Reading: Hebrews 1.
As the first thing in this
meditation upon Christ, we have been occupied with the
ever-growing conception of Him that marked the life of the
Apostle Paul. We saw first how that Paul as a Jew had himself
shared the very earthly and narrow conception of Messiah so
common to his race, with all its thought of a temporal kingdom,
privilege, and position, and how for him this conception came to
be shattered by the revelation which he had of the Lord Jesus
while journeying on the road to Damascus.
This crisis marked the
beginning of an ever-growing knowledge of Christ. There Paul had
learnt, not only that Jesus of Nazareth was Himself the
long-expected Messiah, but that He was also the Son of God, Who
from before times eternal had been in the bosom of the Father.
Christ was thenceforth to him no longer just a figure of time,
and we marked how that by further revelation this fact came to be
related to what Paul frequently calls purpose; the purpose of
God, the Divine counsels - "...who worketh all things after
the counsel of His will..." That is related to the "before
times eternal", and in that purpose, in those Divine
counsels from eternity, very many things are found to which Paul
refers. We saw that these Divine counsels (this eternal purpose)
concern the universe, and man in particular, and that both the
universe and man are gathered up into His Son: "according to
his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of
the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the
things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth". That
led us to consider a point which requires perhaps stating afresh,
or at least a reiteration, to which therefore we now proceed.
The Purpose
of the Ages
These eternal counsels (this
eternal purpose of God,) represent the straight line of God
through the ages, and as we are considering them have nothing to
do with redemption. That is another line, an emergency line. We
were saying that this fulness of the times, of the ages or
seasons, represents God's eternal method of unfolding His
fulness, and of bringing men into that fulness. They are stages
of growth, of progress, of development concerning His Son, and,
as we have said, all this was intended to be a straight line
through the ages. These other ages of which we read, the ages of
this world according to present conditions, are quite another
line and introduce another expression of purpose. They were
brought in, if we may put it figuratively or imaginatively, in
this way: the Godhead in counsel laid the plan for all the future
ages of the ages from eternity to eternity, and in that plan
everything was clear and straightforward. There would be a
progressive unveiling of God in the Son, and a progressive
bringing of the universe into that fulness. But then God reached
a point where He had to say, because of His foreknowledge (we
speak imaginatively): But we know what will happen! We know that
at a certain point the man whom We create will fail, will fall,
will break down! That will mean a long period of disorder,
disruption, chaos, and We must provide for that! There the whole
Plan of redemption was introduced, and the Lamb was slain from
before the foundation of the world. That is another line of
purpose. Thus the ages of this present world had to be
introduced; the age before Law, from Adam after the fall to
Moses, an age governed by certain things; then the age of Law up
to Christ; then the age or the dispensation of the Church. These
were not in the original plan. It is necessary to say that,
because, were it otherwise, it would make God responsible for
sin, and you might say: Well, if God had planned all that, the
fall was bound to be; God had to bring about the fall! But that
is not true. None of us would lay it to God's charge that He had
planned the fall in order to make redemption necessary. That is
another line of purpose, of planning according to the
foreknowledge of God. The first line of purpose was not that,
and, as we said, you start on a level and then reach a point
where, because of failure and sin, there is a dip in the line,
and in that dip, in that gap the whole story of redemption is
seen. Christ bridges it and links up the first purpose and its
realisation, from eternity past to eternity to be. Coming in the
likeness of sinful flesh, but without sin, the Redeemer stands in
the gap and carries the purpose of the ages straight on in
Himself. The present dispensations are, shall we say, subsidiary
in their nature, and were brought in because of an emergency. God
never intended it to be like that. Let us be quite clear on that
point.
The fact which stands out
clearly for us, and which is one of tremendous value, is that God
intended that there should be ages, times, periods in which there
should be an increasing revelation, manifestation, and
apprehension of Himself. Perhaps it sounds speculative, but let
us ask: Now what would have happened if the fall had never taken
place? If man had survived his testing in the garden and had not
broken down, what would have happened? I believe man would have
grown, grown, grown in his apprehension and knowledge of God,
grown in his personal expression of God. God would have thus
secured a progressive, ever-developing expression of Himself and,
seeing that God is what He is, there would have been no limit to
this; it could have gone on through successive ages, with
movements in this universe into ever greater fulnesses of God.
