SONSHIP
[p. 166] SONSHIP
Galatians 3: 24 - 29; Galatians 4: 4 - 7; Romans 8: 14 - 21; Ephesians 1: 3 - 6
THR Many are desirous to look into the subject of sonship this morning. I think people will find the difficulties are more in themselves than in the putting forth of the truth. If we were fully set for the new place there would be no difficulty in understanding sonship. We do not like to leave this place and go to another: we try to attach the privilege of sonship to the scene in which we are.
FER We had better look at the passages where the truth is brought out: Galatians 3: 24 - 29; chapter 4: 4 - 7; Romans 8: 14 - 21; Ephesians 1: 3 - 6. The great thing is to look it in the face. It is a point of great moment to apprehend that sonship does not belong to this present scene at all, but to another place. The light and the spirit of it are given to us in the scene in which we are, but the thing itself belongs to another scene. Therefore you must leave where you are, to enjoy it; it is in a scene where, in one sense, you are not.
THR I think the difficulty of souls is that they attach Christianity to this scene; they have not got the sense of deliverance out of it.
Ques What is deliverance?
THR It takes me right out of the scene in which I am, to know union with Christ.
Ques Is there any relationship that could be enjoyed, except as outside this scene?
THR Christian relationships undoubtedly belong to another scene.
Rem Deliverance has been rather limited, I think, to getting out [p. 167] of the trouble of Romans 7.
FER A person might be free of the trouble of Romans 7, but not be free of the world.
Ques Will you go over the scriptures read?
FER Galatians 3: 26 — “Ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”. In Galatians you get the purpose: light has come in as to this. In Romans the prominent point is the spirit of it; in Ephesians, the place of it. In Galatians, faith has succeeded law, and has brought in the light of God’s purpose. It is “in Christ Jesus”. In Christ Jesus you are all the sons of God through faith.
Ques Is this faith in contrast to law?
FER Yes. When faith is come we are no longer under a schoolmaster. It is what faith is to bring in; but faith is not fact.
THR Faith enters into the purpose.
FER Exactly. The light of purpose has come in.
THR Faith always looked outside this present scene: that is the great point in Hebrews 11. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen”.
Ques What is “sons of God without rebuke” in Philippians 2?
FER It is “children” there. The thought of “children” is that the Father is with us in love; “sons” is that we are with the Father. Mr. D. used to say the only thing Christians actually possessed here was forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit.
Ques Is it so that “children” speaks of descent?
FER I do not think that is quite just. It is not the Scriptural thought of children. The Spirit bears witness with our spirit: it is by the Spirit we understand we are children. Sonship has to do with the apprehension of God’s purpose in its full result for us. In John 1 it is Christ gives the title to take the place of children. You could not be children unless born of God, and so this is introduced in John as a test of it. You ought not to take that place, except as [p. 168] born of God; but the place is given you of the Father — “See what love the Father has given to us that we should be called the children of God”.
Ques Has sonship anything to do, as to the apprehension of our souls, with our actual present position before God?
FER No. It is the revelation of God’s purpose through Christ.
Ques But we may apprehend that in our souls now?
FER Certainly; but it is what is true in Christ. As to rank or status, we have no rank or status here: it is all in Christ. Sonship does not confer on us any present dignity that I can see: I am in the light of all the dignity that is in Christ. The dignity has to come out by-and-by; it is there, but it is no dignity to me down here. We are going into it, and we have the light of it now. I think it all hangs on, how are we going to touch what is in Christ? It is only reviving the question of three or four years ago, is the thing in us, or we in it? If we are in it, how? The tendency is to bring every thought of God, every promise of God, to us down here. It was said, ‘Everything is as true of us in this world as it ever will be, and the Holy Spirit is here that we may enjoy it’. I am only speaking of the way in which things were stated: it was laid down that you possessed everything, and the Holy Spirit was given that you might enjoy it. The Christian here was the depository of everything. It was the most complete falsification of Christianity. It is perfectly true that the believer is justified, and has the Holy Spirit; but the positive blessings of Christianity are not said to be in the believer, but in Christ; and the crucial question is, how are you going to touch what is in Christ? Two things are essential — deliverance and the divine nature. They are concurrent: you cannot have a vacuum. Dead to sin, alive to God in Christ Jesus, they are always concurrent.
