THINGS TO BE LAID HOLD OF
THINGS TO BE LAID HOLD OF
Acts 3:11; 1 Timothy 6:12; Philippians 3:11 - 14
I wish to speak of several things that, according to the passage of scripture I read, are to be laid hold of: if any have not laid hold of them, that they may do so; and those of us who have, that we may continue to hold them and explore them. The first is fellowship, the second is eternal life and the third is the calling on high of God.
Fellowship is involved in the passage I read from Acts. It has a distinctive place in that book and we read that the early converts persevered in it. The second chapter shows that there was a large number of converts; it was the firstfruits of the Spirit through apostolic preaching, Peter being the first to preach. According to Matthew he has the first place, “First, Simon”. He had well nigh forfeited it, from outward appearances at least; but the Lord had laid hold of him when he was a fisherman and said He would make him a fisher of men, which he did. Peter as a disciple of Christ failed most seriously, but before he failed the Lord said “I have besought for thee”. That is a very comforting thing. A failure is never to be excused, but if the Lord prays for us His prayer is heard, and He is said to be a great High Priest over the house of God, and we have Him: “having a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart”, (Hebrews 10:21.) Of course, He has us, but we have Him, and He is available as a Priest. He is a High Priest above and intercedes for us as Scripture says, “Who also intercedes for us”, (Romans 8:34.) The Holy Spirit also intercedes for us, and we are to intercede for one another. So that we can thank God for the wonderful [p. 2] system of intercession we have, first what is in Christ, then in the Spirit and then in the saints. We are all thus wonderfully well off. But we are to avail ourselves of what there is, and having a great High Priest let us draw near; we can ask Him to help us, and He is ready to help us. He helped Peter; He said, “I have besought for thee that thy faith fail not”, (Luke 22:32.) So that Peter was secured for the service of God. The Lord had laid hold of him for it, and He would not let Him go; He secured Him. So that he stands up after the Holy Spirit came down from heaven and preached the first gospel recorded after the advent of the Spirit, with the greatest results of any that we know-three thousand persons They were genuinely affected, and we are told that they persevered in the leading Christian characteristics; they were real believers, convicted people who wanted to be saved, and Peter told them how to be saved. It is interesting to note the answer that he gave them as compared with the answer that Paul and Silas gave to the jailer. But Peter’s converts, we are told, persevered in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship and breaking of bread and prayers. That is the point I am thinking of in chapter 2.
In this chapter it is not three thousand, it is just one convert. If as much were made of each of the three thousand in chapter 2 as of this one, we should have, I may say, a whole Bible full of facts about them. But this single convert in chapter 3 has a great place. We do not get his name, but we do get what implies his name, that he was a persevering man. Peter and John were used of God for his conversion. God used the two greatest men on earth at that time to convert a man of no consequence whatever to the great men of the world of that day. He was a liability on the community; he sat at the gate of the temple asking alms. He was a liability and not a producer, and yet, as I said, heaven employed the two greatest men on earth at that time to convert this man, to secure him for God. Peter says to him, ‘I cannot help you on your own line’. There are those who want to come into christianity on their own terms, and to come into fellowship is under the Lord’s control; the heavenly city has gates, and there are porters at the gates, and hence divine requirements must be met. Nor did this man get in on his own terms, on his own line. What was his line? Begging. Lameness marked him; begging marked him, his very look would imply the word ‘beg’.
Peter says to him, “Look on us”. They did not say what they might have said: We represent what is greatest in the universe; we represent God and Christ and the Spirit: salvation, eternal life, and the gift of the Spirit are available to all. They did not say these things to him. When the Lord Jesus began to preach He did not say these things. He said to His hearers, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has drawn nigh; repent and believe in the glad tidings”, (Mark 1:15) as much as to say, You will find out what is in it if you look into it. “Believe in the glad tidings”, the Lord says: accept them as a whole and explore them. Peter and John did not tell this man everything; he is to deliver the message. Peter says, “Look on us.... Silver and gold I have not”; that is to say, ‘I cannot deal with you on your own terms; I have no money and you are looking for money’. “Silver and gold I have not; but what I have, I give to thee”, (Acts 3:6).
