SPIRITUAL CONDITIONS MARKING THE TESTIMONY IN THE ABSENCE OF CHRIST
[p. 175] SPIRITUAL CONDITIONS MARKING THE TESTIMONY IN THE ABSENCE OF CHRIST
John 13:3-5; John 13:14,15; John 14:6 - 18
As we had before us on a previous occasion, Luke gives us the character of what presented itself to the Lord’s mind immediately after the institution of the Supper, before going on to the Mount of Olives. The Lord evidently had before Him the actual conditions of difficulty through which His testimony would have to make its way before the kingdom of God was come. So we get in Luke’s gospel the treachery of Judas, the desire to be greatest on the part of the disciples and Satan’s desire to sift them as wheat. Conditions similar to these the Lord Himself had to meet in His own path of service, so He refers to “my temptations”. He had known what it was to face all temptations, and so the disciples would see how He overcame. Hence the need for a sword.
John’s gospel gives us another aspect of things altogether. Between the Supper and the Mount of Olives there is given the great unfolding of divine thoughts we get in chapters 13 to 17. The Lord indicates the spiritual conditions that He has set up and which were to mark the testimony during His absence. They would bring the saints out in a character that would provoke the hatred of the world.
We find that there is a clean company amongst whom the service of love is carried on. Then the knowledge of the Father, the presence of the Comforter, the Lord Himself coming to His own, manifesting Himself to faithful lovers, and everything necessary to sustain the testimony can be got by simply asking. These are great spiritual realities; they [p. 176] take no account of the saints as having the flesh in them. There is no reference but to what is the product of the work of God. We have to learn to keep our thoughts on the spiritual line. It requires the competency to act as the Lord Himself acted; none but spiritual persons could do that. The Lord inaugurates a service of love in a clean company, which is to persist so long as the Lord is absent. We must understand that the saints are a clean company, and that the conditions in which they are are the result of the death of Christ and the work of God in them. So clean are they that they need only their feet washed. They must have their feet washed not because they are defiled, no thought of sin or moral defilement, but because they are so clean that by contact with the world, if they put their feet down ever so lightly in it, they pick up some of the dust. The very cleanness produces a sensitiveness so that every contact tends to remove something of the spiritual.
We are absolutely separate from it all in the power of the death of Christ; we are as clean as that. Yet we come into contact with that which tends to take us away from the blessed sense of the spiritual conditions that the washing has established. So it is that the Lord, conscious of His greatness, undertakes such a service amongst His saints so that they have part with Him. It is a spiritual condition attaching to the testimony; there could be no testimony without it. It is all exemplified in Himself as the Teacher; so He says “Learn from me”.
The Supper stands in relation to all these spiritual conditions. We understand the necessity for this feet washing, and if I feel the need, all the brethren need it, and we lay ourselves out to promote it. All our intercourse with one another should tend to have that character and not be merely social or friendly. It is a spiritual condition that is to abide. The Lord says, “Love one another as I have loved you”; it is serving love. “First love” is to love one another as [p. 177] Christ has loved us, and it was from this that they had got away at Ephesus. It is a perpetual service of love until we leave this world altogether.
Peter did not understand that he was clean, because he wanted his hands and head washed, but the Lord explains that he is clean. “He that is washed all over needs not to wash save his feet, but is wholly clean”. We shall not understand what feet washing is unless we understand that we are clean through the word which Christ has spoken to us. The word brings in what is wholly of God. All through the gospel of John the saints are viewed as identified with what they believe. That is the nature of their cleanness — “clean by reason of the word which I have spoken to you”. The linen towel suggests that the operation is complete; the saint is left absolutely happy and undistracted in the presence of the spiritual.
