THE WITNESS
[p. 106] THE WITNESS
I have no thought of attempting an exposition of these addresses to the churches; I want to speak of what the church is as witness, and what succeeds when it fails as witness. In the first of these addresses we get the church in its normal place, the place of witness. It is the only address in which allusion is made to the candlestick. When it ceases to be a witness here it is never restored. So far as the actual fact is concerned, the candlestick is hardly taken out of its place yet. The church is still responsibly in the place of witness, but you read no more of the candlestick. But then another order of things follows: not exactly witness, but life. Life comes in, and you can always fall back upon that, and it is a great thing to fall back upon. You will find the same principle pervading the writings of the apostle Paul. When things were normal, we get the epistle to the Ephesians, and that is the church as witness; but when the church has failed, the apostle has to look the failure in the face, and he falls back upon life. We can make nothing now of witness or testimony, but we can fall back upon life, and that is very important. It is what comes out in these two addresses. The great point in the present day is life, and life must, in a sense, be individual.
Now I will speak a little about witness, and the place of the church as witness. You cannot give up a right thought, even if you see that a right thought can never again be realised down here: a right thought is ever your standard. I think that is one great reason why Scripture has been given to us, that we might have a perfect standard. In days of defection people are led back to the standard, and the effect upon them is they depart from evil. It was so in the time of Josiah; the king was brought back to the standard, and the state of things was judged [p. 107] by it. The same applies to the present day; when any kind of revival has occurred amongst saints, they have been led back to the standard, and were thus able to judge the defection. But then, the standard would not build people up; for that you want the power of the Spirit of God. Life can only be by the Spirit of God. Doctrine is not life; the Spirit is life. The well of water springs up in the believer into everlasting life; saints are built up in the energies of life. That is a great thing in a day of departure. It was pointed out years ago that in the later epistles, where the apostle is addressing himself not to churches but to individuals, he takes the ground of an apostle according to the hope of eternal life. There was no hope of the restoration of the church; and eternal life becomes to a large extent the point in the epistles to Timothy and Titus.
Now one word in regard to the witness. I think there was in the ways of God a kind of continuation of witness. So long as Christ was upon earth He was the great witness here of divine love: He declared God. Now when Christ comes in again He comes as the faithful and true witness; you get that lower down in the third chapter. But in the meantime the church is the witness, and expressions which were used in regard to Christ Himself are used in regard to the church. The Lord speaks of Himself as the light of the world; the church is the light of the world. He was the witness; the church is the witness: that is its normal place, a witness for God here, a living witness. It is the living expression down here of the love of God — that is the true place of the church; and not only witness of the love of God, but of the wisdom of God.
Now I will just ask your attention to a scripture or two in that connection — John 17: 20, 21. There you get the unity of the saints, and that as a proof that the Father sent the Son that the world might believe. Now pass on to Ephesians 3: 14 - 21. I think this prayer brings before us not simply the thought of unity, in which the saints were [p. 108] the witness that the Father sent the Son, but the competency of the church as witness. Nothing could go beyond this prayer in regard to witness. Now I call your special attention to the way in which divine persons are connected in this prayer with the church. The saints are to be strengthened of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by His Spirit, with might in the inner man, the object being that the Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith. Now, the subject of all testimony in Scripture, beyond contradiction, is Christ: “They are they which testify of me”. So in 2 Corinthians 3: “who has also made us competent, as ministers of the new covenant; not of letter, but of spirit”; and then, following upon the parenthesis which succeeds, you get, “The Lord is the Spirit”. I am warranted in saying that Christ is the subject of the Scriptures. You will admit that the source of the Scriptures is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the immediate power by which the Scriptures have been indited is the Spirit, and the subject of the Scriptures is Christ. Now, the saints were to be strengthened with all might, that the Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith, that they, being rooted and grounded in love, might be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, that they may be filled unto all the fulness of God. What I want to point out in that is the competency of the witness. They were to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. You can get no further. That was the competency of the church, and the end of it was that they might be filled unto all the fulness of God. What I understand that to imply is that the church was an adequate witness of God here in the world; it was not simply a witness by word of mouth, but morally. I could not give an exposition of the prayer in Ephesians 3 but it is one of the most remarkable passages you can find; it brings before us the mind of God in a most wonderful way.
I refer to two other passages — 1 John 4: 11 - 14 and John 1: 18. In the gospel of John, Christ was the witness [p. 109] who declared God; in the epistle it says, “No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us”. We are thus the witness here of the love of God. Then the apostle says, “Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world”. That is, the saints are here, the love of God is perfected in them if they love one another; and He has given them of His Spirit, and they bear witness.