Rem What is “in Christ Jesus” is according to purpose.
FER It is good to faith by the Holy Spirit. Faith gets the light of it, but two essential things come in: you want deliverance from what you are in, and the divine nature to lead you into what is in Christ.
Ques Do you mean by “the light of it” that it is all revealed and we see it?
FER God has been pleased to make known His purpose in Christ — that is what I mean.
THR The Spirit and the divine nature are most important. A man might adopt a child, and tell him to call him ‘father’; but he cannot give the natural feelings of a child; and by-and-by the child may call him ‘sir’, and not ‘father’: and that is where many Christians are — they say they are sons, but are not really in the truth of it.
Ques Might that question of divine nature be made a little plainer for us?
THR It is love.
Ques But as to entering into the enjoyment of sonship in connection with it?
THR It seems to me to involve the difference between Romans and Ephesians. In Romans you have the Spirit, but in Ephesians you come to another point — that you are quickened together with Christ. I have the sense that I live in what He lives in. It is love, what God is as known in Christ.
Rem “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God”.
THR What is there but love in the divine nature?
Rem We cannot enter into it naturally.
THR I need to have the sense that before God I am gone, and that there is another Man before Him to His own infinite delight and satisfaction, and to know what it is to be in Him; it is not standing, but the soul reaching Him where He is.
Ques If sonship is connected with another scene [p. 170] into which Christ is gone, how am I to reach Him there? We cannot reach Him without loving Him; is not that the point? Is that what you mean?
FER Pretty much; but I think you leave God out too much. There is a special link with Christ, but sonship refers to God as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You are quickened together with Christ, raised up together and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and this is to satisfy the love of God.
THR You realise what Christ is in the presence of God, what He is to Him, and if you are going to live with God in that sense, you must have His nature — not as a pious Jew loving God with all his heart, but perfectly free with God, formed according to Him.
FER There is most perfect freedom in sonship; in that sense it is beyond ‘children’. Even in the assembly you are nothing without love.
Rem I do not quite see how in the matter of sonship the divine nature would show itself.
FER You are not competent for sonship if not according to God and His nature: you could not have perfect freedom without it; holy and without blame before Him in love; it is not only that you love, but you are in it.
Ques Does not that lie in new creation?
FER Yes, and you could not speak of living together with Christ except as being emancipated from all here.
Rem It seems to me we should not be quite so free to use these terms if we knew more about them.
Ques Have we not been on a wrong tack all this time in using them as true of everybody?
FER I do not see how you can be quickened, except as risen with Christ. The indiscriminate application of truths generalises everything, and produces a very unreal and artificial state in souls. The nature is identified with myself. People have looked [p. 171] at it as if it were a kind of material thing given to a person. A great many Christians have thought that in new birth a new nature was given — full blown.
Ques Would you tell us a little what the true thought is?
FER I remember very well, thirty years ago, Mr. D. preached at the Priory, and drew a distinction between new birth and eternal life. That opened my eyes to the thing. I saw that eternal life was not an immediate and necessary consequence of new birth. A good many were stirred up because it cut athwart what they had been accustomed to believe. Their thought had been the communication of nature in divine birth.
THR The teaching was that you were born of the word, and that as the full truth of Christianity was now revealed in the word, you had it all. It has always struck me as to what we get in 2 Peter 1, “Partakers of” (communion in — you cannot translate it) “the divine nature” — that you have part in it, but it is myself; I love, not a nature apart from myself.
FER You cannot talk of the nature of a thing till the thing itself is there. Endowments are not myself; the endowments pass away, but the nature is myself, and remains. All the talk about nature, as an abstract thing, began right, I am sure, but it has become crystallised and pernicious.
Ques How would you meet the idea that in new birth something is imparted?
FER The teaching of Scripture is that I am born again, whatever may be the extent of it; it is myself, the individuality. That is how Scripture speaks of divine birth; “Except a man be born again”. It is a human idea that something is imparted, but Scripture says I am born again. Then the Lord puts it more abstractly, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”, for it would go too far to say: he which [p. 172] is born of the Spirit is spirit; it would make me spirit, and nothing else.
Ques Do you touch the divine nature before you receive the Holy Spirit?
FER You first touch it when you appreciate the love of God: we love Him because He first loved us.
Ques Is there growth in the divine nature?
