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CONTENDING EARNESTLY FOR THE FAITH ONCE DELIVERED TO THE SAINTS

JM What has been on one’s spirit for quite some time is this verse in Jude, we are “to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints”, and I thought it would be profitable to occupy these three days with the consideration of that. As the brethren well know, Jude was a most affectionate man and it was not in his mind that he should write to the saints on this score, but as he says here, “I have been obliged to write to you”. Divine obligation was there that he should write to them to “contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints”. I need hardly say that the faith here is not exactly faith as we use the term generally, but it involves the whole system of the truth. I notice from the ministers of the recovery that there is quite a stress, not only on the doctrine, but the truth being seen in practical walk among the saints. It involves in its literality the verse in the Acts, “they persevered in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, in breaking of bread and prayers”, (Acts 2: 42), but I think I am justified in saying that it has been redelivered particularly in the revival through Mr. Darby and what has followed on from that. So that is what I would be exercised to keep before us, beloved, that we should value what we have been called into; but not only that we should value it, but that we should carry the responsibility for the maintenance of it. I think I am justified in saying that there is abundant evidence at the present time that there is a need for recalling the saints to “contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints”. We had some warning of that at the meetings here last year on ‘arm yourselves’, and I think it is the time for that. Times are critical, but nevertheless the Lord is with us and He will maintain what is of Himself, and certainly He will maintain those that are committed to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. I thought before we got down to the detail of that we might look at the two temptations that the Lord passed through, the enemy’s intention being to deflect Him. To say the least, He is a model for us and would help us in having these pressures of Satanic wiles upon us. I wondered whether that might be of some help to the brethren.

WMcK Do you think this expression “preserved in Jesus Christ” would direct our thoughts to where you read in Luke 4, Jesus Christ, that kind of man, and our preservation lies in that?

JM I think that is the point, Jesus Christ, and that means, and I trust that may develop with us as the days go on, that that Man is the Man that is for God, and it shuts out every other man.

WMcK And would you say this is to find expression in persons so that one thing we should be contending for is “that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh”, 2 Corinthians 4: 11?

JM That is very much in one’s mind. It is not the doctrine. One has to be humbled oneself, we have relied far too much on doctrine, and I am very slow to say anything against doctrine because doctrine is needed, and it is quite right that the young people particularly should give their attention to the doctrine, the reading of the ministry that has been given, but Christianity is far more than that. It is a way of life which is for the pleasure of God, but the more you look at it the more you can see that it is also a way of life for the blessing of men. There is nothing that can compare with it.

WMcK So running along with what you referred to, the teaching of the apostles, is what Paul says, God has put in us the word of that reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5: 19). That thing was in full expression in those men, and the Spirit of God would have it in full expression in us in our measure.

JM Yes, that is right. As I understand it, reconciliation in the early chapters of the Acts is in every direction. It is not only reconciliation to God, but we are reconciled to one another. We might see that in another reading but the dispensation opened with a company of persons who were in absolute reconciliation. When you read the Lord’s prayer in John 17, you might think to yourself, where was the answer to that? The answer to that was at Pentecost. It was there in a substantial and real way, and that would be part of “the faith once delivered to the saints”, that the Spirit would press on us that in these closing days we may be concerned that there should be a return, a revival, to that way of life, do you think?

WMcK Yes.

DMW Does prayer underlie revival to that kind of life? I was noticing in the chapter in Luke, previous to where you read, it says, “Jesus having been baptised and praying” (Luke 3: 21), it would seem to underlie His consequent movements.

JM He is brought out in that chapter in Luke in His moral beauty. There is what had preceded it, the anointing, but in addition to that there were thirty years of private life under the eye of God. That life was beautiful—a praying Man. Luke gives you the praying Man. He speaks more about prayer than any of the other gospel writers. Have you more to say about it?

DMW I was just struck by the Lord Jesus in Luke 22 saying to His disciples, “Pray that ye enter not into temptation” (Luke 22: 40).

