ENTRANCE INTO THE PURPOSE OF GOD
[p. 125] ENTRANCE INTO THE PURPOSE OF GOD
The thought in my mind was to seek to show how we are led on to the side of divine purpose, and I ventured to read this scripture because it sets forth the judgment formed by one who knew what it was to be there. I like to refer to this epistle because it shows us the spirit of Christianity; not exactly as it was seen in Christ, but as it was seen in a man of like passions as ourselves; that is the apostle Paul, and in that way it is brought nearer to us. I do not deny that it was brought near to man in Christ; this is seen in Elihu, who said to Job: “I am as thou ... my terror shall not make thee afraid”. (Job 33:6,7) Christ drew near to men as Man, so that the things of God, and God Himself, might be understood; that is what the gospels present to us; they present to us what Christ was as a Man come near to men. He was in that estate in lowly grace in order that God might be known. The epistles show us that that was effective, that what Christ was here among men was reflected in others, and particularly in Paul. This is seen in a very marked way in the second epistle to the Corinthians. It shows us the spirit in which we have to say to God and to one another, and in which we move toward the land of Canaan.
Now I desire to enlarge on these points as I am enabled of the Lord, because it is of great moment that we should enter into the divine side of things, into the purpose of God; and, as I said, it begins with a right judgment being formed. One would question one’s own soul and others as to what kind of judgment we have about things. I refer to the judgment we have formed as the result of the gospel [p. 126] that has come to us. If you have not come to form a judgment as to things here, it is not likely that you will ever give them up. You will accept them as a matter of course and go on in them, such as the political system under which you have been born, the social conditions, the commercial relations, and the ordinary family relations, with the duties attendant upon them. All these things are accepted as a matter of course. We have very little thought about them, except that we go on in them. The thought of God is to set our hearts and minds in movement in regard to all this. The gospel comes to us, as light on the part of God, and it is intended to set our hearts and minds in movement, and if they are thus affected the result is that we begin to form a judgment about things around us. People who have no definite judgment as to conditions in the world are unreliable as to the testimony. The apostle says, “we thus judge”. He had formed a judgment about one thing, and that was that if One died for all, then all were dead. You may say that man goes on the same after the cross as before; that he is not any more dead now than before the cross. The fact is, he was dead before it as much as after it. You may say, I do not understand that; people seem to be alive. How many years will they live? It is a matter of a few years, and all will have left this scene that we know now, and if it is a matter of forty or fifty years until death actually occurs, that does not set the fact aside that all are dead. God speaks of things that be not as though they were. If you are to die next year, you are as good as dead. Death is on all as a divine penalty. The apostle’s judgment is right; he did not judge by outward appearances merely, he judged from the moral side: “If one died for all, then were all dead”. It is useless to establish anything on the fact that man lives for a few years, for that is merely a matter of God’s forbearance. God said, “The end of all flesh, has come before me”, (Genesis 6:13) that meant, that the man of the old world was gone in God’s account. “His days shall be one hundred and twenty years”. (Genesis 6:3) That was a matter simply of God’s longsuffering. God fixed the period, but morally the end of that man had come. In God’s account all was over, the end of all flesh, had come. It may be regarded as the first man, or the old man, but that man has gone. in God’s account. God says, “the end”, and He means the end, a few years are nothing. The secret of it lay in this, that another Head had come in.
I am referring now to Genesis 6. Noah’s birth is recorded in Genesis 5; in him you have the second Man typified; that is to say, you have the man brought in upon the scene who is agreeable to God, and that man remains; the end of that man has not come, his name signifies rest. God rested in him, and the other man is terminated. If the first man is allowed to live one hundred and twenty years, it is only in the presence of him who typified the second; it is only in the presence of another; he is allowed to continue in grace because the second Man, in type, is there in the energy of the Spirit. See how Peter takes account of it: speaking of Christ he says, “by which (Spirit) also he went and preached unto the Spirits in prison”. (1 Peter 3:19) It was grace; the man after the flesh was allowed to continue for one hundred and twenty years through God’s grace, but in a sense it was under the headship of another, because really in principle the new Head was there from the end of chapter 5. God can afford in grace to allow the condemned man to remain for one hundred and twenty years in order to preach to him. Wonderful grace! It is called longsuffering in the New Testament. It is not a question of tolerating a man, but of bearing in grace and longsuffering, in order, if it were possible that he might be saved. So God [p. 128] preached to him through Noah. God retains man in this world to preach to him; He retains him that He might be witnessed to by the Spirit; so the Spirit of Christ was in Noah. The Spirit, in which Christ rose from the dead is the Spirit in which He preached through Noah. Compare 1 Peter 3:18 - 20. It only remained for the given period to elapse and the whole race disappeared in judgment; even Noah disappeared in the ark. The ark referred to Christ in that sense; it was constituted to survive death, not to succumb to it, but to go through it and survive.