FER I hope so! Romans 7: 25 is the mind and apprehension, not a nature.
Ques Have we not had a wrong idea as to what ‘nature’ means?
FER It is the looking upon nature or life as something substantive; any substance is characterised by its nature: but you cannot talk of the nature of a thing till the thing is there. It is like many other things: terms that meant right at first have become stereotyped, and people take their doctrine from the terms, not from Scripture.
Ques You said ‘sons’ are with the Father, but ‘children’ is the Father with them. Is it true of Christians that they are loved by the Father down here? “That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them”.
FER The whole assembly stands on that ground.
Ques But we are that in glory?
FER Yes; but in a very different state of things. Christians in a hostile world are the objects of the Father’s love as Christ was — that is the idea of ‘children’ to me. They could not have the privilege without the nature: but the nature is not the privilege; it manifests that they are that. ‘Sons’ is to be with the Father at the top of the mountain, and you look down and survey the whole extent of the Father’s counsels, conscious of being with Christ, and as Christ, in His presence.
Ques Is it the full knowledge of the Son of God?
FER Yes. I do not think “sons and daughters” in 2 Corinthians 6: 18 gives the idea of children, but that [p. 173] God will be to us what He was to Israel: He is not ashamed to own those that are separate from the world, and to undertake for them, in the sense of taking care of them. He gives us the Old Testament blessing now; but if we are content with that, we do not know sonship in its true power. You realise deliverance from all here, if you are in the enjoyment of Him there. It raises the question whether you are prepared to leave this scene for another.
THR In Ephesians 1 redemption is brought in to show you are clear, and free to go on to another scene — that there is nothing left behind that needs to be cleared.
FER The truth of the one body hangs upon sonship — there is only one Spirit of sonship. We being many are one body in Christ: it follows, of necessity, on being partakers of one Spirit. I think it is of moment to apprehend that the truth of the body hangs upon sonship.
Ques Is this in line with what John presents as “one flock and one shepherd”?
FER I think so.
Ques You said once the sheep had to do with nature, and that the truth involves nature?
FER I think so. “I ... know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father”. It is the same character of intimacy.
Ques Is the “knowledge of the Son of God” knowledge in association with all the saints?
FER I should think it was more the knowledge of Him as the Head and Centre of this new system, in which are displayed the counsels of God. ‘Unity’ refers both to “faith” and the “knowledge”.
Rem We must begin with the knowledge of Himself.
FER And we must end with it. It begins with the “unity of the faith”, and ends with “the knowledge of the Son of God”. You come to a perfect man and to the fulness of Christ. The fulness of Christ is the body.
Ques Do we not get the thought of the body as well as the bride in Ephesians 5?
FER Yes; Eve was a figure of the body, as well as of the bride: she was taken from Adam. The church is taken from Christ to be united to Him, and so He nourishes and cherishes it.
Ques Does the thought of ‘body’ drop in glory?
FER I think not; but the bride character of things is the prominent one, i.e., what is displayed.
Ques Is the idea of the body that it is the complement of Christ?
FER I do not think that is the idea of Scripture. I think where the figure of the human body is employed as an illustration, it does not take in Christ. The body is commonly distinguished from Christ: “From whom the whole body”, etc.; that is, both in Ephesians and Colossians the body is looked at as in itself complete, but deriving from Him. I do not think the figure in 1 Corinthians 12 goes beyond the church; for it speaks in detail of the eye and the ear, which, of course, belong to the head, as members. The figure of the human body is brought in to illustrate the relation in which we stand to one another in the body down here. We have been materialising these things too much.
Ques What do you say of Psalm 133 as an illustration of this?
FER There is no idea in it of the head and the body; Christ receives the Spirit to shed forth. To apply “the head cannot say to the feet” to Christ is not, I think, the Scripture way of treating Him: Scripture never forgets that He is divine.
Ques In what sense is the church “the Christ”?
FER It is the anointed body. “For by [p. 175] one Spirit are we all baptised into one body”. “He called their name Adam” — that brings in the bride.
Ques What is the force of “gave him to be head over all things to the assembly”?
FER That He might in all things have the pre-eminence — be chief.
Rem I fancy we have forgotten these things are only human figures.
FER Exactly; the same has been done with new birth; it has been materialised.
