DIVINELY DRAWN

Hosea: 11: 1-4; John 6: 60-64; 17: 22-26

G.C.McK. I was thinking of the way that divine love has drawn us, drawn us out of the world to Christ, and draws us into a realm where divine love has its own satisfaction. The scripture in Hosea alludes to the drawing of the people out of Egypt. Whether they would realise at the time that love lay behind that might be a question. The prophet says, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son”. They were drawn with “bands of a man” – we know something of that – and “cords of love”. We have been drawn, drawn to Christ. The reference to a man would refer typically to Christ, and allude, I suppose, to the service of Moses and Aaron. The people were affected so as to be drawn out, and caused to eat too. The service that proceeded towards them was to draw them from Egypt and to sustain them and give them a sense of divine care: “I gently caused them to eat”. These are wilderness matters, experimental matters. There was a time when they murmured and Aaron had to speak to them. I suppose it was the “bands of a man” that operated then. Moses spoke to Aaron, and Aaron spoke to the people and they turned toward the wilderness and saw the glory of Jehovah (Exod. 16: 10), and the manna was provided, the manna that is alluded to in John 6. The people were thus helped and served.

We have to link that kind of exercise with the deeper and more profound matters, the heavenly and spiritual matters that the Spirit of God would draw us into, especially in a day like this, so that we have in John 6 the Lord speaking of the Father’s activities. No doubt we can get help together as we make way for the Holy Spirit as to how the Father has operated, drawing to Christ, involving a direct dealing with us. Persons have heard, it says here, from the Father Himself (v 45). Jesus then goes on to speak not only of the manna, but also of the Lord Jesus Himself, His flesh and His blood. There seems to be leading-on here. There is the food to sustain life. Life has come into this gospel and now there is food to sustain life in regard to a living order of things. The “living Father” is mentioned in verse 57, and it leads on to “the Son of man ascending up where he was before”. It is a question of how far we might be drawn in our affections and intelligence, whether we might be drawn into what is beyond flesh and blood, beyond what is natural, and whether we might be ready for heavenly things, “the Son of man ascending up”. You can see the leading that is there. Others are going away, but “If then …?” It is a kind of challenge to us. John’s gospel generally has that trend in it, the way that our affections are gathered up by Christ and moved towards the Father.

His prayer in the seventeenth chapter came to mind because clearly as the Lord prayed in the audience of His disciples, as they listened to that priestly prayer, it must be that their affections were drawn into another realm, because the Lord Jesus, as He proceeds, deals not only with the question of how the saints are to be preserved in the testimonial sphere down here, but also from where we read He begins, I think, to speak of the heavenly things.

It would be good to have some sense of this, that divine love is constraining us and helping us, tenderly helping us, to move, wherever we might be. If we are still in Egypt, the Lord would help us to move out of Egypt into the wilderness and then into the land itself.

J.D.G. It would be of interest to us all here: “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son”. God takes account of us in that way: “for ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”, Gal 3: 26. “But because ye are sons, God has sent out the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father”, Gal 4: 6. He had something in mind for you, had He not?

G.C.McK. Yes, exactly, “by faith in Christ Jesus”. You might say “faith in Christ Jesus” is an initial matter but immediately the thought comes in that God has sonship in mind, not simply our salvation. He has a status for us in mind, and then, as you say, the Spirit given as power that we might enter into that relationship and enjoy it. The Spirit is active in this, moving our hearts towards the Father, both in Galatians and in Romans.

J.D.G. What you have drawn attention to is the great matter of His love. He loved him. God loves us as sons. That is why He has given us “the Spirit of His Son”.

G.C.McK. Quite so. “When Israel was a child, then I loved him”, before the divine operations had proceeded far, you might say – when he was just a child. It shows divine consideration and I think we ought to encourage one another. The young people might feel sometimes that these things seem beyond them but those of us who are older feel that very much too, but there is a tenderness, a consideration and a comfort in knowing that divine love will draw us into this, as we are amenable.