A christian is not worth the name of christian if he has not something spiritual. Peter says ‘Such as I have’, not simply what God has or what Christ has, but what I have; he had something. He says, “In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene rise up and walk. And having taken hold of him by the right hand ...” He knew which hand to take; Peter uses his hand often; he was a fisherman. Now he takes hold of this man’s hand, and the man [p. 4] rose up and leaped and stood and walked and praised God. That is how this chapter presents the truth to us, and the verse I read is to show that this man was holding the persons whom God had used to bless him; he was holding them. You remember the man in the porch of Bethesda whom the Lord Jesus raised up: He said to him, “Take up thy couch and walk”. The man went away with his couch and did not even know the Lord Jesus; he did not know where the Lord went, he could say very little about him. This man was different; he held Peter and John. You might say, perhaps John held him. He would if it were necessary, but it was not necessary; he represents an ardent convert, one who was genuinely converted, who is prepared to go in for all there is in the gospel and the consequences thereof. He was standing up holding these two men, and they were under fierce persecution. As the stormy blast of persecution struck them he stood by them, but in this verse it says he held them. He wanted to be identified with them in the fullest possible way. He was no mere nominal professor in fellowship; he was really in it and a contributor to the fellowship; he laid hold of it.
That is my first point. We are not worthy of the name of christian if we are not real christians. Think of this man after he arose and leaped and walked, with his ankle bones made strong, going off to a football match! It is impossible to think of him so inconsistent. Peter and John are my companions, he would say; the heavenly representatives, the servants of God. None of these other things are good enough for me, I belong to heaven; I want fellowship, I want the meetings and the Bible readings and the ministry. I belong to Christ, I am no earth-dweller. This man would not understand these things yet he would say, in effect, I am a genuine christian, I am thoroughly with these two men; I am holding Peter with my right hand and John with my left hand, as it were. He was a real testimony; he was the [p. 5] cause of the persecution, but the religious authorities could not deny the power that raised that man.
Let us face these things as to what christianity is to us, as to whether or not we are shams. This man held the apostles. Think of the space the Spirit of God gives to one man! There were three thousand converts in the previous chapter but as we have said, the space given to them is very small indeed. As John says of the Lord, “There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they were written one by one ... not even the world itself would contain the books written”. So that there is very little said comparatively, of the three thousand, but this is said of them, that they “persevered in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, in breaking of bread and prayers”. What a contrast that is to those who give up the breaking of bread, to those who tell their brethren, I am withdrawing! Withdrawing from what? Withdrawing from God and heaven. They might as well say, I am turning my back on God, because that is what they are doing. But this man’s face is towards heaven. In a sense there was not a more interesting man in the whole city of Jerusalem than this man at that time. All the people saw him; what a testimony he was! He had been well known before; but the idea of the truth and the fellowship is that whereas he had been the subject of sin, now he is the subject of the work of God. He was true to the position locally and to the responsibility attaching to it; he held Peter and held John, meaning that he was thoroughly in fellowship; as Ruth said to Naomi, “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried”.
These two men represented Jesus Christ, the despised, the rejected One, and this man says, They are my companions. The point now is whether we are availing ourselves of this fellowship, holding to it. What kind of a fellowship is it? The first letter to the Corinthians gives us its characteristics, as also John’s first epistle. It is the fellowship of God’s Son. Jesus Christ our Lord. Are you going to leave that fellowship? There is no greater folly than that. It is the fellowship of God’s Son and God has called you into it. Think of the privilege and protection of it, the joy and the life of it; the fellowship of God’s Son and the fellowship of the brethren! Can I afford to be without the brethren? Can I afford to make little of them if I am professedly one of them? If I do, the Lord is stronger than I; and He is jealous if I am making little of His fellowship, that into which I am called.
The next thing is eternal life as spoken of in 1 Timothy 6. Now the subject of eternal life is one of the most important in the Scriptures. It is spoken of very early- the tree of life is an allusion to it. The tree of life was not guarded at the outset, nor was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; but after Adam and Eve transgressed they were driven out of the garden and the Cherubim and a flaming sword were set towards the east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life, lest they should return and eat of the tree of life and live forever in their sins. It would be a disaster. God says, It must not be. Let no-one think he can have eternal life on those lines. Adam and Eve were driven out from the garden and from the tree of life; they could never get back as they were. Man can only be recovered by death, and the Lord Jesus has come into this works to resolve the great question of good and evil; He dies and brought life and incorruptibility to light through the gospel.
