THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
I desire to speak of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul, like many others, had a great experience of it. In his first epistle to Timothy, he says that the grace of the Lord surpassingly over-abounded, and the last verse of the Bible is: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with all the saints”. The Lord would encourage us in giving us experiences of His grace. Peter says to us in his first epistle: “if indeed ye have tasted that the Lord is good”, and the result will be that we will be constantly encouraged to come to Him: there will be edification: “a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ”. The more we draw near to the Lord, the more He will teach us about the Father. He will not just leave us with the simplest impressions of His grace, but He will always attach our hearts to the Father, for He has come from Him; He has come into the world and again He has left it to go to the Father. So the more we prove the grace of the Lord, the more we will be established in the true grace of God, in the knowledge of the Father, and as a result, we will be more and more in liberty in view of service of the blessèd God. John, in writing the book of Revelation, salutes the brethren to whom he was writing, saying to them, “Grace to you and peace from him who is, and who was, and who is to come”, that is God in His majesty, and he adds “and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne”, invoking grace and peace upon the saints on the Spirit’s part, in presenting the Spirit in the character of the seven Spirits who are before His throne—a fulness of power down here, to maintain all that is due to God’s throne. It is a very great encouragement. He goes on to say, “and from Jesus Christ”. John does what Paul never does: he invokes grace and peace upon the saints from the Holy Spirit.
Paul, in almost all his epistles, says, “Grace to you, and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ”, so that we are to be enriched in the feeling of grace, at the same time from the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, and also, according to John, from the Holy Spirit.
In the first passage read, in the gospel of Luke, the Lord has to do with a woman who had a great appreciation of the way in which He had come to face the question of her own sins, for His personal service towards her. It is important for each one of us to have this appreciation of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter, in writing his first epistle, says, as to our Lord Jesus Christ, that Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree; he presents the thing as a very personal matter. The Lord devoted Himself in His own body to bear our sins so that the joy and eternal possession of forgiveness should be ours. This is what the woman in Luke appreciated. Simon the Pharisee did not appreciate that; he was a religious leader but had no appreciation of the personal grace of Christ. Alas, there are many of this sort around us in the religious world. Even the teaching of the religious world would deny us this appreciation of the personal grace of Christ. Some may say that they hope for forgiveness by penances, by confession to a priest, or by good works too; others have teaching, in England especially, that baptism makes us children of God and heirs to the kingdom, but all this would deny us the appreciation of the personal grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What marked this woman here is that she was not deterred by the atmosphere of Simon’s house, who totally failed in sympathy. Simon would have wanted to patronise the Lord, as in the religious world around us, but he entirely failed in service towards the Lord personally, while this woman, having a deep feeling of her sins and of the fact that the Lord had come to take them up Himself by His sacrifice, paid a lot of attention to His feet. She washed His feet with her tears; she wiped them with the hair of her head; she kissed His feet and anointed them with ointment. This is what the Lord greatly appreciated; He calls Simon’s attention to the woman: He says, “Seest thou this woman?” This was what could give pleasure to the heart of Christ in Simon’s house and the Lord appreciated the faith that was found in her, faith that had led her to overcome all the difficulties that existed to come herself where the Lord was found.
It is something very important for all those who are here, who have been able to appreciate all that the Lord has done for them, to watch and consider where the Lord is found and not to be held by all that is around us. Let us look and find where the Lord is. This is what governed this woman here; she learned that the Lord was there, she overcame all the difficulties that the inside of Simon’s house involved so as to be found where Jesus was. As a result, she gave much joy to the heart of Christ and the Lord calls Simon’s attention to her. First he says to her: “Thy sins are forgiven”, and then, “Thy faith has saved thee; go in peace”. This woman would never be able to forget the experience that she had had: the grace of Christ drew her heart to Himself for ever. This is what the Lord desires for us all. However great our privileges may be, and our joys in going on together with the saints, the Lord would also establish personal links between each one of our souls and Himself. This is what Paul experienced in a remarkable way when he was converted in the beginning. The Lord called Paul by his name, saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?”, and when Saul said, “Who art thou, Lord?”, the Lord told him His Name: “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest”. He did not say to him that He was the Lord, He did not say He was the Christ; nor did He say to Him that He was the Son of God. If He had said that, it would indeed have been true, but He simply said, “I am Jesus”, showing that He had in view to establish a personal link between Saul and Himself, and it is made entirely clear the link established continues and became stronger and stronger while Paul pursued his way down here.
