest that joying in God is the result of the gospel received in the soul?
CAC The more one thinks of the gospel the more wonderful does it become; it confers everything.
The ministry of the gospel is the greatest of all truth. There is ever a need for us to be enlarged and confirmed in the knowledge of God that the gospel brings us. The gospel really brings God to us, and our real stature and stability depend upon our knowledge of God. The gospel includes everything; all the truth of the assembly is included in the gospel. The gospel is a beautiful casket and when you open it you find the truth of the assembly inside — “This mystery ... as to the assembly”. All that Christ is, all that the Spirit is, is bound up with and in the gospel. I have no sympathy with those who say, ‘It is only the gospel’. The elements of the gospel, the foundations, are so magnificent, wonderful big stones like those in the temple! Think of it, that God Himself should become the creature’s joy; that man should come to find his joy in God, because God has found His joy in man. It is wonderful to think of the good news that has come to us — God has made every provision for filling us up with divine joy. If we are not filled with joy we are not in the good of the gospel. There is often a lack of joy with believers. One feels that it shows that the gospel is not really in the power of the Spirit in the soul.
Rem “We are making our boast in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5: 11).
Ques Is the first [p. 430] foundation righteousness?
CAC God has put His own righteousness in the forefront of the gospel. It is the shining out of what God is, shining out in righteousness. God says, ‘You have been unrighteous, you have departed from Me, you are no longer innocent, and you are not righteous, but I am going to show you My righteousness, and give you a perfect absolution from all that presses on your conscience. I am going to lift every burden from you, and show My righteousness in doing it’.
Ques In chapter 1: 17 we read with regard to the gospel that “Righteousness of God is revealed therein”. How?
CAC It is a question of His own movements. God has moved in a wonderful way.
He has provided a suitable Object for the faith of man, “By the faith of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2: 16). It does make you love God when you see the kind of Person He has brought in! He has brought in a Man without a flaw; One whom He could anoint. Every poor sinner could say, ‘Thank God for that’, because it is “towards all”. Oh! if people would only read the gospels, they would be obliged to come to the conclusion that “this man has done nothing amiss”. God in His own rights has brought Him in — can anyone give a reason why they could not have faith in Jesus Christ? What a wonderful way God has taken of shutting man’s mouth; is He not trustworthy? Is there anything in that Person for which you cannot commit yourself to Him? Nothing.
“The faith of Jesus Christ” is a life-long study! It is not once for all: you begin small in “the faith of Jesus Christ”; as we go on, we are learning more and more the confidence that can be reposed in that blessed Man, and in doing so you are drawing near to God. Would that not make anybody happy? It makes one’s heart bound. The enemy would darken all the light that God has brought in. Adam is a complete ruin and is untrustworthy. God’s righteousness is made known in the bringing in of the Man of His pleasure. God is teaching us to believe in Jesus Christ. You can throw the whole weight of [p. 431] your soul and your affections on that Person, and when you do, you are happy and getting the good of the gospel.
It is not God who has told us that He is love; God has left us to work out for ourselves that He is love. It is John who says, “God is love” (1 John 4: 16). It is left to us to say it. Faith arrives at that conclusion. The way that He has brought in His righteousness is so convincing that you cannot get away from the conclusion that “God is love”. You are convinced of it — God’s love is the only thing in which God is not sufficient for Himself — love must have objects. The love of God comes to light in this: we find there is that in God that, for His own satisfaction, He must be possessed of me; we are a necessity to God. It is not only that I need God (which is the first thing I learn) for perfect absolution — a Saviour God, a Justifier, a Deliverer — but behind that, God needs man; that is why redemption has come in. God’s first thoughts will be His ultimate thoughts; what He begins with He will finish with; He is “the Alpha and the Omega”.
Firstly, there is “the faith of Jesus Christ” — the faith of a Man so delightful to God that He can anoint Him — and secondly, we are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus”. That gives us a wonderful idea of the kind of recovery that God has brought about. Redemption involves the recovery of what is lost; redemption brought about by a glorified Man, and in a glorified Man, “in Christ Jesus”. We do not understand the death of Christ or the blood of Christ except in the light of the glorified Christ.
What is redemption? The redemption that God has brought in is in a glorified Man. He was once in death, under judgment, made sin, delivered for offences, but now He is out of it all, completely clear of death and Satan’s power, and radiant in glory. He is there as a Man, the anointed Man in heaven. Redemption is in a glorified Man and if God puts the value of that on a person, that one would be justified. As believers, God has actually invested us with the worth of the glorified Man. “Freely”, the same word as that translated “without a cause” in “They hated me without a cause” (John 15: 25). It is the uncaused, undesired action of a Saviour God. Can any question be raised? The sunshine of this would settle all the fears and misgivings that some believers have.
