Reading: Hebrews 1:1-2; 2:5-11; 3:1; 12:28.
There are several matters of very great significance which
have to be taken into consideration by those who would be one
with the fullest thoughts of God, and it is concerning those
matters that we shall be occupied for a little while at this
time.
1) The Eternal Counsels and
Purposes Greater than an Unfallen Innocent Humanity
The first is this, that the eternal counsels and purposes of
God are greater than an innocent race of unfallen created
humanity. Ephesians 1:5 goes a long way beyond Genesis 1 to 3:
“Having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus
Christ unto himself”. That precedes creation and that
governs creation, and that goes a long way beyond a created race
just in an unfallen state. Adam’s was only a probationary
position. If he had been faithful he would not have remained just
an unfallen creature; there would have been something added. The
way would have been left open for fuller intentions of God, and
the test was not allowed just in order to leave him where he was.
The test was allowed with a view to some addition, some increase,
some progress, some development, some enlargement, some advance.
God had something more in view than just having an innocent
humanity in an unfallen state. So that his innocence was only
probationary, and, in the probation, the testing, was a view to
something more.
a) The purpose of God in eternity concerns His Son
The purpose of God was from eternity concerning His Son. There
are two things there. It is not something which has come in at a
later point; it precedes what we understand by time, it precedes
this creation, this history; it is something which arose before
the foundation of the world, and the purpose before times eternal
was concerning His Son. That takes it back before Adam. That
gives it a very much larger significance than the creation
itself. It is from eternity and therefore it is not just bound up
with unfallen Adam, it is bound up with God’s Son.
The Lord Jesus did not come in just as a rescuer of man and of
man’s lot. We should almost be led to believe by certain
emphases that redemption is the greatest thing in the universe,
and that all God’s interest is in redemption, and that we
should be occupied solely with redemption. Redemption is a great
thing. We can never, never exaggerate, and I doubt whether we
shall ever know what a great thing redemption is; and yet, great
as redemption is in its scope, in its depth, in its cost,
redemption is only incidental to the eternal purpose. Christ came
in to time to rescue His own inheritance. In that, of course, man
is rescued, but it is something very much bigger than that. It
relates to the Son primarily, and until the Lord’s people
get the right attitude, the right point of view, that is, that
all things in God’s full and final concern are centred in
God’s Son, they have not come into line with all God’s
resource. While the direction is toward ourselves —
redemption, sanctification, glorification, and so on — or
toward anything less than the Son Himself, we have not got
God’s dynamic for accomplishing His work, and therefore it
becomes necessary, as the sufficient, the adequate basis of the
Holy Spirit’s operation, that there should be a revelation
of Jesus Christ in the heart, for it is in relation to Him and
what God has purposed concerning Him that all the energies of God
are released and made active.
b) The purpose of God in Christ is universal
Further, the relationship of God’s purpose in Christ is
not merely to this world, it is universal. All things are in Him,
through Him, by Him, unto Him created; things in heaven, things
in earth, things under the earth, whether they be principalities
or powers — all things. The purpose of God is a universal
purpose in relation to His Son, and goes far beyond the bounds of
this little world, important and difficult and problematic as it
may be to us.
c) The church is brought into that purpose
The church is brought into that relationship, it is
instrumental in the purpose of God to universal domination. You
will at once find words of Scripture leaping into your mind which
support and bear that out, such as “Now unto the
principalities and powers in the heavenlies, by the
church...”.
That is the first of these very significant matters to be
taken into consideration by those who would be one with the
fullest thoughts of God.
2) Redemption and Salvation Not
Merely Related to Sin
The second of these matters for consideration is that
redemption and salvation are not merely as to sin and a certain
state in which man finds himself; but redemption and salvation
relate to the eternal purpose, going back of sin, back of that
state in which man is: hence you have the significance of all the
New Testament writings, and that significance is something that
is always with me as a tremendously impressive thing.
There is only one book in all the twenty-seven which speaks of
and tells us about the preaching of the Gospel to the unsaved,
and their response to that Gospel. I do not mean by that that the
preaching of the Gospel to the unsaved falls into insignificance;
that is not my point; but it is impressive that all the rest of
the New Testament and quite a lot in that very book itself is
brought to bear upon the saved, those who have believed, and it
is a tremendous mass and weight dealing with believers, with
Christians, with those who are the Lord’s.