J.M. Is the Lord so attractive that He draws us? I was thinking of the disciples when they came in contact with the Lord, it says, “leaving all they followed him”, Luke 5: 11.

G.C.McK. Well, it is a question of attraction. Of course, from one point of view the gospel is a question of compulsion. We have to be compelled to come into the house because naturally we resist, but divine grace has its compelling way with us, and then our affections become engaged. As our affections become engaged, I think the power of attraction begins to hold us, begins to draw us.

J.M. It says in the Song of Songs, “Draw me, we will run after thee!” (ch 1: 4). I feel it is impressive how you are drawn and then you start to run. That is a fine matter. Peter speaks about those that run “to the same sink of corruption” (1 Pet 4: 4), but we do not run in that way.

G.C.McK. Divine drawing is going on all the time. It is a whole process: divine activity is all to that end. It is all leading upward and into this realm. We are drawn to the Supper by affection for Christ. The scripture you are quoting in the Song of Songs raises the question whether we are ready to be drawn. Do we come to the Supper as drawn by love, or is it some kind of formality? It would be a poor thing if it were just a formality. There must be some drawing power there, and then we are tested as we are present. Just how ready are we? “Draw me, we will run after thee!” How quickly do we run?

W.M.G. Would you say a little more as to what you said about Aaron in regard to this passage? It says, “but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with bands of a man, with cords of love”. You were thinking of the “bands of a man” relating to Aaron?

G.C.McK. God used vessels to appeal to His people. He used Moses in a peculiar way and, together with him, Aaron; they would typify Christ. There was a mediatorial side of things which would bring the truth to bear on the saints The Lord Jesus is the great Mediator. Then there is the priestly side in Aaron that would consider for us and appeal to us. There is an affectionate touch in the thought of a priest, I think. What Moses and Aaron were personally had an effect on the people. They conveyed something of divine thoughts and compassions and feelings, and so the people were drawn. They were considered for by persons who were leaders among them and who drew them, and I think they typified Christ. Would that be fair, do you think?

J.D.G. Yes, I think so. It is good to see it set out in type for us because we can understand the features of humanity and expressions of love in these persons.

G.C.McK. We can. Moses is a type, of course, but still we can dwell on him and think of what came out in him, not simply as a type but what was formed in that man in his humanity, because it was after Christ. He says an extraordinary thing – God would raise up a prophet unto them like him (Deut 18: 15). What an honour accorded to someone in scripture that could so represent Christ.

D.S. It says here, “I gently caused them to eat”. That is what Moses did in the wilderness. That is what the Lord does at the Supper perhaps. You get a little food and that draws you back week after week, feeding on Christ.

G.C.McK. Very good. The yoke is taken off the jaws. We do not want to be in bondage. We want to have a sense of liberty and the gospel and Christ Himself would bring us into that. Then being caused to eat is very important. Divine Persons would cause us. It is part of the attraction, part of the divine operation in the drawing, that we are given to eat food that attracts us and builds us up in another constitution.

G.A.B. We have been looking at Exodus in our city readings and these early chapters, perhaps up to about chapter 16, might, do you think, represent the period when Israel was a child? There is abundance of grace to meet the early experiences in the child. Responsibility comes in further on, but there is something very precious about these early days when the manna is provided and every need is met – the springing well, and so on.

G.C.McK. Yes, in infinite divine grace. They murmur and it is not taken up against them. Later on things are taken up against them because they have become men, you might say. They have taken on responsibility and God cannot pass things by, but when we are young, God is gracious with us and would help us to enter into things, help us to walk. Think of God teaching Ephraim to walk. We might say, how am I going to be a Christian, how am I going to move in this pathway that is leading out of this world to the Father, how am I going to take up the pathway practically? Well, God will teach you to walk. Romans teaches us to walk. Other scriptures help us to walk in the power of the Spirit.

D.C.B. I was thinking of the earlier reference in this prophet, “I will allure her” (chap 2: 14). That is the greatness of the attractiveness of the Person, and especially that is by way of recovery so if there has been any failing or any falling back to what we were previously, there is still the attraction, the allurement that is in Christ to bring us back.

