CHAPTER 4: 14 - 24
CHAPTER 4: 14 - 24
FER Verse 14 comes in in view of systematised error; there was a great deal of will in it, too. Popery is an example of systematised error; it is a system of deceit, not merely one item, but a complete systematised whole. You can see one wrong point, perhaps, but behind that there is sure to be systematised error. We have seen it in the history of brethren; there was a whole system of error behind the first division at Plymouth. Of course, when the apostle wrote this, what he had more particularly in view was “philosophy and vain deceit” (see Colossians 2) — the rudiments of the world. I always tremble when a man goes wrong on some one point, for fear of what is behind it. The great safeguard against error is to hold the truth in love. As long as people are babes they are susceptible to all these things. See in a conflict how the mass of people are carried away — “tossed to and fro”.
If you hold the truth in love you do not go beyond your measure. You hold truth, but love is what you are. “In love” occurs very frequently in this epistle.
[p. 251] We are to grow up unto Him in all things; nothing is left out; He is the standard as to all things. Truth and love are the two things that are to characterise the saints.
He “is the head — even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase”. He is Head here in the sense of being the pre-eminent One; it is like the husband being head to the wife. From whom all the body makes increase; it is all from the Head. The Head receives everything for the body: He is the source of supply to it. The body makes increase in divine love. He ministers to the whole body. God gave Him Head over all things to the church; He ministers to it very much in the same way as a husband to his wife. In 1 Corinthians 12 where we get the details of the head, the eye, the ear — it is not the Head as you have it here, but just the saints under that figure. The Corinthians were not in a fit state to receive the truth of the Head.
Verse 16 is the Lord’s side, not ours. The fact is, the body makes increase in no other way; if it is not ministered to by the Head it will not grow. It is not by the ministration of gifts, or anything of that sort, but it is the silent growth of the body; it makes increase entirely independent of any other ministration than that of the Head. I do not think that people see much the identification of the Lord with the saints. He is pre-eminent, and He is the source of supply; you will not understand in any other way how the body makes increase. Christ is also the Head of Israel, and of the nations, too.
Ques Would you say ‘Head’ in the same sense as He is Head to the church?
FER Yes; it is identification there, too. It is in a very special way that He is Head to the church: “He is not ashamed to call them brethren”, but still [p. 252] He is Head to Israel, and He says (Psalm 18), “thou hast made me the head of the heathen”. He is chief.
The point is, He is identified with the body, but He is pre-eminent. He is the source of supply; the body makes increase in that way. You must appreciate His place in regard to the body. Much more goes on in the body than we see, but it is essential to see His place in regard to the body. We appreciate Him as Lord, but it is difficult to many to understand Him as pre-eminent. The Sanctifier and the sanctified are all of one. We are one with Him; the mystery is really little known. To many who pass as Christians, Christianity is only a system of religion better than anything that went before — an improved Judaism. How could you expect such to appreciate the mystery? Christ, who was personally rejected from the earth, is here in His saints. He is present in them; He says, “Why persecutest thou me?” It is His body, because it is His Spirit that is in it; you could not exactly connect the “Spirit of God” with the body in that way; it is Christ’s Spirit. It takes in all, pervades all.
“The whole body” applies to it at any given moment. Those who have passed away are not exactly in the body. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come” — that is, the bride at that moment. Its completeness according to the divine thought will be when Christ comes. Those who have passed away are not at this moment in the baptism of the Spirit; it is that that makes the bride. In Revelation 21: 9 it is the “Lamb’s wife”; that title is His in connection with the earth.
The “life of Jesus” comes out in us individually, but the fulness of Christ is a different thing. The testimony to the world was to be in the unity of the saints. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another”. The unity of affection was the testimony to the world.
[p. 253] Ques Does the heavenly city take in the Old Testament saints?
FER No, I do not think they are the bride: they are the friends of the Bridegroom: they are to a large extent identified with the church: they are included, too, in the twenty-four elders sitting on the thrones. It is a great comfort to me to think there are points of likeness between us and them. When the angel shows John the Lamb’s wife, it is a kind of supplement to what has gone before. You will sit down in the kingdom with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but the church is identified with Christ in the time of His rejection; and she has her peculiar place from that. Joseph gets a wife while rejected of his brethren, and she shares his rejection.
It is remarkable that before there was any mention of the fall we get a type of the church. A “deep sleep”, a figure of death, fell upon Adam before ever sin came in. A deep sleep is deep silence, and it is in the time of His deep silence with regard to Israel that the church is taken from Him. She receives of His Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. It was in death that He became silent to Israel.
It would be impossible to conceive such a thing as one Man alone in heaven! He must have companions. Where would be the fruit of redemption if there were not others with Him? And if there are saints with Him, then they must be His companions.
The character of these sixteen verses is, that you must be right within before you can be right without. These verses indicate what is to be within. It is like John 13 and 14. If you are coming out to the world to manifest God, you must first be right within. It is the provision and the purpose of the provision. Verse 16 is not dependent on the saints — the Lord looks after that. It is the normal order. Unity is the real point of these verses: “one Lord, one faith, one baptism”. If the clock goes right it is sure to keep [p. 254] right time; but it must work harmoniously. Where can the world look now for the time of day? Is it to Catholics, or to the Church of England? For harmonious working we must have the truth of the body, and it is the whole body.
The epistle to the Ephesians may be summed up in this way: you go in to God that you may be able to represent God here. You are to manifest love and light. Everything that came out in Christ is now to come out in the body; it must be so, for God is to come out.
The first thing that he enjoins upon them here is that they were to be separate from other Gentiles: “That ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk”.
The life of God is love, and nothing else: God is love, and they were alienated from that (verse 18). All the activities of God have their origin in love. Man in his pride or ignorance does not tolerate the thought of the love of God.
Idolatry was the cause of the most terrible degradation; it put a religious sanction on every vice, and the result was the most awful debasement of man. Man has by nature an idea of a being high above himself; but if he likens God to a serpent, think how terribly he must have become debased! I do not believe that man, unassisted by Satan, could ever have become as debased as he is; I am strongly inclined to think the devil helped it on. “Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone” Hosea 4: 17. How awful! Yet it is only what the Lord said of the Pharisees, “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind”, Matthew 15: 14.
When the Lord was here there could not exactly be the putting off the old and putting on the new. It is the truth in Jesus; the putting off was really in the cross; we have not yet actually put off the old. It is the truth “in Jesus”, because that makes it personal to Him; it is what has been effected in that Man, in Jesus. It is His personal designation. If ‘Christ’ [p. 255] had been said, the saints would have come in. It is absolutely true in Jesus; it is spiritually true in us. The “old man” has been put off in the cross, and a different man has come to light in resurrection — man morally after a new order — after God.
What is presented to you in testimony becomes the power of life in your soul; man is formed by light. The testimony of the gospel is light; the revelation of God is the life of my soul. “The word of God is quick and powerful”: it is living power in you. It is not living in the book — the letter kills — it is the revelation underlying the letter that lives! That light becomes life in you.