There is one more passage — 1 John 5: 10, 11. The apostle says, “this is the witness, that God hath given to us eternal life”. Read that in conjunction with what comes out in the previous verse: it is the witness that God has given of His Son. The church is looked upon as being in eternal life, and that is the witness which God has given of His Son. God has accomplished His purpose, the purpose for which the only-begotten Son came into the world (John 3: 16), and the accomplishment of that purpose is the testimony that God has given of His Son. Now you see the place of the church in witness here upon earth: witness to the Son of God, the love of God, the wisdom of God — an expression of all the fulness of God. No one can speak about it at the present time with any great amount of power, because the witness is so obscured; but you can get the divine idea of it, and the effect will be that you will not care to have fellowship with anything that tends to obscure the witness. The witness will never come out in clear light again down here; it will come out in the heavenly city. I do not believe the candlestick will ever be brought back to its place, but I get the idea of the candlestick, and anything which tends to obscure the light I would seek to be apart from. As to the christianity current in the present day, I would not have anything to say to it; every day I live I desire to be more apart from it, because it is a great veil which obscures the witness of the church.
[p. 110] If you have followed the passages I have quoted, I beg you not to let them drop with the occasion. Try and gather up the idea of what the mind of God was in regard to the witness of the church down here upon earth.
Now I turn to Revelation 2: 2 - 7. You see the departure there from the place of witness. The proof of it is plain, in that the Lord threatens to remove the candlestick out of its place unless there is repentance. I need hardly tell you that the church at Ephesus has long since ceased to exist; so has every other church in Asia Minor. The whole country was overrun by Mohammedanism, and the light of the church there extinguished. But that was only local. You may look at things in a broader way than that, that is, as to the church in general, for Ephesus is only a sample of the church in the place of witness. You will readily connect what I read with the prayer in Ephesians 3, which gives the idea of the church in the place of witness. Here the church has lost its witness, and the secret of it is that it has left its first love. When the church lost the sense of association with Christ, then, I do not doubt, it left its first love. I believe the idea of the church is set forth in figure in Aaron and his sons. There might not be any particular link of affection between Aaron and his sons; but in Christ and the church the bond is affection. His pre-eminence is the pre-eminence of affection. The bond of affection is in power in the sense of our being risen with Him according to the mind of God, and quickened together with Him by the work of God. So long as that was maintained the church was the witness; when the Head was let go the church ceased to be a witness. I have no doubt the secret of His being let go was unwatchfulness. People came in unawares, even unbelievers, and in that way spirituality declined, and eventually the witness was obscured. The church increased in worldly importance, but the influence of earth and of the world came in, and the witness was obscured. It has been said that the purest water spilt upon earth becomes mud. You get an idea from the passage I have read as to [p. 111] the mind of God in regard to the church; but when the church came under the influence of earth everything became mixed; the witness was obscured, and the Lord takes account of this. Nothing escapes the eye of the Lord, and to my mind this is a great comfort. There never was a phase of the church as to which the Lord had not His particular mind. It is a great comfort, for it brings the sense to me of a living Head, who has His mind as to every moment and in every phase of the church’s history. If I apprehend that, I shall desire to be in the secret of His mind, and then I would seek to be faithful to His mind, not to thwart it or to go on with anything which is not in accordance with it. He has His mind in regard to the church at this moment, as much as He had at the beginning. Laodicea is a very evil phase, but Christ has His mind in regard to that. If anyone there heard His voice and opened to Him they would come into accord with His mind.
Now I have tried to make clear what is before me, and that is, to give an idea of the place of the church as witness, and its suitability for it. The witness was competent and suitable, but as a matter of fact the church left its first love, and when it did so, it ceased to be a witness. When it left its first love, human order came in; and that was, I suppose, almost the first sign of departure on the part of the church. The power of the Spirit declined, saints lost the sense of association with Christ, and then there was nothing left but to establish human order. When human order came in, the church ceased to be the witness which God intended it to be down here. Of course it has the responsibility of being witness until it is taken out of the place of witness, but morally it ceased to be witness when it left its first love; and although the Lord admonishes to repentance, yet, as a matter of fact, the church has never regained the place of witness which it lost.