Now if Christ is out of death. He is out of it as a new order of Man. He was always that personally, but He took upon Him what we were, and terminated it. So now, if we who have faith, are allowed to continue on here, it is not as the ungodly continue; we are here as a matter of righteousness. We are the only ones who have any title to remain on earth. But this is only on the ground of faith. As we have no title in ourselves, Christ has established the title for us to live. That is the situation for Christians. We are taken up in a new Head, in One who vindicated His name. Noah vindicated His name; his parents gave him his name and he vindicated it. When he appears in the new earth, he takes of the clean beasts and he offers them to the Lord, a sacrifice of a sweet smelling savour, and the Lord smelled it; God was glorified in it. All this refers to Christ. We are accepted in all the fragrance of His death. We have title to live on the ground of the burnt-offering.
What we find in chapter 9 is, that Jehovah makes a covenant, not now only with Noah, but with Noah’s sons. The sons are now formally taken account of by God; they were saved on the strength of Noah’s faith, but now they are viewed as his sons and a covenant is made with Noah and with them. As believers in Christ we are recognised by God in connection with Christ. We have title to [p. 129] live to God. The language of faith is: “After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight”, (Hosea 6:2). That is the position; we are raised up really in the resurrection of Christ; that is Colossians; we are said to be raised by faith. But faith in what? We are raised by “faith of the operation of God who hath raised him (Christ) from the dead”. (Colossians 2:12) That is the position in which we are regarded there. The point is that Christ might have His place in the hearts of the saints; that is the point in Colossians. Here in 2 Corinthians it is that they should not henceforth live unto themselves. That is the position, as I understand it, which a righteous judgment leads to, if we accept the fact that all are dead. I repeat it, that it is but a matter of time; all are dead, not one left; not one in sight; just as when the deluge came, everything disappeared; not a vestige of humanity was left in sight. The Lord, having died and risen, has established a title for us to live before God, but we live, not to ourselves, but unto Him who died for us and rose again. The passage opens up a large and wide sphere to us.
I refer now for a moment to the epistle to the Romans. I would suggest that the idea of being to another, in chapter 7, to Him who died for us and rose again, opens up room for the marriage relation. It is there that the thought of the marriage bond comes in; and I connect that in my mind with the covenant in Exodus 19:1 - 6. You will remember how Israel was delivered from Egypt. Jehovah, referring to it afterwards through Jeremiah, says: “I remember for thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land not sown. Israel was holiness unto Jehovah, the firstfruits of his increase”, (Jeremiah 2:2, 3). There was love in Israel for Jehovah, and the proof of it was that they followed after Him. The covenant,
[p. 130] in principle, had in view a marriage bond between the people and Himself. God took the part of a husband to Israel. When a believer comes to recognise the force of his baptism, when it becomes a matter of light to you, then you recognise that you are baptised to Christ. Being baptised to Christ signifies that He has a claim over you, and the result is that your body is brought into subjection.
Now I would warn young people that unless your will is broken you are useless in the testimony. The will must go, and when the will has gone the body is the Lord’s practically, and it becomes a wonderful vehicle in His hands. It becomes, as we learn from Romans 6, an instrument of righteousness, or rather the members become instruments of righteousness to God. There is qualification now for the testimony. I have often thought of the moral greatness seen in many old believers: they are in entire subjection to the Lord, and so qualified for the testimony. In this way they are seen as in accord with the ark of the covenant. The Lord takes them to Himself in love, but the grace that broke their wills and moulded them for His will can do the same with others. In this way the testimony is continued.
