We believe
what we have from the Lord is
based upon the conviction that Christianity as we know it is,
before very long,
going to be shaken to its very foundations, and that a great
structure which is
called Christianity is going to crash and disintegrate. I
believe that what has
already happened in the East is not far distant for this part of
the world. Indeed,
the signs are not lacking that it has begun, and certain
observers are aware of
what is happening. That being the case, which remains to be
proven and seen, we
should expect the Lord to be speaking very seriously, solemnly
and definitely
with such a contingency in view. We should expect that He
would be speaking
about the true eternal nature of Christianity, the kind of
Christianity that
will go through the shaking and survive, and that conviction
lies behind what
He has given us. Therefore we have been turned to these seven
references in the
book of the Acts where Christianity is originally called the
Way, as the full
explanation of what the Lord Jesus said about Himself, that He
was the Way. If
we understand what He meant, having been much more fully
revealed and disclosed
in the ministry of the Holy Spirit after His ascension, we
shall be able to
understand what kind of a Christianity it is that the Lord
wants that will go
through the fires and the shakings which are bound to come.
There is a
vast amount of praying for
revival. The question is: what can the Lord revive? And then
further, is the
Lord really going to do a great thing which will only mean the
strengthening of
something that is not real, or will the Lord permit the great
shaking in order
to revive what is revivable? I leave you to answer the
question, but the
necessity for us is to know what it is that the Lord would
revive.
So we come
back to those features and
elements of Christianity as it was fresh from the hands of the
Holy Spirit at
the beginning.
The Difference Between the Two
Humanities
That makes
it necessary for us to
understand the nature of man according to God; what God's mind
is about us as
human beings, for it is there the focal point of God's
movement with mankind is
found. You and I have not yet become sufficiently awake to the
real and utter
difference between the two humanities - Christ's humanity and
ours. It is just
there that we need a very real waking up. It is just there
that the enemy
concentrates his attention to keep us asleep or to deceive us.
You see, the
words used by God about man as he is now found in this world
since Adam's sin
are very utter and final words. When God uses the word 'lost'
in relation to
man, He means lost. He means that man is lost, and if you are
lost you are
lost; you just have to say, 'Well, I am lost.' When God uses
the word 'dead',
He means dead, dead in trespasses and sins. "This son of mine
was dead" (Luke
15:24) is the parable, but contains the truth. And when God
uses the word
'dead' about man, He means that; and when God uses the phrase
'afar off', He
means afar off. When God uses the word 'alienated', He means
that, just what we
mean by alienate, made foreign, of another kind of nature,
nationality, of
another race. An alien is a foreigner, not a native, and when
God uses the word
'alienate' as He does, He is saying, 'You belong to another
race, another order
of being, another nationality; you are a foreigner, afar off
and foreign to
God.' These are utter words.
Now all
errors have their taproot there.
You will find all errors to contain something faulty about the
conception of
man. Either there is that in man which makes it possible for
him to be his own
saviour, or some other form of making something of man which
puts it within his
own power and scope to do something to make himself acceptable
to God, whether
it be the humanism at one end, or whether it be the ritualism
at the other.
There are many phases between that declare that man does not
need a saviour, he
is his own saviour, he has only to cultivate what is in him...
there is the God
and the Christ in every one of us by nature; this is natural
religion. That on
one side. On the other, all your works, your good works, your
religious works
and activities, your observances of rites and so on, will
bring you to
acceptance with God. In between the two extremes there are
many phases, all of
which put something to the credit of man. Every error is
rooted there.
Christ's
birth, the incarnation, embodies
this fact: that the very beginning holds an unbridgeable gap.
Right at the very
beginning where man is concerned there is an unbridgeable
difference. That is
the meaning of the virgin birth. If you can repeat that, if
you can duplicate
that, if you can imitate that, if you can reproduce that, you
have bridged the
gap. If you cannot, the gap remains. And that is the whole
significance of the
virgin birth. There is something initial that no one can
repeat, no one can
reproduce, no one can duplicate. That is something by itself,
different from
all the processes of nature, different from all the will of
the flesh,
different from all the will of man. The will of man, the will
of the flesh, the
processes of nature, are brought to a standstill there. That
is the end of all
human capability. When it comes to the virgin birth, you have
something that is
altogether outside of the course of humanity as we know it. It
is a break in
from the outside of another world, and therefore of another
order, another
humanity.