JM Yes. I read these two sections because they are temptations. Of course we would have to make clear that there was nothing in Christ that answered to Satan’s temptation, but it had to be that He went through that in view of being here for God and undoing the works of the devil. With us there is that in ourselves that answers to the temptations, but there was nothing in Him. But what it brought out was the absolute perfection of the humanity of Jesus. A brother told me that Mr. Darby says that the Lord had two tools; one was absolute dependence and the other one was absolute obedience.

TFN Would you say that contending for the faith once delivered to the saints would involve the whole truth that has been recovered to us, the faith that was once delivered to the saints?

JM I think it involves the whole truth. It is not part of

the truth, it involves the whole truth, but I would like to press on the brethren that it involves the actual display of the truth in the walk of persons here. The hundred and twenty names in the beginning of the Acts had not done very much, but they were fully reconciled.

JRB John in his third epistle is speaking of this same thing when he says, “For I rejoiced exceedingly when the brethren came and bore testimony to thy holding fast the truth, even as thou walkest in truth. I have no greater joy than these things that I hear of my children walking in the truth” (3 John 3, 4). Is that how we contend earnestly for the faith?

JM I think it is, and I trust that may go through these meetings. That is very beautiful, and there are other passages we will come to where we are to hold fast certain things, but it is not just in the way that we may view it as an obligation. It certainly is an obligation, but there is a joy and a blessedness for ourselves as well as what is for God in the doing of it.

JRB I was thinking there was a demonstration in the lives of these persons, the setting out of what the truth involved.

JM Exactly, and God had great pleasure in that. We sometimes look around, and I have to say I am very prone to it myself, and see the failure. But then we think of what God has among the saints, wrought by the Spirit throughout this dispensation, for His pleasure and glory.

LB Is that the basis of fellowship, as John puts it, “if we walk in the light as he is in the light”?—“he” would be Christ, as you are bringing before us the model—“we have fellowship with one another”, 1 John 1: 7.

JM It involves that. Fellowship would be one with the other. It has often been said, but well worth repeating, that there is only one fellowship. I say that because I hear it said that there are others. There is no such thing. There is only one fellowship, and what I hope we will get hold of for our own souls is the blessedness of what is really in the divine mind for us.

GDR Do we have an example in our Lord as He could

say, I am altogether that which I say unto you (John 8: 25)? Is there not a need in what you are suggesting to look at the matter of consistency, moral consistency?

JM Yes, I feel challenged as to moral consistency, yet the Spirit is with us, and we turn to the Spirit for help and He immediately opens up something to us that really helps us.

The truth is not a glorious impossibility, the truth is glorious, the truth is a glorious reality.

APD I wonder, not to be occupied with what is negative, why it says, we are not ignorant of his thoughts (2 Corinthians 2: 11). Would you say what you feel the attack of the enemy is at the present time?

JM I have no difficulty in saying that the attack of the enemy is against the truth at its highest level as we have been recovered to it.

APD Christ and the assembly.

JM Exactly, that is what the enemy is at constantly. Mr. Stoney says, the enemy does not set out to unchristianise anyone. I can see what Mr. Stoney’s point was, if the enemy sought to unchristianise believers, they would quickly determine what he is at, but he goes on to say that what the enemy is at is to rob the saints of the height of the truth, and that is not so easy to discern. I do not want to judge people, but there are plenty of persons, sad to say, either willingly or unwillingly, who are prepared to give up the height of the truth. What do you think yourself?

APD One way would be the modification of the principles of fellowship, do you think?

JM You will always find that the enemy does not seek to cut out Christianity altogether, but if he could modify it and bring the level down and bring the standards down, that is really what he is at. The sad thing is that he has gained some ground and we have to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.

JRB So the exhortation to the saints at Philadelphia was, “that no one take thy crown”, Revelation 3: 11. It is the highest level of the truth where the enemy attacks.