This means in the very first instance that God can never be
satisfied with just positional salvation. Positional salvation is
this: something has been done for us by the Lord Jesus,
altogether apart from us, on our behalf, and we take an attitude
of faith towards Him and towards that, and by faith in what He is
for us and has done for us we are accepted, we are saved. That is
true; that is where we are positionally in Christ through faith,
but the very logic of the New Testament is that God is never
satisfied just with positional salvation. It is a great thing,
and we shall constantly be compelled to fall back upon it, and it
will often come to our rescue when we are being driven or lured
or tempted to get on to certain dangerous ground where we try to
find something in ourselves as a basis of acceptance, and so on.
We shall have at once to go back to the great truth of positional
salvation and positional sanctification, but the fact that all
these letters are written to believers is proof positive that God
is not satisfied with positional salvation alone.
Ah yes, but I am going to press that further, and if we listen
to the undertone of the New Testament writings (Old Testament as
well) we shall be brought to this conclusion: that God is not
satisfied with just consistent Christian living. That is
something more than positional salvation. There is positional
salvation in the New Testament writings, and there is much about
conditional salvation (using that word “conditional” in
a certain sense); that is, not only the position but also the
condition of believers. It is all there. But there is that deep
undertone which shows that neither of these things, nor yet both
of them, answer to God’s fullest thought. There is the urge,
the constant urge of that undertone to go on, to go on, to go on
to full growth; not just live a consistent, good Christian life,
not just to live day by day without sin, without failure, and to
have your life so ordered in conduct and behaviour and demeanour
as becomes Christians. Yes, that should be, but there is
something more: on to full growth, with an object, God’s
purpose, God’s eternal purpose. Positional salvation does
not bring to that necessarily, it is something on the way. A good
Christian life does not bring to that necessarily, it is on the
way. It is essential but on the way. There is an increase, a
growth, an adding which means spiritual development to a certain
measure which is bound up with God’s eternal purpose. Hence
this constant exhorting, admonition, entreaty, warning, not that
we should fall away from our salvation and lose it, and not only
that we should fall away from our good spiritual position or
condition, but that we should miss that which God has fixed for
us as the purpose with which we are called, “the called
according to His purpose”. Purpose governs everything.
3) Some Related Issues of the
Church and the Eternal Purpose of God
We come to the third consideration. This presents us with the
position that there must be quite a number of things.
a) One dominating and governing objective in all life and
service
Not just to be saved, that is not good enough; and not just to
get others saved, that is not good enough; not just to be good,
or make others good, or help them to be good, that is not enough.
In all life and service the eternal purpose, the full
thought of God is to be dominant and governing. I underline, and
doubly underline, that word “all”. We will explain that
emphasis in a minute.
b) A positive relatedness in all life and service
The second thing with which we are presented by what we have
been saying is a positive relatedness in all life and service,
that nothing becomes a thing in itself, separated, detached,
isolated, self-contained as to our spiritual interests and
activities. Fulness is the basis, fulness is the means, and
fulness is to be the outcome; nothing partial and nothing
detached; everything has got to be brought into a oneness in the
direction of God’s end, and has got to work on the basis of
God’s end: that is fulness. We are never to be content with
anything that is only fragmentary, and we are never to be content
with anything that is something in itself.
Take, for instance, the matter of evangelism. Fulness ought to
govern evangelism, just as fulness ought to govern the ministry
of teaching. But how evangelism has been made something in
itself, and something less! The attitude of mind of so many is
that you do not need very much to be an evangelist, that anybody
can be an evangelist; that you do not need very much spiritual
knowledge, and understanding, and wealth and fulness to bring
souls to a saving knowledge of Christ. All you have got to do is
to get a man saved, and then turn him into an evangelist and send
him out into the world! And then you say, evangelism that is
something in itself! And so evangelism can just work in its own
watertight way, and have no interest in anything else, and say,
Well, of course, all this wonderful teaching does not interest
me; that is not my realm! We have heard many talk like that. I do
not find that in the New Testament.
Fulness is to be the basis of everything, and it is no waste
of time for the one who has the greatest measure of Christ, and
the fullest knowledge of the things of the Lord, to bring it to
bear upon the salvation of a soul. The best and most far-reaching
evangelism is that which has the whole purpose of God in view
from the outset, and unless that is so you will get a very poor
type of convert, who will not go very far, and will have to be
nursed all the way along. Get God’s full thought into
evangelism, and you can leave your converts and they will go on,
and they will grow, and they will take responsibility, they will
learn the Lord themselves.