John makes much of that in saying that God so loved the world. It seems as though when John got to that theme in the chapter, he said I will stop here; I must stop here and dwell on this wonderful theme of love. Verse 14 of chapter 3 is a wonderful text: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son [p. 7] of man be lifted up, that every one who believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”. That is the first thing-”as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness”. In the wilderness people were dying all around; their carcasses were strewn there because of man’s will; they had refused the pleasant land. The gospel of heaven was preached to them, the gospel of the land, and their hearts became hardened. They hardened them. Let no one here be on that line of hardening his heart; “Harden not your hearts”, it says in Hebrews 4: It is within your range to harden your heart; the devil helps by worldliness, by earthly mindedness, so that the heart becomes stony; the meetings of the brethren thus become affected if attended in a perfunctory way. You are responsible for it if your heart becomes hardened. That was how it stood with the children of Israel, and so God says to them, ‘Not one of those persons who have seen My signs in Egypt shall enter into My land except two men, Caleb and Joshua’. Two men out of six hundred thousand! Those who died in the wilderness did not get the dignified name of ‘bodies’; it says “their carcasses” were strewn there. That is the impression of heaven, the reproach of the name of carcasses for those who fell in their lawlessness, in disregard of the gospel of God in the Wilderness.
But now God says, I will make a way of life; they are not all to die in the wilderness, the children are going in. One generation passes away and another comes; “These shall go away”, says the Lord, “into eternal punishment, and the righteous into eternal life”, (Matthew 25:46.) Which way will you go? As to the generation that follows, God says in mercy, the children shall go in; there is a promise to the children. And God says, I will lift up this brazen serpent; the word ‘serpent’ meaning that God is dealing with the evil at its source. So with the city whose situation was good but its water bad, Elisha deals with the source. He says, “Bring me a new cruse, and put salt in it”, (2 Kings 2:20 - 22) and he casts it in at the source of the waters, and they were healed. God says, I must judge sin at its source; so He told Moses to make a serpent of brass and put it on a pole. Everyone could see that serpent of brass from the uttermost limits of the camp; it was on a pole, “lifted up”, as Jesus was. Three times the Lord says in John that He would be lifted up — what for? He was lifted up as Jesus to bear sins. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of man be lifted up, that every one who believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal” (John 3:14 - 16).
This matter of eternal life as set out in Timothy is not simply an objective matter that you believe and have it objectively; but it is within your range. As Paul wrote to Timothy, “Lay hold of eternal life”, (1 Timothy 6:12) John says eternal life is in Christ Jesus, it is in the Son; that is to say, it is in a sure position, but it is not so put here. In this setting you may, as it were, put your hand out and take it. Of course this is a spiritual transaction. Why should I be spiritually dead when eternal life is within reach? In verse 19 of the same chapter the apostle says, “Lay hold of what is really life”. These are most important matters, dear brethren that I am bringing before you, as to fellowship, and as to eternal life, and the purposes of God. Let us be real, let us be transparent. We read in Revelation of those that had gained the victory over the beast standing on a sea of glass, having harps of God. Why did they have harps and sing? Because they had overcome; they had overcome the beast and his image and the number of his name. They were men of energy, and they have harps and sing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb, Revelation 15:2, 3. They are standing on the sea of glass triumphantly, they are victorious. God is pressing upon His people the [p. 9] reality of the present moment: we are coming to the very limit of the dispensation, we are going to heaven in a moment, and He wants to take us up as those that please Him. Enoch had the testimony that he pleased God, and we all need to find out whether we are walking according to God and for his pleasure as we are about to be translated.