G.C.McK. Very good, yes. I thought of reading that scripture. What a powerful word, “allure”. We often speak of the allurements of the world, but think of the allurements of Christ! Think of the attractiveness that is in that Man that would lead us into the wilderness where there is nothing to cater for the flesh. “Speak to her heart” suggests that there is affection there and God can work with us in recovery, and bring about a result “as in the days of her youth”, chap 2: 15.

G.B. “For the love of the Christ constrains us”, 2 Cor 5: 14. It was the fact that He died. I was thinking of what you referred to yesterday as to the manner of their going out as fortified with the lamb.

G.C.McK. Quite so, so we can take into our minds all that transpired at that time, not only the destruction of Egypt, Egypt coming down in the judgment, (really, I suppose, in their own souls and consciences Egypt was destroyed in that sense) but they were being built up too by the ministrations of Moses and Aaron and, as you say, given good food. That would be the beginning, I suppose, of being gently caused to eat such food as the Passover lamb.

R.T. The yoke is removed in view of that, not of saying something or saying a lot but of eating? Would there be a moral order in that?

G.C.McK. I do not suppose an animal can eat too well if it has a yoke on its jaws. So it is preparatory. Go on.

R.T. It says of Isaiah that he “saw his glory and spoke of him”, John 12: 41.

G.C.McK. I think that is what it is, the yoke drawn off, so we have liberty. There is no sense of burden in our spirits and we are able to eat. Isaiah did more than that, as you were saying. He was stirred in his heart to speak of Christ. Isaiah is quoted in John’s gospel. It is interesting to see the affinity between writers of the books of the Bible. In John’s writings in the gospel he shows great affinity with John the Baptist, for example, because of the place that the greatness of Christ had assumed in John the Baptist’s view. He also quotes Esaias in a most sympathetic way as if understanding the feelings of a prophet who was appealing with all the compassions of God to a people who were resisting. It is interesting to see that scriptures are one whole in that way, not only in the letter and terms, but in the spirit of them. It is the same Spirit that indited them and the same Spirit that helped the writers.

J.T.B.(Ed.) It was one of the great points of His crucifixion: “I, if I be lifted up out of the earth, will draw all to me”, John 12: 32. Is that ever a point of magnetism, do you think, that Christ draws us in that way?

G.C.McK. Yes, He does, whatever our need and our state. What a sight that is, divine love expressed and expressed in such a way as to make it possible for me to be drawn and not repelled even though I am a sinner, because that One who is lifted up is the One who is dealing with my sins.

J.T.B.(Ed.) I think too of the cords: He was bound, was He not? That the cords might be released from us required that He should be bound: “bind the sacrifice with cords, – up to the horns of the altar”, Ps 118: 27. Very affecting that, is it not?

G.C.McK. It is indeed. He was bound. What a sight that was! Men laid hands on Him. That is touching. We should go through these scenes, I think, in our affections as to how men treated Christ. Then, of course, He was bound too in the sense of the constraints of divine love.

J.T.B.(Ed.) I wondered as to the sacrifice being bound up with cords – up to the horns of the altar, He was really bound to the will of God.

G.C.McK. It was like the ram caught by its horns in the thicket (Gen 22: 13). He was committed fully. So the altar had horns, speaking of its power, but the sacrifice bound there would suggest complete devotion to the will of God. It would test us: a sacrifice tests us enough, but what about a sacrifice bound?

J.R.C. I was thinking of what you said about John the Baptist. He did not resent the fact that these two disciples of his were attracted to Christ.

G.C.McK. Quite so. It must have been a peculiar experience he had because he was looking into and admiring something that personally went beyond what he had part in. He belonged to another dispensation. Yet he saw others, and was glad to see others, attracted. We have the privilege of entering into these things. “But he who is a little one in the kingdom of the heavens is greater than” John the Baptist, Matt 11: 11. What a privilege we have! Are we going to remain outside all this? Are we going to kick against it?

J.R.C. The Lord just said very gently to them, “What seek ye?” (John 1: 38), so they spent the rest of the day with Him.

