THE FATHER THE SOURCE, THE SON THE CENTRE
[p. 402] THE FATHER THE SOURCE, THE SON THE CENTRE
Rem May I suggest John 5 in connection with God’s work in the soul in view of another world?
FER You get here the fact of God working, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work”. Then we get the character of the work, “The Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father”. The Father is the source; the Son the centre. I think if you do not take that into account you will scarcely understand the teaching of the chapter. The works spoken of do not come out now. The Jew had had experience of the work of God, interposed many times in delivering power on behalf of the people; but the works spoken of in this chapter go beyond that.
Rem Quickening is really the result of power.
FER They had no experience of that; they will experience it. They had works which will have their results in another world; they are not of this world, but of another world.
Ques “My Father worketh hitherto”. What is that?
FER I think from the time that sin came in the Father had in contemplation another world of which the Lord was to be the Head and Centre.
Rem Any one getting light, it would be in view of [p. 403] that world.
FER We see God was working all through. When sin entered the world, the world hung upon one man.
Rem The world of which man was head was a failure; death came in in consequence of sin and there was no way out of that but resurrection.
FER Yes.
Rem “If one died for all, then were all dead”.
Rem If God is to have another world it must be in resurrection. He is working for that end, and now He has got a Man.
FER He has got another Man. The world all went wrong because the head of it went wrong. We have the world — millions of people — and every man doing what he can for the world in the confusion in which it is.
Rem It is all in connection with the world, so to speak, gone out of God’s hand.
FER Yes. The beginning of sin coming into the world was that the woman did not refer to her head; she acted according to another dictum, and thus was the ruin of the world brought about.
Ques The idea of quickening here — is it actually resurrection, or the soul entering into it in a moral way?
FER I do not believe it is one or the other. I think power is in exercise in connection with that world. It has not to say to the present time.
Ques Do you mean that raising is one thing and quickening is another?
FER Yes.
Rem They are quickened out of the sleep of death.
FER Yes. Quickening is used in connection with Israel. I think they are raised and then quickened.
Ques Is the idea mortality swallowed up of life?
FER I think Israel will be [p. 404] quickened.
Ques In what way does the Son quicken whom He will?
FER In connection with His coming. I think that is the effect of the coming of the Lord. He will quicken whom He will — not all. There is another thing — judgment; if all were quickened there would be no judgment.
Ques What difference is there between the Father and Son quickening?
FER God is the source of all — only the Son takes the place that properly belonged to the Father. I think the great point of the chapter is that the last Adam, as the Son of God, comes in in life-giving power.
Rem The Father had worked in the past, now all is committed to the Son.
Ques Has it a present application?
FER No, not exactly. I think the present application is, he that heareth My word has passed from death unto life.
Ques What about hearing the voice of the Son of God?
FER Well, I think that is true now; hearing the voice of the Son of God is the great present testimony. They hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear live. I think the Lord drops the idea of quickening here and speaks of the testimony of the moment, and of what the effect of that testimony would be — he that hears lives.
Ques “He that hears my word”?
FER Yes.
Ques Then you make a difference between hearing the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear live?
FER Yes. So far as I see, the quickening is divine power; hearing the voice of the Son of God is really hearing the testimony.
Ques What do you make of [p. 405] Ephesians 2?
FER There you get quickened together with Christ. I do not think it is so absolute as here. I think quickening can be taken in a limited way at the present time, in point of affection, so that you are capable in that way for association with Christ. I think you get quickening in real power connected with the advent of the last Adam — a quickening Spirit. In fact, quickening is perfectly explained in 1 Corinthians 15, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming”. I think that makes quickening plain. In Ephesians and Colossians it is taken anticipatively.
Ques Is it advancement in the divine nature?
FER I think that is in it. In coming together in the assembly we are capable in point of affection but not as to our bodies; for instance, we very soon find that a meeting will run out.
Rem Unless we are like the Lord in body it cannot be otherwise.
Ques Is it the body here?
FER It says, “quickens whom he will”. It implies, as one might speak, that He has choice. It is election really.
Ques Do I understand that it is applied to the body more particularly?
Rem It says in another place, “quicken your mortal body”.
FER I think the point of the passage is quickening whom He will.
Rem The man in John 9 was one who heard the voice of the Son of God.
FER Yes, I think so; he heard the testimony.
Ques Is it hearing His voice in death in John 5?
FER Yes. I think it is a peculiarity of the voice of the Son of God that it involves the death of the [p. 406] Son of God. I think it is in death you get His voice. It is in death that He speaks.
Rem Then it is in resurrection He is declared to be Son of God.
FER You might say in death His voice was silent, yet it is there He speaks loudest.
Ques Do you mean that to go into death He became man?
FER No. I mean He brought life and it came out in death. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”: that is connected with the Son of man lifted up. It is in His death that you hear the voice of the Son of God.
Ques “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me”.