The second great thought the Lord speaks of is the knowledge of the Father. This is a great spiritual condition that marks the testimony, that the saints have the knowledge of the Father. If we are set in movement by the service of love the traitor goes out and there are conditions established in which we can come to the Father. This really enters into our having part with Christ. Our place is with Christ but then He is with the Father. The Father’s house will not be attractive to any who do not know the Father. Philip shows that the disciples had not entered into the real spiritual force of it. It is another thing to see the Father in Christ, greater than all the promises of God which they had believed. The Lord has all the springs of His being in the Father; He could say, “I am in the Father”. The knowledge of the Father really comes out over against present conditions. This would give character not only to the testimony but to the worship; to know the Father is a wonderful spring of worship in the soul. God is pleased to be known as the Father. It is the name of revelation. Those who saw Jesus saw the Father. There was [p. 178] a blessed Man in the world who was in the Father; the Father was the source of every thought, every affection, and the Father was in Him for revelation, so He spoke, “The words which I speak to you I do not speak from myself, but the Father who abides in me, he does the works”.
We know God as the Father revealed in the Son and we come to the Father by Him. It is all mediatorial, not direct knowledge, but is revealed in Jesus, in the Son. So the works are to be pondered because they are the Father’s works. Nothing was seen or heard from Him that was not of the Father. All was expressed in a divine Person become Man for the very purpose that the Father might be revealed. So now He could say, “They have both seen and hated both me and my Father”, John 15:24. They all saw the Father.
Now we get spiritual conditions in which the Father is known by the words and by the works. He says, “Believe me for the works’ sake”. What works these were! The turning the water into wine was the Father’s work; the raising of the nobleman’s son was the Father’s work; the healing of the impotent man was the Father’s work; the feeding of the multitude was the Father’s work; the opening of the eyes of the blind was the Father’s work; the raising of Lazarus was the Father’s work. The revelation of the Father, how wonderful! It is the Father showing that none of these things, these conditions, have any part in His mind as to man. What marks men is disappointment, sorrow, death, and dearth. The Father says, ‘Nothing of this will do for Me; I cannot have any of these things’. The Father revealed in the Son is the answer to what came in in Eden, as removing every condition contrary to Himself. That is the Father, in pure grace. Not only is He merciful and compassionate, but He comes out in His beloved Son to show that these things are entirely contrary to His mind; there is not a trace of them in His thought, We only know the Father in the conditions in which He has come in the greatness of His love.
“Emmanuel” is God coming in to fulfil all His promises, but there is something greater. It is Himself come to light as the Father revealed in the Son. The Father is greater than all He gives, and the wonderful works are the inlet for us into what He is, so there is no other way in which we can arrive at what He is. So when He describes the eternal conditions in Revelation 21 He does not tell what is there, but what is not there. That is how we arrive at things from our side. The Revelation takes account of what exists on our side. The mediatorial system is this. If God as Jehovah had secured the affections of His people, how much more when He comes out as Father in the Son! So we get the impression that the Father has another system of things altogether before Him, where there is no trace of former things. It is the real knowledge of God revealed in these wonderful works and words. It is important to think of these works as the Father’s works and the words as the Father’s words; it is real spiritual knowledge.
Then the Lord says, “The works which I do shall he do also”; that is, that every believer is to do the Father’s works. It is the revelation of what the Father is perpetuated in the saints. So He says, “He shall do greater works than these, because I go to the Father”. What the Lord did which the people saw were material works; the greater works are spiritual works. The saints do in a spiritual way what He did in a material way. Things are to be done spiritually and are thus greater than the material things. It is bringing out the Father and so continues the revelation. The things are now done spiritually, and the Lord in doing them had a spiritual thought in His mind. So we ask what was in the Father’s mind when He did these things.
There are the further spiritual conditions introduced by the Son of God in having gone to the Father. So we have the Comforter, a divine Person come in to take His place beside us, who identifies Himself with us.
[p. 180] The Lord also refers to asking. He says, “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, this will I do”. He makes everything available on the principle of asking; this is a further great spiritual condition. The asking here supposes that we are intelligent. We understand that we are a clean company engaged in washing one another’s feet, we know the Father, we have the Comforter with us, and we realise the necessity of asking. It is all so simple!
These are the greatest realities in the universe, but they are spiritual realities. They lie outside the confines of the human mind and desires, but they are all available on the line of asking.