JM You are referring to the word to Philadelphia, “hold fast what thou hast, that no one take thy crown”,

Revelation 3: 11. I used to think that the crown was nazariteship, and I would not say that it is not. There is a strong grammatical connection there, the word used is ‘nazar’, but a consensus of opinion among those that we respect suggests it is really the height of Ephesian truth. That is what the enemy is against.

NJH Would the Holy Spirit bringing demonstration have part in what you are referring to as contending earnestly for the faith?

JM Say some more.

NJH As the footnote clearly says there it is not directly the Spirit but it is what His presence affords to the believer (John 16: 8, note ‘d’). I wondered if that comes out here in this combat.

JM That links on with what we are saying, it is the whole walk of the saints. The truth once delivered to the saints is the whole system of what has been in the mind of God from the very beginning, and worked out here in a powerful way, undoubtedly involving very largely the Holy Spirit. I would not say entirely the Holy Spirit because the work of God comes into it, and the work of Christ, but I think very largely it is the work of the Holy Spirit.

The more you think about it you say to yourself, Is not that wonderful that God has a people here on earth at the present time in the midst of the terrible evil that is in the world? And there certainly is very much evil, but we can get obsessed with that, but in the midst of the terrible declension in the area where the truth used to be. God has a people that are actually walking in the full light of the truth for His pleasure. I think it is a tremendous matter.

Ques. So in the matter of fellowship, Paul early in 1 Corinthians brings in the divine standard, the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Corinthians 1: 9). Is that important?

JM Yes, there is no other fellowship, as we said. There is nothing lower, there is not another fellowship. Well maybe we should look at the Lord in Luke’s gospel because we could never do anything better than contemplate Christ. These are spoken of as temptations, it says that. We know the passage extraordinarily well, and maybe because we know it extraordinarily well we might tend to skip over it.

WMcK It says in verse 13, “the devil, having completed every temptation”. What the Lord went through in those forty days tempted of the devil, the Lord was faced by the terrible antagonism of this fallen being.

JM And you just think for a moment of who it was that was tempted by the devil. He had to go through this in the detail, forty days. It was not just a day and a night.

WMcK And what a model He is for us, “full of the Holy Spirit”. It brings out, does it not, the beautiful humanity of Jesus that it was in the Holy Spirit’s power that He repulsed these temptations?

JM It says that He “returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness forty days”. It is well worth thinking about. The Lord did not meet the enemy’s temptations in His deity; He could have done that. He did not even meet him in the power of His own humanity; He could have done that. But He met him as a Man who was full of the Holy Spirit. Do you agree with that?

WMcK Yes, exactly; and the Lord did not initiate this. Mark tells us the Spirit drives him into the wilderness (Mark 1: 12). What you see is what you referred to earlier, absolute obedience, and as in the wilderness He is absolutely dependent but He is absolutely obedient. He was led by the Spirit.

JM Yes, no doubt to such a Person, blessed Man, holy Man, sinless Man, a Man for God, it was abhorrent. We often think of the abhorrence when we come to what is referred to at Gethsemane, but the temptations in Luke 4 must have been abhorrent to Jesus, but in holy obedience and a Man full of the Holy Spirit He met every detail of it.

WMcK Think of how the Lord must have felt this because Satan was created by Him; here he is the epitome of lawlessness and coming against the One who was the absolute infinite expression of dependence and obedience, and the Lord meeting that in the power of the Holy Spirit. Do you not think it is to show that in the Spirit’s power it is within our range to meet temptation?

JM That is why I read in Luke, because you get a Man full of the Holy Spirit. It brings it within our range, so that He is a model for us in the way that He met the tempter. He therefore shows us the way in which Satan can be overcome.

JRB The first word of the Lord is, Man shall not live, “Man shall not live by bread alone”. Absolute perfect standard of manhood there in Christ was it not?