G.C.McK. Quite so. They come into a settled realm: “Come and see”, John 1: 39. I think there is a directness about God’s dealing with us. “Come and see” comes into John’s gospel more than once, does it not? You have to find out for yourselves. Not only did the woman in John 4, for example, say, “Come, see” (v 29) but the men of the city eventually said, we have heard Him for ourselves. Things in John are learned directly. We get that in John 6, hearing of the Father Himself. That is an encouragement that God would have direct dealings with us.

J.D.G. Open up John 6 to us, what you have in mind: “No one can come to me except the Father who has sent me draw him”. It is a wonderful day when you learn that secret.

G.C.McK. Quite so. Of course, you might say I was drawn to Christ by my need, and that is the way we come. We come the road of need, of necessity, seeking a Saviour, seeking mercy, but then John says there was something more happened than that. There was something to do with divine counsels and divine need. If the Father is drawing to Christ, would it be that lying behind that is the Father’s love for Christ and what He wishes to make of Him?

J.D.G. I was thinking too of the Father’s affections towards sons, “out of Egypt I called my son”. Here He is drawing them. It is sonship that is in mind, is it not? “The Father himself has affection for you, because ye have had affection for me”, John 16: 27. The Lord was indicating there that sonship was in mind for them.

G.C.McK. Quite so: sonship was in view. Not that, as we know, John develops sonship on our side but you can see the whole movement is in that direction as we begin to see what the glory of sonship is in Christ and what the divine thought was. “The Father who has sent me draw him” is a direct divine intervention.

G.A.B. Does the Father draw us so that He might give us to Christ? In chapter 17 He says, “They were thine, and thou gavest them me”, v 6. It is one of the last remarks Mr Darby made before the Lord took him: ‘I have dwelt much on the fact that I am the Father’s gift to Christ’.

G.C.McK. That is divine ownership and these transactions you speak about are very precious and very profound: “They were thine”. We are His as redeemed but that is not what that scripture is speaking about: “They were thine”. That is, they were the Father’s in purpose, and then the great transactions have proceeded in view, as you say, of being drawn to Christ and then Christ bringing them to the Father. It is very wonderful to think of the two divine Persons thus operating, ourselves the objects of divine operations.

M.C. Is there a touch of sovereign grace, the Father’s own touch, in this: “Every one that has heard from the Father himself, and has learned of him, comes to me”. It seems a very intimate thought. Could you say more about it?

G.C.McK. Yes, the Lord Jesus quotes the prophets to reinforce what you are saying. He says to the Jews, “It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God” so you can see clearly that what is in mind is that there is going to be a dispensation in which divine Persons are having to do with individuals. That feature marks John’s gospel: the glory of divine Persons comes out in it most wonderfully and yet how They have to do with individuals comes out. “Every one that has heard from the Father himself, and has learned of him, comes to me”. You might say you would find it hard to explain how you know certain things and how you were drawn to Christ, but you learn that the Father has really been operating in your heart and mind.

T.L. I know the setting is slightly different but is this a similar thought to being “taken … into favour in the Beloved”, Eph. 1:6? The “taken … into” would be drawn to all the Father’s appreciation of Christ and then your place of standing there. Would that be right?

G.C.McK. Yes; that section in Ephesians 1 gives, I think, the divine objective, what is destined for us. It runs along with some of the things we have read, ”that we should be holy and blameless before him in love” (v 4), and then, as you say, “taken us into favour in the Beloved”. I suppose what we are saying about sonship would help us as to that – the Beloved. He is the Beloved and we are taken into favour in Him; we have sonship in Him.

J.D.G. I was wondering whether “comes to me” is more than initial. We come to Christ, speaking practically, as a Saviour, but do you think the Father still draws us to that blessed Man as we go on in our Christian experience and there are glories that we never thought about before we come into their blessing, such as the One who is building the assembly?