In the next incident, in chapter 19, we have the grace of the Lord towards Zacchæus, a man who “desired to see Jesus, who he was”; that is to say, that he had sincere desires towards Christ. He desired to know Him better, he desired to know Him personally. It was not simply a matter for him of what the Lord had done or what He was going to do, Zacchæus desired to know Him, or at least he desired to see Him, but he could not on account of the crowd because he was little in stature. This is precisely the difficulty for most of us, the smallness of our stature in the things of God. I suppose that whoever among us is sincere must feel this smallness. Zacchæus, instead of recognising this fully, took the way according to his mind to try and overcome the difficulty. It is said that he ran on and climbed up into a sycamore to see Him. Without doubt, he was entirely sincere in his desires, sincere also in his activities. But we cannot take such a way, for in God’s things, we have to follow the way that is established if we want to grow. The Lord in His grace took good account of the desires of Zacchæus and looked at what he saw. Zacchæus had placed himself in a position in which he had to lower his eyes to see Jesus. This is the practical result: if we think that by great activities, whether it be in reading, reading the ministry (not that I have anything to say against reading the ministry; the more we read, the better it will be) but if we think that by this means we will be able to arrive at the truth about Jesus, we do not really know ourselves and we tend to make ourselves greater than Him. This is the position in which Zacchæus placed himself; he got into a position where he had to look down to see Jesus. Jesus in grace lifted his eyes towards him, and said to him, “make haste and come down, for to-day I must remain in thy house”. The Lord was ready to set him on a good line of thought; He recognised the sincerity of his desires and He set him on a line where he could realise what he desired to have. Now, it is a credit to Zacchæus that it should say of him, “And he made haste and came down, and received him with joy”. How testing it would be if the Lord came into our houses to remain there! Would we receive Him with joy if the Lord made this proposal to us? Zacchæus does so. I have no doubt that he would very much feel put to the test, that he would have felt that there were many things in him that needed to be adjusted, but there was the grace in which the Lord could actually enter into his house. Zacchæus, in following the movements of Christ, in listening to His words, had the perfection of Jesus before him, the perfection of Manhood; he had before his eyes and before his heart the Man from whom we all have to learn and whose image we are going to bear. So the Lord in grace takes this position. I am sure that Zacchæus would never forgot it, and I mention it because that is the greatest encouragement for each one among us. If we have some desire, some exercise in a good direction, even though we may not have taken the good way from the outset, the Lord takes account and He responds to it in grace. He is ready to give us the knowledge of Himself, if on our side we are ready to give Him the place that He desires. The fact that the Lord went into the house of Zacchæus implied that the whole life of Zacchæus was going to be regulated by the Lord Himself. For the believer, the house is so to say the base of operations: he leaves his house to go to his work but he comes back to his house. It is from the house that he goes to the assembly, and he goes back again to his house, so that if the Lord regulates the house, he also regulates the position. I believe that that is what the Lord had in mind in saying to Zacchæus that he must remain in his house.
Zacchæus also shows that he was an exercised man and the Lord says, “To-day salvation is come to this house”, recognising the faith that marked Zacchæus. One could indeed multiply examples of the Lord’s grace according to this gospel of Luke. There is the way in which He considered Peter, although he had denied Him, and we know how He adjusted him as soon as He had risen from among the dead. There is the way in which He puts out His hand, healing the ear of the bondman of the high priest; this man would never forget the touch of grace. While Peter had cut off the ear, the Lord stretched out His hand and healed it. There is the way in which He prayed for those who persecuted Him, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. There is that grace in which he spoke to the thief, saying to him, “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”. Examples could be multiplied in which the personal grace of Christ is known by individuals. Peter says that we should grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Then in the passage read in Acts 23, we have the grace of the Lord for Paul, as being one of His faithful servants, a servant whose faith had slightly failed for a moment. A spiritual man feels weakness more than a man who is not spiritual. Paul before the Sanhedrim had fallen for a moment to the level of a natural man. He had had recourse to human strategy, and seeing that some of the Sanhedrim were Pharisees and some were Sadducees, and knowing that the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel nor spirit, while the Pharisees believed in both—for it was on account of the resurrection that he was there—it was then that this strategy was used so that the Sanhedrim should be divided and the Pharisees would say that they found no evil in this man. This was not a spiritual movement; it was not a movement directed by the Holy Spirit. The result was a great tumult in the Sanhedrim and I have no doubt that in the night that followed Paul felt deeply that he had failed. It is said, “But the following night the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good courage; for as thou hast testified the things concerning me at Jerusalem, so thou must bear witness at Rome also”. It is a marvellous touch of the grace of Christ, restoring the spirit and comforting Paul’s heart. The Lord’s ways are very wonderful. Many years before, He had already said to Paul that he would suffer much on account of His Name. It is this marvellous grace of Christ that allowed him to be taken up with the ministry of the assembly, he a man who had persecuted the assembly, who had made others suffer much. In God’s governmental ways, a man who causes a lot of suffering to others must himself have the experience of sufferings, for we reap what we sow, and according to the measure with which we measure it will be measured to us. Paul in the days that had preceded his conversion had sown for himself experiences of suffering that must come upon him in God’s ways. But God’s grace can take up such a man and give him the great privilege of suffering for the saints and suffering for the truth, changing what is governmental, in grace, into what becomes a wonderful privilege. It is one of the examples of Christ’s wonderful grace. I have no doubt that, while Paul had gone through sufferings, he had had moments when he had occasion to feel the immense burden of suffering; he had had to remember that he had himself caused much suffering to the saints, and that it was only right that he should suffer himself. But his heart was comforted in the feeling that the Lord’s grace had given him the privilege of suffering for the love of His Name, for the saints who were so dear to Him, and for the truth.
So, at the end of Paul’s ministry, as it is presented to us in 2 Timothy, we see him growing in Christ’s grace. He is before the emperor Nero and forsaken by all; he was thus brought to find himself in strict correspondence with Christ, for when Christ’s enemies laid hands upon Him, all the disciples forsook Him and fled, and now Paul experiences being forsaken by all. But he adds, “But the Lord stood with me, and gave me power, that through me the proclamation might be fully made, and all those of the nations should hear”. It is according to His marvellous grace that the Lord Jesus stands with His servant when all had forsaken him, allowing him to finish his service so that all the nations should hear. In the experience of such grace, Paul goes on to say: “The Lord shall deliver me from every wicked work, and shall preserve me for his heavenly kingdom; to whom be glory for the ages of ages. Amen”. That is the language of one who has had experience of Christ’s grace. Every experience that we have of the grace of Christ becomes a real treasure in our souls, in the knowledge of Himself, a treasure that we will carry in eternity, when the conditions that call for grace will have ceased for ever.
May we be given, dear brethren, to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for the love of His Name!
ST ETIENNE
11th November 1954
Translated from the French magazine, ‘Ondées’,
September 1955
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