JM That is right, absolute standard, “but by every word of God”. Think of the tremendous power that Satan has in the commercial system, it is all under his sway, and if we are not careful we will come under that sway. I am not unsympathetic. I feel sorry for our younger brethren. Employers expect them these days to devote nearly their life to their work, what earns them their bread. There is no need to develop that and press it too hard, but it is just worth mentioning that we should think about it.

DMW Is it significant that it is “every word of God” in relation to your subject? It is the devil, and his intent was to divert the Lord Jesus from the pathway of the truth.

JM That is right, and as you think of that pathway of His, those thirty-three and a half years, every moment of it was governed by God’s word.

TFN I should ask the question, if we should bring this down to a simple Christian, the question is, “It is written”. Is it not the Spirit’s power that sustains such persons? If you understand that the word is the word of God, it is written, the devil cannot overcome that can he?

JM No, that is right. Of course in the working out of it you are fairly sure to have to experience suffering. It is brought in here as directly related to the Lord, but the matter of our daily bread is something that we need to think about, and make quite sure that there is something of the humanity of Christ coming to light in the working of it out. It does not mean that a man may not be prosperous, I am not saying that. One thing that we always need to be clear about is socialism or jealousy, but the great thing is to be in matters with God.

WMcK I was wondering if this section would help us as to skill in contending earnestly for the faith. You notice the devil said, “If thou be Son of God”. He would select the matter of sonship as the ground of conflict, but the Lord does not allow that. He says, “Man”, and I think we need to seek the Spirit’s help not to let the devil select the battleground in any issue. We need, by the Spirit’s help, to select the ground on which to contend, would you think?

JM I think so. The general who selects the battleground is always the winner, and the Lord went through in the power of the Holy Spirit. We need the Spirit’s help, and “greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world” (1 John 4: 4), so that the enemy has no advantage. It is essential to see that. You might think the enemy has a tremendous advantage. He has built up a system here, a tremendous system, which of course is going to come down, but the simple person who is making room for the Spirit in his or her life has the advantage.

APD Why is the political matter first in Luke? It is the religious in Matthew. It is the political side or the world, in Luke, what would you say about that?

JM I do not know, you had better tell us.

APD I wondered about it, what the Lord says later, “I am in the midst of you as the one that serves” (Luke 22: 27), whether it would not be a pattern for us that we have God before us, not ourselves.

JM Well I am sure that is right. Certainly you could not say about the Lord’s life that God was not His prime object, indeed His sole object. You might say that is being selfish, but if you understand God and who He is, and what He is, and the way He operates, as you come to have Him as your sole object you find that man comes into right relationships on every side.

GDR To the saints whom Paul was addressing, he says not to depart from the simplicity as to the Christ (2 Corinthians 11: 3). I think what you were saying earlier as to remaining on this line of simplicity is vital because there is a struggle. The restfulness that the Lord brings in in relation to His sufficiency should bring in a ceasing of the struggle. You know what I mean, there is a bit more and a bit more, and never satisfied. Would you agree with that?

JM If you hold to the simplicity of the Christ you get the chaste virgin for Christ.

These two go together. We will come to that a little later, not exactly that because that is in Corinthians, but if I understand it, the inference there is that Paul was seeking to counteract the tendency for men to add something to the Christ which corrupts the thought.

NJH There is a starting point in this pattern, is there not?

JM I would say so.

NJH Well there is another race in his mind, another order of man, when He overcame the world.

JM Yes exactly, not only another order of man, but you do not get the truth of the assembly until you come to Acts, but God was really setting the stage for it, so things that were proper to the old dispensation are not given the same prominence. I think there is an easing in of what God has in His mind to develop as the great truth of the assembly. Generally speaking God does not act abruptly and terminate one order, one divine arrangement and go in for another. He does it gradually. You will find if you particularly look in Luke’s gospel, because he is influenced by Paul, there are certain indications in his gospel of what was in the divine mind as to the working out of the truth of Christ and the assembly. Do you think that is all right?