G.C.McK. There is the impossibility of anyone coming except the Father draws him, which would seem to include what is initial, because otherwise no one could come at all, but then you can see that the whole matter of drawing is something that proceeds. It is not just one event. There is a constant drawing and I think you see in the Lord’s teaching in this section that kind of thing. How far on are we going to move? I am sure the Father would operate in that regard, the living Father.

J.D.G. That is what I was thinking. In this chapter there are persons who go away back. They really went out of the area of the Father’s drawing.

G.C.McK. Exactly

J.D.G. The Father would helpfully keep drawing us to Christ. He would do that, would He not?

G.C.McK. I think He would. He would attach us to Him. Indeed, that comes out in Peter: “Lord, to whom shall we go?” The question arose, What else could you do? You get the impression when Peter speaks that he is more attached to the Lord than ever through this experience.

D.C.B. Is the Spirit part of the process in drawing? I wondered if Genesis 24 gave us an example of it, if we can think of Rebecca individually. It is the father who institutes the whole matter that there should be a person secured for the son.

G.C.McK. Yes, I think that in itself would be a fruitful area to enquire into. The Spirit in type does that there by describing something of the attractiveness of Isaac, including his place in his father’s affections. That comes into it too, does it not? And then his wealth and everything has been given into his hand and so on. I think it is on the line of receiving of mine and announcing it to you (John 16: 14). I think the Spirit is occupied in that kind of activity, the Father being behind it, but to attract us to Christ. Then as to what was said as to the spirit of sonship, the Spirit active in drawing us out in our affections. You took part to the Spirit this morning. Have you any more thoughts as to it?

D.C.B. No, but if we just see the attractiveness of the Spirit’s operations in that chapter and His knowledge. We sang:

Thou dost know the Father’s feelings (Hymn 121).

The Father’s feelings are behind all that we have here, His feelings of affection for the Son that He would draw persons that the Son should be magnified by these persons attached to Him.

G.C.McK. So that everything that the Spirit does would have these feelings in mind so that what He engenders in my heart is bringing about what is suitable in view of the divine heart, the divine affections. What a level of things He is operating on, you might say, because these are holy matters when we speak of divine affections.

E.W.J. It is interesting what is being said about the Spirit. There is a peculiar blending of what God is doing behind the scenes – is that what you have in mind? – in causing us. Some of us know what it is to be caused to come into things. I was thinking about the servant. The servant came to the household of Rebecca in Genesis 24: “And her brother and her mother said, Let the maiden abide with us some days …” and in type the Spirit says, “Do not hinder me” and she is in accord with the Spirit: “Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go” (vv 55,56,58). I think there is a beautiful cohesion, the work of God and the result of it in my soul. Do you think that would be right?

G.C.McK. So the work of God is beautifully co-ordinated. We know our experience is mixed. We know the ups and downs and the failures and all the rest, but there is a progressive line in our histories that will come to a conclusion, and in that I can see that the divine operations are co-ordinated. You find the servant praying and being so thankful too that he had been led to the house of his master’s brethren. It is co-ordination. But then the other side is, is there something in us that is responsive? Are we ready for it?

E.W.J. I was thinking about Hosea, “And I it was that taught Ephraim to walk”. We go back and think of Ephraim and Manasseh. His name means ‘double fruitfulness’ as if there was a result for God from the heart. I think there may be results with us here. We think of the young people here. Do they sit down and consider, what is for God in my life?

G.C.McK. Well, that is very good, ‘double fruitfulness’, that is Ephraim and that is really in type the Gentile saints, the saints of the assembly. That is very fine.

G.A.B. This attraction is related very much to the question of food, is it not? The “gently caused … to eat” in Hosea, I suppose would be the manna initially, but what we have here is something further, but it is what keeps you coming back, the satisfaction that you can derive from eating the flesh of the Son of man and drinking His blood.

G.C.McK. Yes, we come to what is “truly food” and what is “truly drink” and then in that eating as we know – I could not expound the section – there is a certain progression. What it is really doing is helping us to see that there is a realm beyond death because Christ has died, and strengthening our affections in view of entering into what is beyond death. In fact, as we know, the section ends not with eating His flesh and blood but eating me, He says, so that really the whole movement is towards a risen and glorified Christ. The question is how far do we go, how far are we being drawn?