Thirdly, it is, “Whom God has set forth a mercy-seat, through faith in his blood” (Romans 3: 25). You can think about the blood now, if you like; we see the character of redemption, God’s way of bringing man into His presence in conditions of glory, set before us in Christ Jesus. It is there — that is, the measure and character of it — and when we have understood that, we can learn the value of the blood, learn it in the light of the glory. No other light is great enough to show you the value of the blood. There are many types of the blood in the Old Testament, the blood on the door-posts and lintel which is very blessed, and the blood in the other types, all most precious and efficacious, but on the mercy-seat the Shekinah glory, God’s presence, shone on the gold and on the blood. It is a wonderful thing to have faith in the blood on the mercy-seat. It is before God’s eye as that which sets Him perfectly free to come out, (it is not shelter for the poor sinner) and to set forth the glorified Man. God comes out in all the value of the death of that glorified Person who is now in heaven. It is the light of that that shines upon the death of Jesus. The fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Jesus on earth. You pity a person who has not the light and joy of it — God has cleared us for the satisfaction of His own heart and given us to see the death of Christ in the light of the glory.
How delightful it is to God when He sees a soul seeing Him setting forth Jesus as a mercy-seat. The Shekinah glory shining on that and the blood on it. There is nothing so wonderful as that, if I have taken in the fact that Jesus has been down into death for me. It is the way that God has set Himself free so that we know Him in the blessed movements of His love, the motive nature of His love. His moral nature [p. 433] is righteousness, holiness, etc.; His motive nature is love. God has acted that we should know Him in His motive nature. It is His love that moves Him; He moves at the dictates of His love, consistently with His moral nature. The gospel is worthy of God, and when you have said that, you have said everything.
Rem In chapter 1, it is spoken of as, “God’s glad tidings”, and in 1 Thessalonians 2: 13, “The word of the report of God”.
CAC What God is! And it is all available for the vilest sinner because “there is no difference”. I address everybody on a common platform in preaching the gospel for no one knows the gospel fully, not even the preacher. Divine joy in the heart, the light of the blessedness of God, is ours by the gospel. God’s great object in the new covenant, the conditions He establishes from His own side, is to be God to us. He says, “I will be to them God”. God is known in all the movings of His heart so that thus He may get His desire, “They shall be to me a people” (2 Corinthians 6: 16). The gospel is universal; it finds everybody in the same state and brings everybody into the same blessedness. Romans 3 is one of the most comforting chapters in the Bible — God knew the worst about me before He started. Redemption is in Christ Jesus, and He is the mercy-seat; all stands on that footing, it is Christ.
Ques What is meant in 1 John 4: 17 — “As he is, we also are in this world”?
CAC If we really receive the gospel, we are brought on to the ground that what is true of Christ is true of us. Is Jesus Christ the righteous? Then believers are righteous. He is the holy One, believers are holy — the believer takes character from Him.
Chapter 5 is our side, what we have. God has raised up Jesus our Lord for our justification, that is how we know God. He Himself is our righteousness. J.N.D. said a short time before he died, ‘Christ is my righteousness and that settles everything’. There is cloudless peace then! We come into God’s favour, we have access into it.
We have “peace”, “access”, “boast in hope of the glory of God” and “boast in tribulations”, because in them we are getting the experience of God. The gospel gives you light but not experience. Light is greater than experience; you can learn more by light than by ten thousand years of experience. God has left us here in conditions of tribulation, and in every tribulation there is an opportunity for experience of God. In the tribulations you get the experience of God, and you can boast in them because you experience what God can be in such circumstances.
You know what to expect from God because His love (the same as that expressed in the death of Christ) is diffused in your heart by the Spirit. You will never experience anything of God inconsistent with the light of the gospel.
Finally, “being enemies, we have been reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (verse 10). It is when we were enemies — reconciliation touches a deeper question than guilt. A man might have sinned without being at enmity. A disobedient child does not naturally hate his parents, but with man there is a rebellious will, and reconciliation comes in in connection with that. God has dealt with it in His love in the death of His Son. The One who loved God perfectly has borne the judgment of that. Every person who has the faith of that is reconciled. It is then that we begin true self-judgment. God has retained us for His own pleasure, apart from all that at such a cost; then how can I go on with it? One learns to judge one’s own will in the light of being retained for God’s complacency, for His pleasure.
The gospel is a fine thing; I do not feel ashamed of it.