DMW So would it be helpful to see that the devil intended to limit the movements of this kind of man, firstly in Christ, and also the continuation of the same kind of man in others, including ourselves?

JM That is right. He was Man on earth. You think of the disappointment there must have been for Satan to find a Man on earth who was answering in every detail to what was for the pleasure of God.

DMW It was not the earthly man but it was the heavenly Man on earth.

JM That is right. He was not of the earth, but it was the heavenly Man, another character of man, another order of man altogether. What a beautiful order it is really! The more you think about it, the order of manhood in Christ, there is a beauty about it that the Spirit of God would give us as men to appreciate; that is what God is finding His delight in. It should not be something that He will usher in eternally. It should be seen now in testimony.

JRB I have been struck by the fact that in Genesis 2 and 3 that word ‘man’ is used over and over again in relation to Adam. Paul brings it forward for us in Corinthians, does he not, as to the earthly man, and then the heavenly Man, it says, “such also the heavenly ones”, 1 Corinthians 15: 48?

JM “Such also the heavenly ones”. What God had in His mind from the very beginning was man, “Let us make man” (Genesis 1: 26), He said. We often think of what came in through Adam, and undoubtedly it was a great grief, but it has made room for another order of manhood altogether in which there can be no breakdown. In approaching the matter of the Lord’s sufferings in Luke 22 we do so in unshod feet. In the actual sufferings of Christ on the cross, there was a certain public display. The cross was a public matter, but we do get, especially in the psalms, some prophetic words as to the inward feelings of Christ, but what He faces here in Luke 22 as a holy, sinless Man, anticipating what it was to be made sin, is one of the most tremendous matters that you could ever think about.

GDR Would not this be included in the dying of Jesus? You think of the death of Jesus as very specific and limited, but the dying of Jesus really is something that we are to have part in now, “always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus”, 2 Corinthians 4: 10. Does that fit in with what you are saying?

JM I think “the dying of Jesus” is His life from the mount of transfiguration to the cross, is it not? Here it is His holy inward feelings, but, again as we said in chapter 4, Luke is not so drastic as Matthew and Mark. He brings it within our range to understand.

IMS Is this the Spirit of holiness in Romans 1, “marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness” (Romans 1: 4)?

JM Yes, the Spirit of holiness. That is very evident, is it not? Holiness shone through in its fulness and perfection in every breath. One has to be very careful about what one says but everything that marked Him at all times brought out His holiness. Here He is not only facing what the enemy would bring to bear upon His spirit knowing that He was a holy Man, as you say, “the Spirit of holiness” was there. The enemy would bring it to bear upon His spirit with the intent that He might be diverted from it, but there was no diversion. The holy soul of Jesus is exposed here, that is why I say you need to take the sandals off your feet when you think of this passage.

AL Could you please say something about the angel appearing from heaven strengthening Him?

JM I think that shows two things. It shows what we have been saying that Luke brings it within our range so that persons like ourselves can actually contemplate it; and I think the other thing it shows is the tremendous pressure of what He actually went through. Had you any thought yourself?

AL I appreciate what you have said. I also wondered if it could be referred to the unique glory between the Father and the Son and the perfection in His manhood.

JM Yes, we have to understand that. He went through this temptation in His full links with His Father. When you come to the actual cross He was forsaken.

NJH Was the conflict then that the Father’s will might be done?

JM Yes, maybe you can help us further. Mr. Darby said that the enemy sought to deflect the Lord from what was before Him, but when he was unsuccessful he sought to get the Lord to accept the cup from him, which, as you could understand, He would absolutely refuse. What He accepted was what came from God. You might be able to expand on that.

NJH No, it is such a holy scene that it is right to be careful. They are holy words that you are referring to.

JM Yes, and what I would say on this, dear brethren, especially for our younger brethren, never be very far away from the sufferings of Christ. There is nothing amongst us like that booklet by Mr. Darby on the sufferings of Christ that will keep us softened in our spirits and our affection towards Christ. Read it and seek the Spirit’s help to understand it, so that you understand what that blessed Man went through.