The birth
of Christ sets forth then, that
that which is of God and that which is going to come to God
because it came
from God, is not of this order of humanity. Essentially,
fundamentally, there
is a difference, and such a difference that cannot be rubbed
out and cannot be
bridged. There are likenesses, it is true, the human form, the
human
constitution of spirit, soul and body. All those things are
likenesses, but
when you have said all that, and look at Jesus Christ, you
have another. Deeply
and inwardly He is not of this order; He is of another order.
There is a
mystery about Him that no human mind or intellect can fathom
or explain, and
you have either got to rule out such a thing as the virgin
birth as fiction or
falsehood, or you have got to accept that this is something
that you cannot
account for on any ordinary ground. It must be God.
The Necessity for New Birth
So Christ's
initial and fundamental,
all-governing imperative, was and is, "You must be born again"
(John 3:7). That
is in keeping with the incarnation. I am not talking about
Christ's Deity, and
I am not suggesting or hinting that what takes place in us
makes us a part of
Deity. You understand that. I am keeping a very wide eternal
gap between the
Deity of Christ and His humanity, and I am only dealing with
the significance
of His humanity as our Kinsman-Redeemer.
God put man
originally into a perfect
garden, and man has made it a perfect bear's den. It
is man who makes the world, or unmakes
it. Always it is man who makes the world what it is, what it
becomes. Outward
values depend entirely upon inward condition, inward state,
and it does not
matter how man may develop this world, because man is what he
is, the end of
all his developments will be suffering and destruction. He
cannot help himself.
When the Lord Jesus says such things as "you will be hearing
of wars and
rumours of wars" (Matt. 24:6), He is not just making a
prophetic statement in
an objective way that that is how things will be. He is
speaking on principle
and He is saying in effect, that man, being what he is, will
only increase
difficulties in this world, he will only bring about an
ever-increasing state
of conflict because he himself is a conflict, he himself is
all disrupted.
War
is not some objective thing; war is what man is in himself!
Can you deny that?
In spite of man, in spite of his outward efforts, he just does
it. Man says,
'The war to end all wars'. Man says, 'This is the last
world-war; no more war.'
What endless talk there is like that, and all the time if he
were a sane
creature he would realize that he is only working for more,
and the end of his
works does mean more, he cannot avoid it. It is the coming out
of what man is
and you and I know that very well. That is the meaning of this
fundamental
imperative, "You must be born again." There must be another
kind of man to have
another kind of world. There must be another humanity.
Redemption comes by
another kind of humanity, and that is the principle of the
incarnation.
Our Discovery of the Difference
You see,
the Christian life is one long discovery
on the negative side of this difference between Christ and
ourselves. Thank God
it is not only that, but on one side it is that - one long
discovery and
realization that we are one thing and Christ is another. That
is the basis and
the background of all the meaning of the Gospel, all the work
of grace, all the
growing knowledge of the Lord, all the discipline. There is no
meaning in such
words as "predestined to become conformed to the image of his
Son" (Rom. 8:29)
if conformity does not mean a change from one thing to
another. Language has no
meaning if that is not its meaning. You and I are really in
this thing on one
side of our Christian experience. What Christ is is something
utterly, wholly
different from what we are. There lies the real danger in all
doctrines of
eradication which put young Christians in a position where
they believe that
everything is done in an instant. They do not know the
terrible depths of the
difference, and which knowledge is necessary to spiritual
education and spiritual growth.
Christ Provides a Way Back to God
If it is
true, as God says it is, that
man is lost, then he needs a way back. He will never be
recovered unless a way
is provided and set before him. Christ was never lost, hence
He can provide a
way, indicate the way, tell you the way. He was never lost,
and so He says,
'The way is what I am, I am the way.' The way does not become
objective to
Christ, something to which He points. He says, 'The way is
what I am, and I am
the kind of Man that reaches God. I am the kind of humanity
that links God's
purpose with its realization, God's original beginning with
God's end, God's
desire with its attainment, and man's too; I am the way.'