The Lord says to Peter, “When thou wast young thou girdedst thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest”. That was will; but “when thou shalt be old thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not”. (John 21:18) Now Peter’s will is gone. He is resigned to the will of Another. Thus would he be in accord with the ark of the testimony. Peter suffered martyrdom for the testimony. How important it is that we should be in subjection to Christ early. It is a simple question of recognising that, as brought under grace, you should be subject to Christ, and you will be in consistency with His death.
In Romans 7 we get light as to the Lord’s body.
[p. 131] It is in full keeping with what I have been saying. The Lord, you will remember, in the institution of the Supper, said, “This is my body, which is for you”. (1 Corinthians 11:24) He meant to imply that His body was devoted to the assembly. He came down from heaven, saying, “I come ... to do thy will, O God”. (Hebrews 10:7) That is the ark of the covenant. His body was devoted to the will of God, but He also took account of the assembly, and devoted His body to it. “This is my body, which is for you”, (1 Corinthians 11:24) He says. Well, in Romans 7 it is referred to, not exactly in that connection, but to show that the Lord has relieved us of all legal pressure by dying for us. We have become dead to the law by the body of Christ. You can see what a service the Lord rendered by relieving us of that bond. It is that we might “be to another, who has been raised up from among the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God”. (Romans 7:4) There you have light that will develop in your soul into the assembly’s position. You have the principle on which the assembly’s relations with Christ are formed. Christ has a moral claim over you. The apostle sets it out as his judgment, “that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again”, (2 Corinthians 5:14,15). Christ is in resurrection. You walk in “newness of life” in Romans 6, and serve in “newness of spirit”, in chapter 7, which is in the form of a psalm; the idea to be reached is presented first, and then the road by which it is reached. In the end of the chapter you come to the Deliverer, and the Deliverer really becomes the Husband.
Now, we read in the Song of Solomon that the bride is seen coming out of the wilderness leaning on the Beloved, chapter 8: 5. I speak of that for a moment in connection with Romans 8. It is really on the arm of Christ; that is, in the power of the Spirit,
[p. 132] that the saints go up out of the wilderness. You will remember that Israel set out for Canaan after the springing well. There is a moment in the believer’s history when he comes to recognise the Holy Spirit; henceforth the Spirit is his power, not the flesh. This is what Romans 8 sets before us.
Proceeding a little further into the type, the biggest man in Scripture appears directly after that; that is Og. I refer to him as the biggest man in Scripture because of the dimensions given of his bed in Deuteronomy 3:11. It is remarkable that the dimensions of a man’s bed should be given. If the Spirit records such a thing, you may depend upon it, that it has some special reference to the kind of man he was. I leave that to your reflection. Bed is a place where there is no exercise, that is the idea. This is overcome in the power of the Spirit. You will remember how Rahab, in speaking to the spies, referred to what Israel did to Sihon and Og; Joshua 2:10. The Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea, but the people slew the two kings of the Amorites. Og’s was a very large bed, a bed of iron; but all that it represents disappears where there is exercise, and only as exercised are you prepared to go into. Canaan. Towards the end of Romans 8 the purpose of God comes into view. We are to be “conformed to the image of God’s Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren”. (Romans 8:29) What a goal to have before us! And it is to be reached now in the power of the Spirit.
Returning to 2 Corinthians 5, the apostle says, “we know no man after the flesh”. It is a question of what Christ is in resurrection. See what a change in us when we begin to know each other in Christ instead of as in the flesh. It makes all the difference when you take account of a brother as in Christ. This was how Paul knew the saints. If any one is in Christ, there is new creation. New creation is [p. 133] connected with Canaan; in that sphere all things are of God. What a sphere! We are acquainted more with what is of man. In the epistles to the Corinthians we are impressed that God and what is of Him must prevail. In the assembly He must rule; and not man, and so in new creation all things are of God. So if any one be in Christ, there is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold all things have become new: and all things are of the God, “who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ”. I cannot proceed further; I trust you have followed. It is a great thing to have the divine end in view. If you form a right judgment, keep to it, and the Lord will support you in it; and you will get increased light. “The path of the righteous is as the shining light, going on and brightening until the day be fully come”. (Proverbs 4:18)
Pages 134 - 290 - “Headship and other Subjects”.
Indianapolis, 1913 (Volume 18)