THE WAY OF ENTRANCE INTO SPIRITUAL BLESSING
[p. 165] THE WAY OF ENTRANCE INTO SPIRITUAL BLESSING
I would like to say a word as to the progress of the soul, and its entrance into the sense of spiritual blessing.
It is evident that we cannot at once enter into things in the measure in which God has presented them to us. If God speaks to us, He speaks of necessity from His own fulness; it is impossible that we can all at once take in all that God proposes to us; if that were the case we should in a sense be as great in understanding as God. I believe we are led on into the consciousness of blessing just in proportion as we are in the apprehension of Christ; that is, we enjoy it, the truth works within us just as there is the apprehension of what is true in Christ, for the Spirit in the believer answers to what Christ is at the right hand of God.
Now I have been struck with the sequence of the three chapters, John 4, John 5 and John 6. I believe they speak on the side of our apprehension of the truth. The Lord had revealed in chapter 3 the proposition or thought of God, and therefore to my mind John 3 is essentially a gospel chapter, it is the revelation of what God has proposed. Our entering into it I believe comes out in the succeeding chapters 4, 5 and 6, and culminates in chapter 7.
I will just touch for a moment on the point of these chapters, especially on what comes out in chapter 5. I think there are three forms of pressure from which the Lord proposes to deliver man in the three chapters. In chapter 4 the deliverance is from sin, in chapter 5 the deliverance is from weakness, and in chapter 6, in the satisfying the soul, if I might use the expression, the deliverance
[p. 166] is from want — these are three great things for God in His grace to effect for man down here in the very scene of sin and weakness and want. I assert that man is delivered from sin, raised up out of weakness, and every need of his heart is satisfied and more than satisfied. I think everybody would admit that that is a great thing to be effected for man down here, and in it is the fulfilment of the thought in chapter 3, “that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. I get it carried out experimentally in that way. It is noticeable that there is but little reference to the future except in chapter 6, where the Lord says, “I will raise him up at the last day”.
I want to touch, seriatim, on the points I have indicated. Jesus is presented in chapter 4 as the Christ, for although the Father’s name occurs in the chapter in connection with worship, the name of the Son does not appear, and it is as the Christ that He communicates to the believer the living water. We read in Ephesians 1, “In whom having believed”, that is, in the Christ, “ye have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”. It is a great thing to get hold of the truth of the Christ. In the Old Testament we find the thought of the anointed of God, the One who, rejected here of men, is to take the earth for His inheritance. I believe you have a larger range of thought opened out in Hebrews, that He is the heir of all things; that connects itself with what we have in Ephesians 1, the mystery of God’s will. To gather up in one all things in the Christ. He is the One who has to take all things, and in John 4 it is He who communicates the living water; the water that He would give was to be in the believer a well of water springing up into everlasting life. This is what I would call initial and introductory. Sin has met its judgment in Christ. He has fulfilled the type of the brazen [p. 167] serpent, the judgment of sin in the flesh, in order that the Spirit might dwell in the believer.
In connection with the truth of eternal life comes in the most important point of deliverance from sin. You will never gain deliverance from sin except by getting another object than self before the soul. You must of necessity be superseded in your own eyes, and this is only by the power of another object, another man before the soul. I know that plenty of people would tell me that you are dead to sin, but you will not die to it till you get another object before the soul, and that is the second Man, who has entered into the holiest for us, and in the apprehension of that really lies the secret of deliverance from sin.
In chapter 5 I get a point further; it is here more than the communication of the Spirit of life to be in the believer, for we get the man raised up. The Son quickens the body, but the point in the chapter is that He raises up the man, and a wonderful thing it is for a man to be raised up out of the weakness which sin has brought upon him. The point of the chapter is the raising of the man. I believe it is effected by the apprehension in the soul of the truth of the Son and what depends on this, for in this chapter it is not the Christ who is brought before us, but the Son — He reveals the Father. I get here the truth of the Person; He is the Son, and therefore He is competent to reveal the Father, that is the wonderful thing that comes out in this chapter. He knows the Father, lies in His bosom, knows all that is there. The Father loves the Son and shews Him all things that Himself doeth. You have got now to a grand point, you are raised up into a new scene altogether, and the new scene presented to us is an unfolding beyond all that was ever revealed before. None but the Son can reveal the Father, it is not any amount of language that could reveal the [p. 168] Father. He alone is competent here and therefore He says, “He that hears my word, and believes him that has sent me, has life eternal, and does not come into judgment, but is passed out of death into life”. You are really raised up by the introduction of the soul into a new scene. It is not only that the Christ has communicated unto me a great gift, but He is competent to reveal the Father. He says, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work”. What things to open out to poor things like us; it is to me perfectly wonderful that down here He has raised man out of his weakness to enter into things that he never could have dreamt of — the Father revealed in the Son. The secret of all that God is has come out. It is not simply what the Father can do, but it is the Father’s heart that has come to light. The Father loves the Son and shews Him all these works of grace. The Son is as man dependent, but He is none the less the Son. He is as truly a divine Person as the Father, and can say, “He that hears my word, and believes him that has sent me”; and it is in this that we really enter into the place of children, are made conscious of being raised up in this very scene.
There is only a word more as to the third point, that is, deliverance from want. We have seen that there is the well of water springing up in the believer into eternal life, and that he has a revelation of new things to his soul. Now there is another thing; he has to be formed constitutionally; that is what I get in chapter 6, the effect of the living bread. The constitution of a child is formed by its food. The bread from heaven is the believer’s food, and there is another character of food to that, eating the flesh of the Son of man and drinking His blood; that is, that I have to appropriate death to that system in which the flesh lives. But I am fed with living bread, “he also who eats me shall live also on account of me”. My spiritual constitution is formed as surely by the food on which I live as is that of a child. The believer apprehends in Christ the Man that is the object of heaven’s delight. It is a great thing not only to be brought into these things, but to be in them constitutionally; we are, I fear, very small constitutionally, and I think it is because we are not fully nourished. “He also who eats me shall live also on account of me”. The whole idea of the chapter is, I think, satisfaction. The blessed Son of God has become man, entered into that state that He might be everything to the believer, as He is everything to heaven; thus his soul is fed, and he is independent of all beside.
I only add that all this depends on the apprehension of what Christ is, and we have seen the order in which the soul has to apprehend it. You do not begin at the top, though God speaks from the top. I do not think that a soul in the first place takes in what are called in a familiar hymn ‘the higher mysteries of Thy fame’. When God begins to work in the teaching of the Spirit we are led on in the apprehension of Christ so as to become more deeply conscious of the blessing which God has purposed for us; and anything to surpass what is presented to us in this chapter I cannot conceive. You are brought into all the light of heaven in what is presented in the Father and the Son, and in chapter 6 it is not only, as we have seen, that we are to be in it as under the power of the Spirit but also constitutionally.
I do not want to add more, I would rather others would seek to open it out for themselves.
I believe that God intends to bring us into all that He has revealed to us, but it is another thing how far we have taken it in. I think I can see the wonderful grace of God and the power of the Spirit in the way in which our souls are led on.