CHRIST APPREHENDED AND CHRIST FORMED
N. T. Meek
That this is a rather unfamiliar scripture you will readily perceive, and I want only to make an application of it. I sometimes wonder about some scriptures as to why they are in the Bible, but “Every word of God is pure”, Proverbs 30: 5. I do not know whether you read your Bible—most people here do, some read it more than others—but it is a good book to read.
Read a little every day, and because it is reading night, do not think that will do for that day. Develop the habit of reading something yourself, by yourself too perhaps. When I was first starting out to work (we had to start at half-past seven) my father used to get up and make my breakfast and insist on reading with me. I think he realized that I did not read up in my bedroom. I tumbled out of bed and all I wanted was my breakfast and then a run to the station; but he insisted on reading—and I sometimes used to bless him for it too! But “Every word of God is pure”, and God has
not left any one of us here without direction. There are all kinds of questions which come up during our lives, the answers to which are in this book. These include involved questions that persons have debates about and which the social service people have conferences about, quite simple answers to which are given in this book. I would encourage you to read your Bible.
Now this is a section that, as you will be aware, we are inclined to skip over or take two chapters together. I am not sure that we are always wise in that. Sometimes the unexplored parts of Scripture are very yielding. This chapter is speaking about a certain matter and I do not speak about the matter directly, the literal thing that is being referred to. It is not my intention to comment on that at all; I do not know that I could. But I want to make an application of the scripture and suggest that it bears the application that as a believer you may begin to find some stirring of life in you. It speaks about a woman conceiving—there is some stirring of life. Something comes into your mind, maybe in a meeting like this, which was not there before; something begins to stir in your mind and in your soul. It may just be that some ray of light from God comes into my soul, that I begin to see something in the truth that I have not seen before. It is not exactly that I hear mere information but that some light from God, some divine impression that has come from God Himself, begins to affect me.
That is intended to be a constant experience, dear friends, that light from God, some ray of the truth, comes home to me with force and with power, and something living begins to stir as a result. You could not explain it; you had perhaps heard that expression many times; it had gone over your head; but quite inexplicably something that you may have heard perhaps a dozen times suddenly takes on vitality and meaning and reality, and you realize in your soul that something has happened. It may be just that you see something in an objective way; I think that may be in the suggestion of the bearing of the male; it is not exactly that you can say that you are up to it, but you see something. The objective truth is very fine; it is presented to us as something to lay hold of; it is arresting; it is a sight; it is the idea of a sight, something that comes before your view and you are affected by it, you are stirred in relation to it.
Now the associated exercise is quite something to go through because you find in yourself that there is that which would quench it. If light from God is presented to us, Satan will always and immediately bring in a kind of counter-attraction. He did that with Abraham. The glory of God appeared to him, and he went so far on the strength of it, and then he got stuck.
Now we all know what that is, that you are moved, maybe by a powerful presentation, a preaching, you are moved in your soul, and you make a certain journey and then you get bogged down. So the exercise may be quite prolonged and includes a period of seven days and then a period of thirty-three days—a time that no doubt involved for this person a time of reflection as to what it all meant and what was involved in it and how personally one finds what is mixed, what is spoken of here as uncleanness. And yet I have light, I have precious light from God, but I find this mixed condition with me. You find, if you get any impression of Christ, Satan will certainly bring in a counter-attraction, he will certainly do that, and we find in ourselves what will respond to it.
But then there is even more than that because the scripture goes on to speak about the possibility of the bearing of a female. Now often in Scripture the female represents what is subjective. You would not get that idea from the world, would you? but that is God’s thought that what is feminine is subjective, so that “the assembly is subjected to the Christ” (Ephesians 5: 24); the feminine conveys the idea of what is subjective, what is subject and subjective.
Now we use these words but I do not know if we all understand too well what they mean. I will just tell you what I understand; I think that when Christ is presented to you objectively it is like a ray of glory which you see and which affects you, but what we speak of as the subjective side of the truth means that I embrace the process of making that my own, of actually grasping it and having it for myself. It is not that I am content to leave it there in the distance, even though I can see it clearly; if I am going to get over to the side of formation I have got to make it my own. That becomes costly; you will notice here that for that side there are fourteen days, there is double the time, and then there are sixty-six days—not thirty-three days—there is double time again, and I think every one of us here would acknowledge that the actual getting into the good of an impression is quite a prolonged exercise, it is quite extended. And do you know why that is? It is because if Christ is to be formed in me, something of me has to be displaced to make room for it. It is a cardinal principle in physics that no two portions of substance can occupy the same space at the same time, and if Christ is going to be formed in me, something of me will have to go to make room for Him, and that is quite prolonged, is it not? It is; whether you think so or not, it is; it is quite prolonged, and it is quite difficult and testing. But it is worth it.
You can see it with Rachel that the bearing of Benjamin, which really means Christ formed in the saints, was costly to her, but it was worth it because Benjamin had the key to a critical situation at a certain time later on, and things cannot be worked out fully, dear brethren, just on the objective line. The full result must involve the actual going through the exercise that Christ should be really formed. Now you love Jesus, do you not? Do you remember what He did for you? He came down of His own volition; no one made Him come down. He came down here to this world of sin and woe, and He was abused by men, but He went to the cross, and most of us can say that there He bore our sins in His body. You do not wonder that we love Him, do you? It is quite reasonable, it is the most rational thing to do to love Jesus. It is quite irrational not to love Him. But you love Him, and I tell you that in principle you can embrace Him. This woman here would actually one day embrace the son or the daughter. So that whilst the exercise may be prolonged, it is worth it. You may be going through exercise and you may be troubled—you will be too; that would be the normal thing; but the end is worth it. I would encourage you to hold on and to remember that whilst there are the days of uncleanness, there are also the days of cleansing.
Now there is a distinction there, which has been pointed out by another. There are seven days of uncleanness, but there are thirty-three days of cleansing, and there are fourteen days of uncleanness but sixty-six days of cleansing. Now it is a great thing to get past that side of uncleanness into the area of cleansing. The cleansing period is not that the exercise is complete, but it is moving that way. Dear brethren, you know, the Scriptures are wonderful, are they not?—How rich they are! I am only scratching the surface here. There would be at least seven applications to this scripture, I think, because it speaks in the Psalms that the words of Jehovah are “purified seven times”, Psalm 12: 6. I am only giving one application of it, but it is just the one that seems to be laid on me, and I would like to encourage us here, and especially you dear young ones, to go on with your exercises and reach these days of cleansing because you will find it will be worth it, and there is not one of us here who has not had sorrow and known what displacement is, and known what it is to cry at night and to be thoroughly downcast with ourselves. But you will find the Lord is always tender, and even if others do not understand you, you will find the Lord always will.
May every one of our hearts be drawn to Him so that not only do we see Him objectively in His beauty and His glory, but He is actually formed in us. How appropriable we will be! How increasingly we will feed on one another as He is formed in us, actually formed. You can go to a person and appropriate him or her as some feature of Christ is formed there. Let us press on until this is so more and more, dear brethren, for the Lord’s name’s sake.
Address in Edinburgh
31 May 1980