We are not speaking of
individual man but of collective man. That is what God intends,
and that is what will be. Bridge the gap. Get right across the
whole gap that has been filled by the redemptive programme, and
take the matter up at the point where redemption is complete. Get
back on to God's first level, triumphant over the enemy, and take
things up there. What are you going to have? You are going to
have a progressive, ever-growing expression of the fulness of God
displayed in ages, in ever widening circles of the revelation of
God. It is not possible to comprehend the fulness of God. It will
take eternity to express that.
All that fulness is in Christ
and our point at the moment is how great is that fulness. What a
Christ we have! It will take eternity to discover Christ. There
is no small meaning about that statement. We recall the words of
the Lord Jesus Himself: "...no one knoweth the Son, save the
Father..." That, of course, does not merely imply a question
of identification, that no one knows who Christ is except the
Father. It signifies what Christ stands for in the history of
this universe, all that He is in His position in it. I believe it
is unto an understanding of that the Lord is calling us. The Lord
wants us to come to a new understanding and apprehension of His
Son, Jesus Christ, and that apprehension is our way out, our way
up, our way to fulness. This, as we have said, came to be related
to purpose, to Divine counsels concerning the universe, and man
in particular.
The
Personification of the Divine Thought in a Being
Its central meaning was in
relation to a type of created being called man, and man is an
expression of Divine thought, an image and likeness of something
conceived in the mind of God. These are the eternal counsels
issuing in eternal purpose, the counsel of His will. Now let us
break that up.
God thought thoughts. You and I
think thoughts, thoughts that correspond to our mental
constitution, our nature, our make-up. One thinks after one
manner because he is made that way, another after another manner
because he is made that way. Our thoughts are the expression of
our nature, our constitution, our disposition; in a word, our
make-up. "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he..."
(Prov. 23:7). The thought is the man in essence. God thought
thoughts. Those thoughts were God in essence. They were the
projected mind of what God is like, what God thinks, what God is.
Those thoughts were projected toward an object called man; that
man should be an expression, a living personification of God's
thoughts.
God desired desires. Now of man
it is equally true that as a man desires in his heart so is he.
We desire according to our inclinations, according to our
preferences, according to what we feel to be best. Our desires
express ourselves. God's desires are an expression of His own
nature, His own being, His likeness. Those desires were centred
in man, that man should be a living embodiment of God's heart,
God's desire; desiring one desire with God, thinking one thought
with God; one in mind, one in heart with God.
God willed a will. Our wills
always betray us. What we will is the unveiling, the disclosing
of what we are after, what we mean, what we intend. That is true
of God. God willed a will, and that will was God, after the
nature of God, the essence of God's nature, disposition,
intention. That will of God was focussed upon man, that man
should embody the will of God and express it in personal living
expression; living in the will of God, living by the will of God,
his whole being gathered up in one inclusive and positive
expression: Thy will, O God! There was to be a created being
called "man" after that order, to be in that
moral-spiritual sense the image of God, the likeness of God. This
was not to share Deity, but to have the moral nature of God; the
spiritual nature of God in mind, and heart, and will reproduced
in man, expressed in a creation. That is where God's thought
rested, and that is God's purpose. He would have it to be
fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth; to grow and
expand; morally and spiritually to reach out into all spiritual
realms and fill the universe. Moral forces are forces which go
far beyond the individual in which they rest or are centred.
The Lie and
its Outworking
Now you can see why Satan
sought to capture man, and why he went about it in the manner
that he did. It is as though he said: Set aside God's mind, God's
will, God's desire! In other words, Accept mine instead! Now what
have you? The expansion of that thing from a man to a universe!
Those moral forces which are other than God intended are cosmic
forces now. They have gone far beyond the individual, far beyond
the family to a race, and out beyond a race to all the encircling
realms of the cosmos. There is a will other than God's
impregnating the very atmosphere. There are other desires, other
feelings, other thoughts all against God.
See, then, the awful
alternative. See how far reaching this matter is. Had man been
true to God's expressed thoughts, His expressed desires, His
expressed will; had man, in other words, been true to himself as
out from the hand of God, which was to be true to God, this whole
world, this whole cosmos today would be an expression of God's
thought, desire, and will. What a world! What a universe! But
what is it now? Such a thing as a thousand Leagues of Nations
will never set right. Man has let loose something in this
universe by his treachery, his complicity with God's enemy, which
must work itself out until this creation is an expression through
and through of that which has revolted against God: and it will
compass its own doom. What a difference! It is working out in
that way. Try to arrest war. How futile! It is the working out of
that thing: "only there is one that restraineth now, until
he be taken out of the way". When that restraint is fully
removed, you will see this whole creation as one leavened lump,
seething with anarchy and self-destruction. God never intended
that.