J.R.C. It would be right, therefore, to think of a measure of responsibility on our part: “he that eats”.

G.C.McK. I think that is right. Would you say a little more?

J.R.C. The food is there; it is available, but we could bypass it. “He that eats”: that calls for submission on my part too.

G.C.McK. It does. One side of it, of course, is developing a taste for good food, for what is right, a taste for Christ, we might say. They came to loath the manna, “this light bread”, so it is a question of acquiring taste. The manna would no doubt help us in that as rightly appropriated, but there is responsibility, as you say. It says in the Proverbs that the sluggard will put his hand in the pot and He will not even take it up to his mouth again (Prov 19: 24). It is all there: he will even put his hand to it but he will not actually lift it to his mouth. But that is nature: we find it difficult to go in for the thing responsibly.

J.T.B.(Gr.) Does eating then involve not only the appropriation of the manna but the appropriation of the victuals to give us the power to go through the Jordan, but also right on to the old corn of the land, to enjoy the Christ which is indigenous to heaven? The superiority of Christianity is that we have what is even greater because we have Christ personally.

G.C.McK. Well, you are covering a lot of ground there as to food. We have had the manna and then the victuals, as you say, and then right through to the old corn of the land, so there is teaching in that. The manna speaks of Christ here. We carry that with us, of course, what Christ was here, but really in the service of God we are occupied with another realm. We would not be alluding so much in the service of praise to what Christ was in His pathway of flesh and blood because we are occupied with Him and we are with Him in another realm of things, the old corn of the land. I wonder if we realise that and experience that after the Supper we move into another realm, not that in which we broke bread because we break bread in the wilderness. We move into a spiritual realm and we need the food to move.

G.B. I was going to say in relation to what you were saying earlier that Jesus says, “Work not for the food which perishes”. There was that in Himself that had to be laid hold of. Would that be right?

G.C.McK. Yes, that is right, “the food which perishes”. Working for food seems to suggest the idea of responsibility that has been brought up, because our responsibility must run along with this. While there are divine operations and divine attraction and drawing us, we have to be amenable to this. We might rebel against it as persons did here. They said, “This word is hard”. It might enter into our hearts: this is too hard. That is what the flesh would say: I am not able for this, eating His flesh and drinking His blood. I am not able to move into what is beyond flesh and blood, beyond what I know and touch here, a realm that involves that I have to accept death.

J.R.C. The danger always is that we drop back from the level the Lord would have us at, like going into the land. There were those that settled down instead of going into the land. That shows what we are naturally.

G.C.McK. Yes, there is what we are naturally, so the Lord Jesus said, “the flesh profits nothing”. You are not going to get any profit from the flesh, but what about the Spirit? “It is the Spirit which quickens”. We want to get on to that side of things. It is a chapter of life. The food here is to sustain life. It is the living Father who has sent Christ and we are to live on account of Christ so there is to be life in the saints, life on account of Christ.

D.S. Say something about this living on account of Christ. The footnote says a little about it: ‘by reason of what the Father is and his living;’ ‘I live by reason of his being and living’ (note ‘e’ to verse 57). It seems to link very much with what you are drawing us on to in John 17.

G.C.McK. It is attractive to my heart that it is connected with the Christ here: “I live on account of the Father”, how His whole life and being was bound up with the Father’s and then there seems to be correspondence to that; as we appropriate Christ, our life is related to that blessed Man, the One that went into death and who is now on high. The whole principle of life in my soul is connected with me appropriating a Christ that has risen.

D.S. I wondered if it linked it with what J.T.B.(Gr.) said as to the old corn of the land – he that eats Me. It is Christ according to divine purpose before the worlds were founded, that blessed Man, in His own realm.

G.C.McK. Well, life is in us and it has to be sustained by such food. It involves the acceptance of death but the whole matter goes on to a living Christ on high: “he also who eats me shall live also on account of me”; and then we are glad to understand that the Spirit quickens and the words the Lord Jesus speaks are “spirit and are life”. We want to get into the spirit of things.