THR You have got to dig the wells; it is hard work, and the Philistines will fill them up still; they are awkward people; they dwell in the land and have prior claims. They came out of Egypt before Israel did.
Rem In Jeremiah 23 we have “the Lord our righteousness”, and in chapter 33, “Jerusalem shall be called the Lord our righteousness”. Mr. D. connected these passages with 1 Corinthians 1: 30 and 2 Corinthians 5: 21.
FER “The Christ” is the anointed, and in that sense the church is here as Christ, and to hold the ground for Christ: when here He claimed what belonged to Him, and was rejected, and the church is left here to claim the inheritance, what belongs to Christ.
Ques Are you thinking of the heavenly line of things?
FER The whole extent of what belongs to Christ. The professing church has set to work to claim the inheritance without Christ. We claim it by the most intense separation from the organisation of this world. You compromise the testimony if you use the world in any way except to go through it and earn a subsistence in it. The enemy is claiming it for man, for he dare not claim it for himself. That is why the conflict comes in Ephesians 6. The Christian says, I stand apart from the whole thing because the world [p. 176] belongs to Christ.
Ques Is the claiming by testimony, and not actual?
FER Yes. A man mars the testimony the moment he accepts honour from the world. It is very searching.
THR We had a nice case in Berlin of a young soldier who declined to take ‘buttons’ (answering to ‘stripes’) for good conduct.
FER That is a man to be admired. I should like to shake hands with that man! I do not know who of us is prepared to refuse ‘buttons’, but you will not understand sonship if you do not. See a man who accepts the world’s honour: he will not enter much into spiritual things. I believe the providence of God comes in and marks your path for you, so that you will not be carried into that kind of thing if you desire to go on.
THR You would seek to help others, but your interest would be in another scene. If risen together with Christ, you would not want the honour of this world. That is the whole point of sonship: it is “in Christ Jesus”, and if you want to reach that you must be free of this scene.
Ques Why did you say that risen with Christ comes in Colossians before quickening?
FER They must come concurrently, but the first place is given to “risen”, which gives the thought of deliverance. “Dead” gives the thought that I am weak. I accept death — but “risen”, I am out of it: it is complete deliverance.
THR “Quickened us together with Christ” goes a long way; it means you live in all in which He lives, and you are competent for it.
Ques Must we not notice that it was written to the Ephesians and Colossians, and not apply it promiscuously?
FER You must learn what the Spirit is to you before you touch sonship. You must go to “therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the [p. 177] flesh ... if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live”, before you come to the question of sonship. The effect on the Galatians of what was put before them ought to have been: here is a most wonderful thing that is brought before us, which we do not know anything about; it ought to have exercised them deeply. But in Ephesians it is different; he breaks it at once with the great truth of sonship, outside this world and in heavenly places to Himself. The Galatians were going back into the bondage of servants, but the light of sonship would set them at liberty: it was not that they would get into it all in a moment, but it would exercise them. Did they want to enter into this: “Ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”? Then comes the point, how are we going to touch what is in Christ Jesus? New creation comes in and deliverance. You could not be before God if you were not holy and without blame in love. “Holy and without blame” characterises us “in love” — there is no aspersion on you, nothing that could come against you.
Ques What is “before the foundation of the world”?
FER It is outside the whole course of things here with which the world is connected. Mr. D. always said sonship is the highest blessing and privilege conferred on the Christian: the truth of the body hangs on it.
Ques Does union with Christ refer to the body?
FER The instant you bring in union, it is the thought of the bride. The church would not be fit to be the bride if she were not the body.
Ques How far is the truth of the bride actually entered into now?
FER It is entered into so far as union is realised: if the truth is realised that we belong to that scene, that heaven is our place, then we get the truth of the bride. The bride is that you are with Him, not in Him.
“Unity” refers to the body, “union” to the bride. In Ephesians 1 Christ is raised up and set in heavenly places; in Ephesians 2 you are raised that you may be with Him. You are seated together there in Him. It is said to be in Him as regards the place, because bodily you are not there. With Him is the great point in union.
The Lord is helping us, and I think we shall be greatly helped if we go on with patience; not calling each other heretics, but seeking to get the mind of God from His word, instead of clinging to stereotyped forms of expression that had their value in their day. I do not believe the Spirit of God will bind Himself to that kind of thing.