FER Well, I think He becomes the gathering point of all.
Ques That involves death, too?
FER Yes; He says so expressly: “This he said, signifying what death he should die”.
Ques Is not the great point, who it is who went into death?
FER Yes; the great testimony was in death. I think, to speak reverently, God came into the place of death. He came to meet man in the place of distance. Man was under death as the fruit of sin. Christ came into that place. He took it upon Him to make amends to God. He said, “Thy law is within my heart”. He undertook to make amends in regard of man to God. And the One who made amends to God is the expression of God’s love to man, therefore you get the testimony of righteousness and love. There you get the mercy-seat. There is nothing so profound as the death of Christ. It is extraordinary how people will look with reverence on pictures of the crucifixion and all that kind of thing, and be [p. 407] affected by what is material, and yet have no conception of the moral bearing of the death of Christ. It is beyond expression. If it could be written the world itself could not contain the books, if it could be expressed, but it is not possible.
Ques In what way do we hear the voice of the Son of God?
FER I think when God looks down He sees everything as under death. “If one died for all, then were all dead”. What a voice that has! All were dead; that is a voice. Christ’s death proved that all were dead. Then they that have heard live.
Ques Would you say it was a definite point in man’s history?
FER I think so. The force of it is, the testimony was in the world, and if any heard it, they lived.
Ques Would you say that hearing is a proof that life is there?
FER I would say that life is the result of hearing.
Ques Has it anything to do with being born again?
FER New birth is previous.
Rem The quickening is life.
FER It is involved.
Ques Is it quickening to life?
FER As quickened you are looked at as being made alive out of death.
Rem How often new birth has been taken as the same as quickening.
FER I think the appreciation of God’s love is the starting-point of life. When sin came into the world the love of God came out; it was in love God gave His Son. Until a person has the appreciation of that love, you cannot talk of him living.
Rem The death of Christ makes that known.
FER His death is the great witness [p. 408] of it.
Rem The effect of it is to carry you beyond the place where sin has power.
FER That is it. He that heareth My word — he has passed out of death into life; he has passed into another sphere, another region.
Ques Is that what we are to understand by quickening a man to life?
FER I do not think that goes far enough. I think quickening in its full sense is connected with the coming of the Son of God.
Rem Actually we are not there, but morally we are there now.
FER When the Son of God comes He brings in the glory of God. I leave this scene to enter upon another, a scene of which the Son of God is centre.
Rem And in that sphere you are outside the sphere of responsible life down here.
FER I think many people would be helped if they understood that the house of God is connected with the “land”, not with the “wilderness”. When you get the High Priest, the High Priest touches us individually but that is not the house of God. When you get the house of God, properly speaking you get Christ as Minister of the sanctuary. The true tabernacle I have no doubt was pitched in connection with the land.
Ques You mean by the land, the place of God’s purpose?
FER Exactly; the place of God’s purpose. It has often been noticed that the idea of the temple is connected with the kingdom. When you pass beyond the kingdom into the eternal state, the tabernacle comes into view again — the tabernacle of God.
Rem “And there I will meet with the children of Israel, and the tabernacle shall be sanctified by my glory ... And I will dwell among the children [p. 409] of Israel, and will be their God” (Exodus 29: 43, 45). That would be the time you speak of.
FER Yes. Look at Ephesians 2, “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus”. That is verse 6; then lower down in the chapter we get, “And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone ... in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit”. I think that is all connected with the land.
Rem I think it makes a great difference not connecting it with the wilderness.
FER From this passage and from the Epistle to the Hebrews, I think we get the impression that the house of God is connected with the land.
Ques. With the assembly?
FER We find in the world a great system of profession which has sprung up in connection with God’s testimony in the world which God recognises in a way. At the same time, while that is the case, and we recognise it, we see that the household of God has its own proper character.
Ques The household of God is more what belongs to God Himself?
FER I think it is possible to apprehend the two things. No one can deny the great system of profession, but I do not think that is properly the house of God.
Ques What is the first Epistle to Timothy?
FER I think you get it there in its proper character.
[p. 410] Rem I suppose it is more the shrine or inner sanctuary, what was part of the whole, but not the entire part. In Revelation we read of an outer court being given over to judgment; the temple was for worship.
FER I think we have the outer thing in christianity; we have the great system of profession which will come under judgment; at the same time we have what was prefigured in the temple.
Rem The inner part was really where the Lord did not go. He could not be a priest on earth.
Ques Do you not think we ought to be occupied with the spiritual, moral character of the thing, which is the real thing, while the outward profession has gone to decay?
FER I have no doubt of it.
Rem The Spirit occupies us with what is moral.
FER There seems such confusion around us, but what a comfort it is in the midst of it to remember that all that does not alter the purpose of God. The kingdom of God may have become like a tree with the fowls of the air lodging in its branches; that may be what the external system in the hands of men has become; but at the same time the kingdom has its own proper character, and to enter it a man must be born again. The same is true of the house of God.