Now if you pass on to Smyrna (verses 8 - 11), the striking points in regard to this church are as to death and life — [p. 112] life out of death. Christ brings Himself before the church in that way — “... which was dead, and is alive”. I want to show the present application of that. The state of things then was analogous to what is here now. When the Spirit of God began to work at the beginning of the present century, there was restoration, in a small way, to what was seen at Ephesus. The saints were devoted and unworldly; they were largely in the reality of first love. But even that little bit of witness declined. You will never see it restored. There has been such a state of things even in the present century, in the power of the Spirit of God. And what about us? We come in for a good deal of what is written to Smyrna, “I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty”. It is a time of tribulation and poverty, not a time of honour. There was a moment in Ephesus when the witness was in honour; but the present is a time of tribulation and poverty. There is no great energy amongst us; I think you will admit that we deplore the loss of vitality. And I think, too, there is the endurance of ‘blasphemy’; those who have come out from all that is around, and have sought to get to the Lord, are not well spoken of; they are the subject of blasphemy from the synagogue of Satan. There is a synagogue of Satan still: people whose confidence is in earthly order and succession here upon earth. They would speak evil of all that is really in the Spirit of God. “Ye shall have tribulation ten days”. You get tribulation, only the tribulation is limited. “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life”. This is a great principle; death is the true way to life. Faithfulness unto death gets its answer in the crown of life. It was a time of real persecution in that day, though limited, when saints needed to be faithful unto death, and the Lord would give them the crown of life. But we, too, want to be faithful unto death, and death is the test of faithfulness. People do not like death. If you saw the great gain that lies on the other side of death, you would be faithful unto death. I think we shirk it; we want to go on more or [p. 113] less in conformity with the world. Many who would not go to theatres and such like want a certain amount of worldly recognition, and go on with the amenities of the world. The point is, “Be thou faithful unto death”. I do not want to give a curious or fanciful interpretation to the passage I only take it up as a principle — faithfulness unto death is the way of life according to God. If we have died with Him, we shall also live with Him. We reckon ourselves to have died indeed unto sin. If a man takes the ground of being alive in the world, I can hardly understand how he can be alive unto God. The principle of being alive unto God is that you have died — “died to sin”; and when Scripture speaks of sin, it implies the world, for the world is dominated by sin and lawlessness.
Now one word as to life. I think life practically is the enjoyment of the relationships in which it has pleased God to place us. In one sense, it is the power to enjoy the relationships; in another sense, it may be spoken of as the enjoyment of the relationships. If I speak of business life, I mean the associations and connections of business. Family life is in the affections and associations and connections of the family. And so in divine things.
Life according to God is the enjoyment of the relationships and associations in which it has pleased God to place us — not the natural relationships, but the spiritual ones; and if we are to enter into the enjoyment of these spiritual relationships there must of necessity be the fellowship of the death of Christ. If we are not prepared to accept that, we are greatly hindered in the enjoyment of the relationships of life.
Now it is a great thing to be in the enjoyment of eternal things. We have a great deal to do with temporal things, but they are all transient; the great point is to be living in the relationships with which life according to God is connected. There is no single relationship of earth but what is dominated by death, but the relationships which God has been pleased to establish are all connected with a living God. It is impossible to connect [p. 114] the thought of a dead world with a living God. All the relationships which God has been pleased to establish in grace are living, because they are of the living God, and the point for us is to accept the fellowship of the death of Christ, to be faithful unto death, so that we may lay hold of that which is really life. The point is, to lay hold on that which is in connection with the living God. There is no thought in Scripture which is more suggestive to my mind than the expression, “the living God”. We read of the Son of the living God, the Spirit of the living God, the church of the living God, the service of the living God, the word of the living God — all is living. Now the great thing for us is to be faithful unto death, to accept the death of Christ in regard to the world system around us, that we may lay hold of that which is really life. The crown is the consummation; you cannot get that until the Lord comes, but there is such a thing now as to be past death. We are quickened with Christ, in order that we may enter upon the domain of life, but the region of life lies on the other side of Jordan. I do not want to distort the passage, but I think you may accept the principle. You cannot make much now of the witness of the church. People have talked about “our testimony”. I have no sympathy with any such expressions. A servant of the Lord once said, if we were a testimony to anything, we were a testimony to the ruin of the church. The witness is obscured, and I would have no fellowship with what obscures it, but we have something to fall back upon, and that is, the great and blessed realities of life. We may be reviled and blasphemed, but the point is, “Be thou faithful unto death”. Imagine what a thing it will be to receive the consummation from the hand of Christ. You have accepted the fellowship of His death, and He gives you the crown of life.
Then you get an important word to the overcomer, and that is, that he will not be hurt of the second death. I look upon the second death as moral death. Of course it is the lake of fire, but those in the lake of fire are shut [p. 115] out for ever from the light of God and all that flows from it. There is nothing to succeed it; it is final, “the second death”. May God give us grace that we may be prepared to accept the fellowship of Christ’s death, that we may come now into the blessed region where the Son of the living God lives.