WMcK Elsewhere with regard to what you are saying the Lord says, “the cup which the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?”, John 18: 11.

JM Exactly, and you would have to say that He would not acknowledge Satan in any way whatsoever despite Satan’s pressure. I suppose Satan had certain power over death, did he?—but Christ would only accept it from the Father, blessed Man.

NJH He got the keys by going into death, did He not, He got the control of it?

JM That is right. He got the absolute control over it. So He is “firstborn from among the dead”, Colossians 1: 18. That is one of His glories, and He says later to John that He has “the keys of death and of hades”, Revelation 1: 18. He has them, and nobody can take them out of His hand.

APD Does the reference that He makes to “if thou wilt remove this cup from me” the absolute abhorrence that He had of being made sin?

JM That is why it is brought in, is it not? It is not that the Lord was shirking the matter. He would never shirk the matter. Our brother referred to “the Spirit of holiness”. It was right that the holiness of His person should really wring out of Him this cry of absolute abhorrence that He had of being made sin.

Rem. Mr. Darby used the word ‘recoiled’.

JM Yes, recoiled, that is right. You can see that. Do not let us get that mixed up, it is not that He shirked it at all. One other thing that I would say to the young

people, as knowing what I thought myself, when I was younger. I used to listen to the brethren preaching on the sufferings of Christ, the forsaking, the abandonment and I used to think because He was God in His person, it would not have been so difficult for Him. He was going through this as Man. That must be emphasised, He was going through as Man, and not only as Man, but as a holy sin-hating Man.

Ques. Is that why it says, “his sweat became as great drops of blood”?

JM Dr. Roberts, whom I suppose many of the brethren will have known, told me once that it is not unknown for men in extreme pressure to sweat little drops of blood, but in the medical world it is unknown for anyone to sweat great drops of blood. The more you view the holy sufferings of Jesus the more you see the uniqueness and the blessedness of His humanity. That would appeal to our affections, especially those of our younger ones, but all of us. The enemy makes quite a bid through one thing or another, but you have something here that is well worth giving your time and your efforts to.

WMcK So it is said of the Lord, “who did no sin” (1 Peter 2: 22), which would affect us, and in Him sin was not, but deeper still, “Him who knew not sin”, 2 Corinthians 5: 21. I think it should stimulate our hearts that finally in our bodies of glory we shall have that kind of humanity fully, we shall not know sin. In the meantime, as to what you are saying, we need to seek the help of the Spirit of holiness so that our minds should be free from the working of sin at all.

JM Yes, and it is possible that it should be. These things are not impossibilities. It is possible that these things should be. Well I thought we should just look at these temptations. The hymn says, ‘Unmoved by Satan’s subtle wiles’ (Hymn 230). That is the way he works. He is a wily foe, and Mr. Darby says he is brilliantly clever, but there is power in the Spirit to overcome all those things.

NJH We should know not only what we are contending against but who we are contending against.

JM I think that is the important thing. As we said that hymn ‘Unmoved by Satan’s subtle wiles’. Mr. Stoney says that it is never the Satan that I can see that I fear, but it is the Satan that is working in a hidden way.

LB So “our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against principalities, against authorities”, Ephesians 6: 12. But we have the Spirit, as you mentioned, “greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world”, 1 John 4: 4.

JM Yes, it searches me, as no doubt it does you, as to whether we sufficiently know the Spirit, whether we give room and place to Him in our practical lives and in our minds.

The reference that our brother has said, that we may be able to shut the whole of his activities out of our minds, is very important.

Reading at Ormond Beach/Bunnell
17 December 2004

KEY TO INITIALS

L. Barnard

A. Lidbeck

G. D. Rosenberry

J. R. Bellamy

W. McKiliop

I. M. Shearer

A. P. Devenish

J. Mitchell

D. M. Welch

N. J. Henry

T. F. Noel

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