Fulness is to be the basis, and fulness is to be the relating
factor in all things, so that whatever we may be doing in the
sovereign ordering of God, it is not something apart, a line of
its own, our peculiar and detached work. If it is not related to
the ultimate it will lack something, and it will fail
proportionately. A positive relatedness in all life and service,
so that fulness is the basis and fulness the means: that is, that
everyone who is in the thoughts of God and in the work of God has
as great a measure of fulness that it is possible for them to
have, and you may not think that it is unnecessary for them to
have fulness in order to do that work; and that fulness therefore
is the outcome of everything. If ever any servant of God should
say: For my job the greater fulness is unnecessary, it would be
wasted, there would be no room for it, no place for it at all;
then that servant of God has an entire misconception of his
calling; they are on some line that may lead to nowhere. At best
it will only lead just so far and stop. If we are going through,
right through, without an arrest, without a stopping short,
without a narrowing down, without a thinning out, we must be,
from the outset, right in line and in union with God’s
ultimate purpose in His full thought.
c) Divine fulness the purpose of God
Then again, divine fulness will be proportionate to the
measure in which the purpose of God governs. Now, I am using the
phrase “divine purpose” in just a slightly different
sense. I mean the Lord committing Himself, the Lord giving of
Himself, that fulness which is for us, which He desires us to
have, that large measure of Himself given now into life and into
service. That will be proportionate to the measure in which the
purpose governs. Divine fulness is spiritual; therefore
spirituality is the law which governs fulness; that is, it is
just in so far as spirituality obtains that God gives of His
fulness. God is limited by us. He is bound up so. He is curtailed
by us, not by His own desire or will. He would give Himself
altogether. He would give of His fulness in life and in service,
but what limits Him is that which is not spiritual, and, of
course, more positively, that which is unspiritual. God’s
end is spiritual fulness. He is working to that end. Oneness with
God in His end means a way that is wholly spiritual, and
therefore God is governed by a law in His giving of Himself, in
His pouring out of His resources, in His committing of Himself,
and that law is the law of spirituality; and so His fulness is
proportionate to the measure in which the ultimate purpose
governs. If we have something less than the ultimate purpose in
view, we have got some piece of work in which we are engaged that
we want to be successful, we want it to be established, we
want it to be known, we want it to grow; and in
some way it is bound up with us and our activities, interests,
and so forth, God cannot commit Himself to that. Only in so far
as there may be a bit of spirituality within that will God be
able to commit Himself, but not to that; to what is spiritual
within, but not to that. He ignores that. He has no interest in
that. If the setting up of something on this earth in time in any
way governs our consideration, our activity, God is not in that.
He is not giving Himself to that, that is not according to the
eternal purpose. In this dispensation God is doing nothing in
relation to this earth; He is doing all in relation to heaven,
taking out for the heavenly. If we are seeking to set up and to
keep going something on this earth, God is not in it. It is just
in so far as there is a measure of spirituality somewhere that
God in any way takes account of it. If our methods, our means are
other than wholly spiritual, God is not in it, and therefore the
fulness of God is not there, it is limited.
That explains why so much that is man-propelled, man-ordered,
goes such a little way, although the world may be full of it.
Think of the disparity between the number of Christians and those
who might go by the name of apostles in the world today and in
the time of the book of the Acts, concerning which the book of
the Acts was written, and the difference in effectiveness, in
power, in fruitfulness. If in those days, concerning which that
book was written, they had had as many Christian workers then, on
the basis of those who lived then, we should have been in the
millennium long ago, the work would have been done. And yet today
with countless more agents at work for the Gospel and agencies,
the one cry is “Limitation”! Limitation, limitation,
defeat, weakness, getting just so far and the fruit of what there
is (I am speaking generally) is so poor that very often you have
to ask: Are these people really born again or not? There was no
doubt about it in New Testament times. What is the matter? Well,
that book answers for itself. Someone has called the book of the
Acts “Holy Ghost days”! That goes to the heart of it.
Things were then in the hands of the Holy Spirit entirely, not in
the hands of men.
I am not going to pursue that, but I am seeking to help you to
grasp what I mean by God’s end governing the matter of
God’s fulness, and that fulness is proportionate to the
measure in which God’s end really does govern. Therefore, we
must take one further step:
d) Divine disfavour upon all that opposes
Divine disfavour will rest upon all that stands in the way of
the full thought of God. Hence there has to be discrimination in
work, in method, in means. Is this God’s purpose? Is this
the way to reach God’s purpose? Is this the means that God
would employ? And so often in the light of a true spiritual
understanding of what God is after, and how God reaches what He
is after, there has to be a shedding of a very great deal in the
work of the Lord. And that requires this, so far as the
Lord’s servants are concerned, that they shall be marked by
true adjustability.
We have often in this very connection cited David and his cart
for the Ark. Yes, the purpose was right, the object in view was
in God’s mind, but a cart was not God’s prescription.