Do you see God's thought for
man, God's intention, God's purpose? It was to express Himself
through the universe. With this dispensation and creation just
the opposite is expressing itself, and will do so until the end.
This is not God's thought, God's desire, God's will; this is
anarchy. It is against God, against His purpose, against His
creation. Blessed be God, we are out of that creation, because we
are in Christ, and Christ bridges the gap. He takes up the
original intention. In Him you have God's thoughts, God's
desires, God's will perfectly expressed, and we are in Him, a new
creation in Christ Jesus. Now what is our business? To learn by
the Holy Spirit to live after God's thoughts, according to God's
desires, and in God's way. That lies ahead of us for our further
consideration. It is only hinted at for the moment.
Conformity to
Christ Essentially Moral and Spiritual
You see the result was intended
to be a created corporate race as an expression of that which
was, in essence, God. I do not mean Deity, I mean that which was
intended in moral essence; the kind of thoughts God thinks, the
kind of desires God desires, the kind of will God wills. God
intended a created corporate race as an expression of Himself in
that sense. You see it in Christ. You have the meaning of Christ
when you see all that. This is what Christ means. This is the
interpretation of Christ. How great a Christ!
Paul sees Him lifted altogether
out of time, sees Him related to God's purpose; His express
image, the effulgence, the very essence of God. Yes, in His case
Deity included the moral essence of God. The expression of God in
an Image morally constituted after God, that is Christ.
It is a great thing to see
Christ, and then to see that we were chosen in Him to be like
that, "...conformed to the image of His Son". The first
representation of that thought, that mind, that heart, that will
of God, was the Son; and the Son was not created but
begotten. Man was created to be conformed to
the image of the Son, but the Son was not created. He was the
only begotten of the Father; unique, standing alone, inclusive,
conclusive.
Those are not mere words. In
the creation according to God there will be nothing but what is
of Christ. It is important to realise that. That will govern a
good deal that we may have yet to say. Thank God, you and I will
not be as we are. It is not to be Christ and us; all is to
be Christ. That is to say, Christ will be so corporately
expressed that, the question of Deity apart, the moral and
spiritual essence of Christ will utterly govern every other unit
in the universe. It will be Christ in that sense; one great
universal, collective, corporate Christ! Yes, there will be
multitudes which no man can number, yet so conformed to the image
of Christ that, looking at any one or all of these, spiritual
conformity to Christ will be seen. We are not saying that Christ
is to lose His individuality, to be absorbed in some
inclusiveness where all His own personal distinctiveness ceases;
we are saying that, when conformed to His image, we are to be as
one great person, the Body of Christ perfected, a corporate and
collective expression of what Christ is.
Paul refers to that when, with
tremendous faith representing a tremendous victory and
ascendency, he said: "...we henceforth know no man after the
flesh" (2 Cor. 5:15). It represents a victory of no mean
order. In our dealings with the Lord's children, for instance,
Paul means that, notwithstanding all that we may find of
inconsistency and failure, because of what they are by nature, we
are to focus all our attention upon Christ in them, and because
they are Christ's, and He is in them, make His indwelling the
ground of all our relations with them, keeping our eyes off the
other altogether; we are to know them after Christ and not after
the flesh. It will not be difficult in the ages to come, for then
there will be nothing but what is of Christ in us. We shall see
Christ in one another, we shall be fully conformed to His image.
The Lord hasten that day!
What a Christ! See His position
in God's purpose. See the universal, eternal Christ, embracing
all, excluding all; excluding all that in character is unsuitable
to God, and not out from Him, and including in Himself as the Son
all that has become conformed to His image. Christ inclusive of
creation, for all things were created for Him. They will be His,
but as morally purged and made suitable to Him. That is why He
refused them at the hands of the Devil. "All these things
will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me."
(Matt. 4:9.) He disdains the offer. Costly as the path would be -
and He knew it - He would not be caught by that proposal. In
effect He says: I will have them, but I will have them when all
the trouble and the heart-break have gone. That is the effect of
it; the whole creation included in Christ: but what a Christ!
One of the great governing
factors and features of the new creation in Christ is deathless
life. In the present creation at its best death reigns, decay
reigns. Deathless life! There is no death at all in that new
creation.