J.D.G. Would the touch to the affections of Christ coming to us give us a sense that we are linked up with a Man who is living in another world and He would draw us over to that world, not only in the service of God but to seek Him out there all the time?

G.C.McK. Very good, so that you might say it is not an alien world to us where He is. We belong in that world and our life is bound up there and that would apply in the whole week. We have a life that does not really subsist in what is down here in what is material and natural.

J.D.G. The Lord Jesus says, “I live on account of the Father”. I liked your touch about that: that is how He lived when He was here, when He sought the Father’s presence, went out to pray, for instance.

G.C.McK. It brings out the perfection of His manhood. Of course, He is a divine Person. What can we say? Here in manhood He takes this subject place of being bound up with the Father in His life here, the living Father. What a lovely touch, “the living Father has sent me” as if to say there is a realm of life and He is living in connection with a living Father. Are we connected in our affections with a living Christ?

E.W.J. You begin to wonder where your faith is, speaking to a Person that has called you, and you have had to judge yourself. I wonder in what respect the feelings of the living Father, and His interest in you or me personally are real to us. Do I believe that? You can draw from that quarter. Is that what you mean?

G.C.McK. Well, I think faith is essential to this. I do not think there is any entrance into it apart from these things being in the faith of our souls and then, as was remarked, the help of the Holy Spirit. It is remarkable that each of the divine Persons would operate the Father and the Lord Jesus and the Spirit, to help us into these things.

I was wondering whether we could look a little further because it seemed to me this morning that the affections of the brethren were being really drawn into a realm of divine affection. It was as if our hearts and minds were just commanded by divine love. I felt that before the Father. I felt the Spirit was helping us as to divine affections so I thought of John 17 because it is the intimate speech of the Lord to the Father. He mentions love: “thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me” and so on. He goes on to, “thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world”. He is touching on the realm of love towards the end. Earlier in the chapter it is a question of responsibility and being preserved and kept and sanctified, but at the end of John 17 He is moving into more the realm of love, is He not?

W.M.G. I am thinking of verse 22: “And the glory which thou hast given me I have given them, that they may be one, as we are one; I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one”.

G.C.McK. Yes, it has been said – we have been well taught, I think – that the glory in verse 22 is the glory of sonship. It is not actually defined. That is interesting: the Lord does not define it, but He speaks about it a glory given to him. That would lead to some spiritual enquiry in our minds. Sometimes things are not spelled out in scripture for the reason that we have to explore them and find out what the reality is so that it is not just that sonship is a kind of doctrine; it is a glory.

G.A.B. Love essentially attracts. Even, as has been pointed out – Mr Raven pointed out – the lake of fire was a necessity of love because everything that brought in distance has to be totally banished so that love can operate and draw to itself.

G.C.McK. Quite so, so love has its own necessities and that was one solemn one, what you have quoted, that evil must be restricted to its own place. Then there is this other place, this heavenly place, this place of privilege for us.

J.T.B. (Gr.) He says in chapter 14, “I am coming again and shall receive you to myself”, v 3. Is this the area to which He receives us where this love can flow freely and unhinderedly?

G.C.McK. Well, it is the Father’s house, I suppose, in the scripture you allude to in chapter 14. It is the realm where He is for the pleasure of the Father and I suppose that would be included in what is in mind here in the sense of privilege although I wonder just how far this scripture goes, that “they also may be with me, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me”. It seems as if it takes us to the threshold of eternity, to the threshold of what a creature can touch.

W.M.G. So would the next glory you are referring to relate to Christ in glory that we experience and that would be beholding His glory: “that they may behold my glory”. Could you say something about that?

G.C.McK. Well, it is Christ’s distinctiveness. Although this section is full of our privilege and the privilege that we have as with the Father and as given sonship, the summit of it seems to be that we have sight of a glory that we do not share. We often speak about this but I wonder how much we really understand that: “my glory which thou hast given me”. It is distinctive to Christ; we do not share it. It is not what we are associated with with Christ; it is what is distinctive to Him: “which thou hast given me, for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world”. I think it must connect with Christ as the One who has accomplished all God’s purposes, everything seen shining in Him.