Well now, there is the third point in mind, “the calling on high of God”. In (Philippians 3:11 - 14) the apostle says: “if any way I arrive at the resurrection from among the dead. Not that I have already obtained the prize, or am already perfected; but I pursue, if also I may get possession of it, seeing that also I have been taken possession of by Christ Jesus. Brethren I do not count to have got possession myself; but one thing — forgetting the things behind, and stretching out to the things before, I pursue, looking towards the goal, for the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus”. This requires the greatest effort of all — that is the idea, it is energy exercised with a definite purpose. It is something before me that I see and earnestly want to reach. That is the language of this passage. The point to be attained is the resurrection from among the dead. You say I can hardly take in how a man can reach or attain to the resurrection from among the dead; one must die before he can reach that; but Paul is speaking of what is attainable while he was still alive in his body. If we do not understand it, let us ask the Lord who gives understanding in all things. What did Paul have in his mind when he tells us that he died daily? “Daily I die”, he says, “by your boasting which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord”, (1 Corinthians 15:31.) And again he says that in their tribulation in Asia, “We were excessively pressed beyond our power, so as to despair even of living. But we ourselves had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not have our trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who has delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver; in [p. 10] whom we confide that he will also deliver”, (2 Corinthians 1: 8 - 10.) Think of the man who is speaking to us. He tells us, “I know a man in Christ”. I wonder if we all know a man in Christ? Do I know a man in Christ? I just put that question simply. It is not in the second or third person, it must be myself. There is no other way of knowing a man in Christ but by knowing him to be yourself; it is conscious knowledge, see note on 2 Corinthians 12:2. It is a subjective condition, and you can only be understood subjectively. He said, “I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I know not, or out of the body I know not, God knows;) such a one caught up to the third heaven ... caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable things said which it is not allowed to man to utter”. (2 Corinthians 12:2 - 4.) It was indeed an extraordinary experience, but Paul for God’s wise purpose was privileged to be the man to have it. And he says, I know that man.
And then he speaks in the passage before us here of laying hold of the resurrection, attaining to it, “if any way I arrive at the resurrection from among the dead”. He means laying hold of it. The early christians understood what ecstasy meant. They set before us conditions that are possible, that is on the principle of laying hold of them, and it is what you get there; “if any way I arrive at the resurrection from among the dead;” that I might sense, even if but for a moment, what passing out of death into life is. I cannot define it to you, nor can anybody define it to you; in the same sense, you cannot define love, you have to realise it yourself and show it. It implies definiteness of purpose — of laying oneself out for something to be supremely desired. So the apostle goes on, “Not that I have already obtained the prize ... but I pursue, if also I may get possession of it, seeing that also I have been taken possession of by Christ Jesus”. The apostle’s thought was to lay hold “of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus” not as a matter of light simply, but the apprehension and realisation of it in a spiritual way. The athletic figure expressed in stretching out, pursuing, looking towards the goal speaks strikingly of the reality of the apostle’s experience. The goal when reached involved the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus. He saw Christ as He is now. He saw the Lord Jesus as He is in heaven. He says If I have known Christ after the flesh, I do not know him thus anymore; this is Christ up there, and we are to see Him up there now, apprehend Him as there. John says, “What we shall be has not yet been manifested; we know that if it is manifested we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”. John comes near to Paul in this statement.
The great apostle, however, is admitting in Philippians that he had not come practically to the heavenly position of Christ to his own satisfaction; but he had had a glimpse of it; he says, “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” He had appeared to him, and Paul says, in effect, I would like to apprehend Him more clearly. He was not satisfied even with what he knew; there was more, so he goes on, “Brethren, I do not count to have got possession myself; but one thing — forgetting the things behind, and stretching out to the things before, I pursue, looking towards the goal, for the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus” This is how he leaves us. With him this exercise would be continuous; he was like an athlete, indeed he uses that very symbol. Do I exercise myself like a man getting up in the morning and taking physical exercise? Paul sees the goal clearly, but he says, I am not at it, as still here it is a question of spiritual attainment as well as of light. No one who has not the Holy Spirit can understand this; the calling of God is not theirs, but it is ours in title, and the apostle Paul is telling us how we may attain to it. We want to get into that race. He says, there is a goal I am aiming at, but I have not reached it yet. Then he speaks of “the prize”; the goal is the athletic mark, the goal is not the prize, the prize is mine as I reach the goal. The goal is the point fixed in the race; the prize is “the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus”. What a wonderful thought! The apostle tells us later in this chapter that the Lord Jesus is coming to transform out bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto His body of glory. That literally involves the prize. To reach that now is full christianity, the great objective for the believer. It calls for putting out the hand in the way of energy and aiming at things. If you do not reach them — keep on. It is continual exercise that brings about the result — “the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus”.