Crumbs
“Therefore, whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed” (1 Cor 15: 11), that is Christ. In each epistle we have that which God has secured for Himself in the Person and work of Christ insisted on. This is the key to them all, and it is that which the saints are to be in the good of. It is for us that the epistles make known what Christ is to God. This is what the Spirit of God had before Him in writing them. We find varied ways of presenting this in each epistle, according to the various conditions of the saints who are addressed. Nevertheless the object is ONE. CHRIST is God’s resource, and food is not only knowledge, it is assimilated and formative knowledge, that which God would and does thus minister, either to sustain or to form. To sustain every right thought and affection which exists in us, or to form fresh links of thought, in desires and affections God-ward. God’s food for us is Christ.
One divine mind has written all the Bible, and all with one divine object, to draw us more into its current, and into correspondence with itself! The Bible is the oracles of God, the “living oracles” (Acts 7: 38 NT), but it is not this for angels, it is for man. Mere mental perception and the display of it—great acuteness in grasping points of comparison and of contrast, as set forth in the epistles (which very especially in the Bible address themselves to Christians)—will, if love is not in activity thereby, tend but to innate the individual. Love desires to serve as unknown, mere mental perception and acuteness is bold and comes continually to the front. This is a great trial in the assemblies of the saints.
We only really grow as we grow in LOVE. That is, as love grows we grow. This is the only true stature of a man before God. His stature is not what he knows (any more than your stature is the food you eat), but how he is formed by what he knows. Love has been brought down and displayed on earth, but it has not left the earth! It is the divine nature, and its home is in the saints.
Every scripture reading—every ministry of the truth—every varied aspect of it as presented in every epistle—are special privileges from God with a view to the rooting and grounding of the soul in one thing—love, “being rooted and grounded in LOVE”, Eph 3: 17.
Oh, that we may ever remember the love that is in question is divine. That is, it acts from its own nature, and delights to act without anything to attract in its objects! Every bit of knowledge, every mental perception and admiration of the truth without a corresponding growth in love is worthless. Moreover, it will tend to perpetual friction amongst saints, and to pride and sourness in the individual. But love is never wearied, never distrustful—its delights are in itself, 1 Cor 13!
Anything that tends to friction is the opposite of the “bond of peace”, Eph 4: 3. This bond was first promulgated in John 20, “Peace be unto you”. We are, that is saints are, held together by it. They are in it, and have to endeavour “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”. There is not, in God’s sight, and there is not to be in our sight, a single ripple to disturb the inside company, see John 20: 21-26.
From Food for the Faithful—vol 5, 1892