E.W.J. Mr Darby uses the expression – I have come across it – ‘before He became man’. He goes right back as you say, “that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father”. There is almost mystery in that. He is unique, is that so? and we are drawn to see that.

G.C.McK. I think so. We are drawn to that. It is not in connection with our need or what has been effectuated exactly in connection with us. It is what is for divine satisfaction. I was wondering about the scripture in Chronicles that speaks about the ark being brought into Solomon’s temple. It says there was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone (2 Chron. 5: 10). There would have been manna there, the pot of manna, and Aaron’s rod and there had been very precious matters in regard to Christ’s service to His own and the provision that has been from the divine side, the cords of a man, but in the end that is not there. Would that connect a little with this thought of just the original purposes of God carried through, rather than our side of it?

J.D.G. I have often wondered whether we get some glimpse of the glory that was in eternity “for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world”, whether there would be some expression of that.

G.C.McK. The love with which Christ was loved before the foundation of the world in some way is reflected in that glory that we see.

J.T.B.(Ed.) Would that link with the half cubit in the ark, just what you are referring to that there is something that can be contemplated but which shall ever be beyond us, do you think?

G.C.McK. Yes, each of the dimensions of the ark has the half in it as if you cannot approach that holy subject of Christ and His humanity and what He has effected for God and encompass it from any angle.

J.T.B.(Ed.) So you referred to Chronicles: the ark in its place and it is the ark really in its place according to the divine pleasure.

G.C.McK. I think that is what it is. Go on.

J.T.B.(Ed.) Everything in His pathway is swept up there but also, as you were saying, the extra half cubit brings in an impression of what is eternal as well.

G.C.McK. I think that goes beyond what has to do with our sustaining and our feeding and so on and how we have been drawn into things. No doubt the way we have been brought in is integral with the divine pleasure, but still the thought in mind there is not what was catering for us but what is for the heart of God, His counsels accomplished.

D.S. The wonder of it is that the Lord says, “I desire that … they also may be with me” as if there is going to be eternal satisfaction for the heart of Christ that those that the Father has given Him will be with Him in this realm which is close to what is inscrutable, as Jim Brown is suggesting, and yet the saints are there sustained because they have the Spirit, which, of course, is inscrutable.

G.C.McK. Very good, so it is divine desires here. It is Christ’s desire: “I desire”. We might say we could not have formulated that as a desire in our own hearts. There is what is in Christ’s heart for us, but do you think, as He discloses in this prayer what His desires are, we get instruction that might draw our hearts out to be in keeping with His desires, to see what satisfies His heart?

J.R.C. I was just going to ask, how would you describe glory.

G.C.McK. It is clearly the outshining of the essence of something.

J.R.C. I wrote that some years ago at the front of my Bible from Mr Stoney: ‘The glory is the expression of divine satisfaction according to all its attributes, resting on a Man’.

G.C.McK. Very good, ‘resting’. That is divine satisfaction, every divine desire and purpose satisfied in Christ.

J.R.C. We might think glory is beyond us but we are brought into an area where we can appreciate the glory.

G.C.McK. Well, I think that is right. May we be helped! May our desires be in that direction appreciating what glory is!

 

EDINBURGH

1 April 2001

 

 

Key to initials

G.Bailey, Edinburgh; D.C.Brown, Edinburgh; G.A.Brown, Edinburgh; J.T.Brown, Edinburgh; J.T.Brown, Grangemouth; M.Cowan, Kirkcaldy; J.R.Cumming, Edinburgh; J.D.Gray, Edinburgh; W.M.Grosse, Edinburgh; E.W.Johnson, Edinburgh; T.Lock, Edinburgh; G.C.McKay, Glasgow; J.Marshall, Edinburgh; D.Scougal, Edinburgh; R.Trotter, Edinburgh