It was a man-made thing, a mechanical means of propelling and
carriage for the testimony. But the point is this, that when
David met the displeasure, the disfavour of the Lord, not
concerning his object, and not concerning his motive, but
concerning his method and his means, although at the moment he
was grieved, displeased and he smarted, we find that when he had
had time to be quiet and get before the Lord, and the heat of his
own soul and his own soul’s interests had died down, he was
found an adjustable man, and he adjusted himself in his method to
God’s purpose. Then David said, “Let the Levites bear
the ark, for so it is written.” I believe that is one of the
many things in David that made him a man after God’s own
heart that should do all His pleasure — not David’s
pleasure.
How necessary it is for us, then, to be adjustable, ready to
shed those things which are not directly related to God’s
end, or those methods and those means; ready to let go that which
is something in itself, though that something may be good, and
valuable, and seemingly necessary but not what God is after in
the full sense. There are any number of good works going on, and
valuable in their way, and to those who are doing them, evidently
necessary, but are they really God’s full purpose, that
which God is really after? They are things in themselves, and
largely apart, either unrelated or else not reaching God’s
end at all.
e) The need of a vessel to keep the purpose in view
There must, therefore (and this is the point to which we have
been working all the time), be that vessel and that instrument
sovereignly raised up by God to keep His full purpose in view. It
is essential to God. When there is so much that is less, and
contentedly less, so much that is blindly other, so much that
leads nowhere, and so much that is entirely unsatisfactory to the
Lord, it is necessary that the Lord shall raise up a vessel, an
instrument for the purpose of keeping His full thought before His
people. God has had a small witness to His full thought right
down the ages, but that vessel has been His plummet, His
measuring-line. Men have refused, men have persecuted, but men
are going to be judged by that.
As the dispensation moves on and grows old and nears its end,
shall we not be right in concluding that if what we have said is
the truth, towards the end and in the end time God will seek that
He shall be in possession of a vessel which does set forth for
Him before His people His full thought. I believe He will, and we
might apply in this connection the words of the apostle in
another connection: “Ye see your calling, brethren...”.
Now half of the statement is that there must, therefore, be a
vessel and an instrument sovereignly raised up by God to keep His
full purpose in view. The other half is God will call into
relationship to that ministry. He will call into relationship to that
ministry, and therefore there will come about a discrimination in
ministry under the sovereign calling of God. There will be many
things which will arise. For such as are thus called, laid
hold of, apprehended of God, there will be such a line taken by
the Lord that they cannot do what others do, even in the
ministry. Oh, these are serving the Lord, and they do this and
they do that and there seems to be blessing and the Lord seems to
be with them. They... Why shouldn’t I? Why can’t I? The
only answer that will ever come is: Others can, you cannot! And
there is a deeper explanation: you are called for something to
which they are not called, or to which as yet they have not come,
and you are entirely governed by God according to His purpose;
not just interest, but specific object.
f) The end determines the preparation experimentally of
the vessel
That vessel, and those who are called to its ministry, have to
be constituted in a living and experimental way according to the
end in view.
That opens a new line. I just make that statement and close
there for the time being. They will be dealt with in such a way
as no one else will be dealt with. That vessel will be
constituted by such divine means, such divine dealings as no one
else knows. That vessel will go through experiences in the hands
of God which are peculiar experiences, strange experiences, deep
experiences, and all the time the human heart may be crying out,
Why should I go this way? Why should I have this
experience? Why is it that such things have befallen us?
These are not the things common to man! Our experience is a
different experience altogether from the experience of the
majority of the Lord’s people! What we are called to do, and
let go, and so on, is altogether different. The way in which the
Lord deals with us is different! Yes, it is not only,
“Called, according to His purpose”, but constituted
according to His purpose. The end is governing the Lord’s
dealings with us.
Oh, listen to this as we close. No one can come into the
ministry of God’s full, eternal purpose in relation to
God’s fullest thought by taking it up, by the attitude which
says, I am going into that! I am going to take that up! I am
going to be in that! I am going to do that! That is going to be
my line of ministry! That is going to be my message! Beware! Do
not take any such attitude: it is impossible. If you do you will
soon be found in a false position, and you will be knocked to
pieces. You have got to be constituted for this thing, and that
constituting follows a sovereign movement of God in your life
which makes you know that, although you might be doing good work
in various other ways and directions, this is God’s way for
you, and you do not argue from the general, you argue from the
particular: I see now that, whereas I have been in a certain
realm, on a certain line, God has wound that up for me, and laid
His hand upon me and called me to something other. Until that
becomes, not something mentally apprehended but something born
into our very being, so that, although we might often have
recoiled, we might have gone through contortions over it, we know
that God’s end has come upon us, and in the specific sense
of ministry (I am not talking now about our place in the purpose,
but in the sense of ministry), we are the called according to His
purpose. Then God begins the constituting.