All the ages are included in
Christ. Yes, there are ages yet to be - "...that in the ages
to come..." Those ages are being included in Christ. That
means that Christ will give them their character. They are to
take their nature, their character from Christ, and inasmuch as
they are ages, it means that progress, development, increase,
expansiveness, extensiveness is all a matter of going on and
enlarging unto Christ. The ages are made for Him, and the ages to
come are for the showing forth in us of God in Christ. All the
Divine fulness is in Christ. These are statements in the Word.
The Gift of
Eternal Life
In the creation of man at the
first one great factor was suspended. Perhaps it was the most
important factor, and it was suspended pending man's probation
and testing. What was it that so entirely depended upon how man
issued from the probation and testing? It was eternity of life;
life from the Divine standpoint; what God means by life. This was
suspended pending the trial of man, and it introduces a further
great factor of the Word of God, namely, the revelation of God.
This represents the great governing question in history from Adam
onward. The great governing question is this: In whom can that
which is called eternal life dwell? We know that eternal life is
not mere duration of being. It is a kind of life; it is God's
life, Divine life, the life of the ages. In whom can that life
dwell? That is the great governing question of history. The
answer to the question is Christ: "...in him was
life..." He is the life. But then, we behold Him not only as
personal, individual, separate, but corporate; the creation in
Christ.
That concludes the first stage
and begins the next. Up to that point everything, so far as this
present time is concerned, is one great question. In this
redemptive period, brought in as a second line of Divine
arrangement, the whole matter of our response to God's call, of
our acceptance of Christ, and of union with Him is in the
balance. One big question hangs over this dispensation: Who will
respond? To many He has had to say, "...ye will not come
unto me..." (John 5:40). The question is settled once the
life is within: you have started at that point where Adam broke
down, and have immediately been lifted out of the gap, out of the
bend; you have been brought up there in Christ and have come
right into the straight line of the eternal purpose which, in its
realisation, will be a universe full of Christ: "Unto a
dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in
Christ..."
Are you asking what this is all
about? If you are not yet clear it can be put into very few
words. It is to bring the greatness of Christ into view, that is
all. Now we need that there should happen to us, in the grace of
God, what happened to this man who came into this ever-growing,
inexhaustible conception of Christ. We recall his own words:
"...it was the good pleasure of God to reveal his Son in
me..." You may have heard all this: it may have sounded more
or less wonderful; you may know the truth, in an intellectual way;
but there is all the difference between that and the way in which
Paul knew it. Paul's way of knowing brings emancipation.
Have you ever seen a fly in a
bottle? Round and round it goes, beating itself from side to
side, rising, falling, until you really ache as you watch that
fly. You saw it rise a little and your hopes rose with it, and
then you saw it go down, trying to find a way out, beating itself
to death. Then up, up, climbing and reaching the top, out and
away! That is the difference.
You and I with all our head
knowledge, our mental knowledge of a great spiritual realm, find
it a hopeless thing if in reality we are living down in this
creation. Today it would be easy to despair, to drop down into
things as they are. Look out into the world for prospects for the
Church, prospects for the Gospel, prospects for the Lord. Look at
the state of the Church itself. Bring the letter to the Ephesians
down into this world! You will give it up and say: It is a
wonderful conception, but impossible. Try to realise it down
on this level and you beat yourself to despair. Note Paul as he
looks out over the churches which he had seen brought into being
and sees them breaking up, and the men for whom he had suffered
turning against him. Paul would have despaired in his heart, had
he been living down here. What were the prospects in such
conditions? But he got up into the heavenlies in Christ Jesus and
saw that this was a heavenly thing, an eternal thing. Read the
Ephesian letter again and mark how it starts: "Blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us
with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ; even
as he chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we
should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having
foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto
himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the
praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us
in the Beloved: in whom we have our redemption through his blood,
the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his
grace..." (Ephes. 1:3-7).
These are the words of a man
with his life work tumbling to pieces and all his old friends for
whom he had sacrificed himself turning against him. What has he
seen? The eternity, the universality of Christ, ALL THINGS IN
CHRIST. Paul is not living in this world now, but living in
Christ. It is the only way out. It is the way of life, the way of
hope, the way of assurance in a day like this when things close
down. Christ is the way out: "...in the heavenlies in
Christ..." "...chose us in him before the
foundation of the world..." Again we say; What a Christ!
Let us dwell much upon the
Lord Jesus, for everything for us is in Him.