Ques Would you say it is more the character of the church as the assembly of God which abides today?
FER I think it abides, but I do not shut my eyes to the great outward profession. I do not deny that I am in it, but at the same time it is a great matter to see what is under the eye of God, which is unseen by man. Even christians do not see it, but God sees it. There is a great difference between what God has wrought and what man has wrought.
[p. 411] Rem I suppose that is the difference between 1 and 2 Timothy. The great house in 2 Timothy is not the house of God at all.
Rem I think you have said that John’s writings give moral characteristics which abide when what Paul had begun had broken up.
FER In a day of confusion like this when there is no hope of putting the confusion right, it is a great thing to get insight into where there is no confusion.
Rem I think it is very interesting to distinguish between what God has wrought and what man has wrought.
FER What is really for God is His own work.
Rem And that abides because it is of Himself.
Rem What is important for us is the effect of the word of God in ourselves. I may build upon something apart from the word of God.
FER You see men follow after one system, whilst God has another.
Rem That is really Babylon and the heavenly Jerusalem.
FER Yes. God builds one, men the other. One will go, the other abide. I think it is a wonderful thing to get hold of the household of God, and to know that God dwells there. And then another point of importance connected with it is that in God’s house Christ has a place. Christ is Son over God’s house — God’s household — that is the priestly company. I think every one in God’s house is a priest.
Rem That is Aaron and his sons.
FER Yes; Aaron and his sons constituted God’s household. God’s light is there. I think a great point of God’s household is that there is light there.
Rem You will not find it anywhere else.
FER Quite so.
Rem That I suppose is what really is the basis of fellowship; at least what we are brought into is fellowship in [p. 412] the light.
FER Quite so.
Ques How do you place the hymn, ‘Where love shall find its rest’?
FER In one sense that is right, and in another sense it is wrong. The hymn refers to the future only, not to the present.
Ques Is it not our privilege now?
FER I think it is. What is referred to here is, “He that hears my word, and believes him that has sent me ... is passed out of death into life”. I think passed into life in a sense is passed in that way into the Father’s house. We enter into the house of God at any rate. So the apostle says, “Ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God”.
Ques Is that the household of God in Hebrews 3?
FER Exactly. The figure is taken, I have no doubt, from Aaron’s house. It is taken really from the tabernacle. The explanation is given later on. We are become companions of Christ.
Ques They fell in the wilderness?
FER The point is the household did not fall.
Ques Where is the household of God in Hebrews 3? Is that the wilderness?
FER Well, I do not think it is properly. You know the warnings are in connection with the people — warnings apply individually; as an individual you are in the wilderness. When you come to companions of Christ you are not in the wilderness. As a matter of fact we are in the wilderness and there we get the warnings.
Ques That would be to test if we were really entering into it?
FER Yes.
Ques Is the way we get into it hearing the voice of the Son of God?
FER Yes. I cannot think of anything much more important than this, that God has begun [p. 413] another order of things in the lifting up of the Son of man. The Son of God went down into death. He met everything in death in order that He might come forth in life. If He comes forth in life He really brings in a new world with Him.
Rem “On this rock I will build my assembly” — My assembly.
FER Yes; My assembly. He must come out of death to bring the world with Him.
Rem I think it depends on who He was. If He had not been the Son of God He could not have come out.
Ques When you say ‘the world’, what do you mean?
FER Well, He brings out the church, He brings everything out of death; He brought you out.
Rem Everything was under death.
Rem He does not bring out anything without death.
FER Oh no. In death He brings out everything that is for God.
Rem That is the point, everything for God.
FER I think the church is looked at as the first-fruits. Israel will come out of His grave — the gentile too.
Ques Would Psalm 22 come in here?
FER Yes.
Rem In connection with Christ now you would say we are out of the world condition.
FER Resurrection is the principle of the world to come. It must be so. Death is upon everything here, the best as well as the worst. Well, if God is going to bring to pass another world, it must be by resurrection. In the nature of things it must be outside the system of things here. Who is he that overcometh the world? He that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God.
[p. 414] Rem It was impossible for Him to be holden of it.
FER Death could not hold Him. He entered into it to come out of it. He says, “No man taketh it from me ... I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again”. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”.
Rem And having come out of it, He can lead the believer out now.
FER It is one thing to come out in that way, and it is another thing to come out to judgment. Whatever comes out of death in Christ is for God. It is in that way a continuation of the resurrection of Christ. I think it is most striking in regard to Israel: “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake”. They come out of death. Whatever is for God comes from the grave of Christ.
Ques Is that what the apostle says in the last chapter of Hebrews?
FER Exactly. The great Shepherd comes out of death.
Rem I think it is clear it must be God who causes the dead to hear.
FER You may preach as impressively as you like, but it is not your voice that makes anybody “hear” — it is God’s.