So you see,
this gives the meaning to
Christianity as the Way. Christianity as the Way means that
there is another
humanity brought in by regeneration or new birth, another kind
of being. Is not
that the deepest truth and reality about us if we are the
Lord's? Oh, I know
about all the framework and all that we carry with us, but
fundamentally some
radical difference has been made, and we know right there deep
down in the
centre of our being there is that which is against all the
rest that is true of
us, that knows quite well that all the rest is wrong, all that
other has got to
be repudiated. Something has happened that has linked us with
an order that we
are not naturally. Is not that the deepest truth of our being
as Christians? We
have not just accepted certain teachings and practice and by
so doing joined
Christianity. Something has happened in us and that happening
is that which
corresponds to what happened at Bethlehem, a different kind of
being has been
brought into this world.
The Distinctiveness of
Christianity
When
Christianity became known as the
Way, it surely meant at least that it was something distinct.
The article is
there every time - the Way. It does not just say a
way, although
there were others. It is the Way. They were the
people of the Way. It
was this way, something quite distinct, something different,
something other,
something recognizable as being other. When you sift it down
and ask what it
is, you cannot find that it was just because these Christians
were changing
their religion and their religious procedure. You arrive at
this, that these
Christians are different people. They are different from all
the rest and it is
that that makes them known as the Way. It is the way which is
marked out by a
difference in the people themselves, and when you ask again,
What is that
difference? - if you had asked these people who formulated
that title, that
designation, 'What do you mean by the Way?' they would have
said, I believe,
that they are related to Jesus of Nazareth; Jesus of Nazareth
is everything to
them. Jesus of Nazareth is all they have to talk about; it is
the Jesus way.
Ah, it is the only explanation and definition of the Way. It
is something which
brings Christ into view, something that presents Him.
Christianity, therefore,
in its very inception, is that which is intended to be the
embodiment of Christ
as another order of being.
We have
said enough about His birth, His
humanity, as the inclusive background of what is meant by the
Way. It is not
some thing, it is a
kind of Person.
The Meaning of Christ's Baptism
I said
there were five major features of
Christ and of Christianity as the Way. That was the first; and
the second is
the meaning of His baptism. The birth declares the difference
in the humanity,
of one humanity which will not be acceptable to, or accepted
by God and another
humanity which will be accepted. That is the secret of the
birth.
The
baptism, as the next major
outstanding thing in Christ's life sets forth the door into
the Way. Let us be
very clear here. We are not preaching baptism. The apostles
did not preach
baptism. Oh, but, you say, what about Peter on the day of
Pentecost? "Repent...
and be baptised" (Acts 2:38). What about Philip and the
eunuch? I repeat, they
did not preach baptism. But, you say, what about the great
commission - "Go
therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing
them in the name of
the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19)? I
repeat, they did
not preach baptism. Now, you say, how are you going to get
round this? Go
straight through it! We are not saying that baptism is the
door into the Way.
We are not talking about baptism and saying that it in itself
is anything; we
are talking about baptism in its meaning. It is the meaning,
not the
thing. Let us leave ordinances aside, for we are not talking
about baptism as
an ordinance.
The
apostles preached Christ in the power
of the Holy Spirit. They set forth Christ, what He was, Who He
was, and what He
signified in the sense in which we have been speaking -
another, different, and
only way - and the Holy Spirit came upon their preaching of
Christ and brought
conviction and men cried out, "What shall we do?" and then as
a reply to a Holy
Spirit created conviction about the Lord Jesus, they said,
"Repent... and be
baptised." You see the order. Baptism derives its value from a
seeing of
Christ, and God help anybody who is baptised who has not seen
Christ - seen Christ, the
altogether different, the altogether only.
The Effect
of Seeing Christ
Where does
it lead me and lead you? When
we, under the power of the Holy Spirit, see Christ, we
immediately see our own
lostness. Is that not true? When the Holy Spirit reveals
Christ to us, the
immediate accompaniment is the sense that we are lost and we
are hopeless. An
accompanying despair goes with a real seeing of Christ. That
is conviction;
call it conviction of sin, if you like. It is conviction of
what we are as over
against what He is. This difference immediately springs into
view.
Christ is
one thing and I am another, and
the difference is so overwhelming. In myself I am utterly in
despair, there is
no hope. God's way is not negative. That is just condemnation.
God's way is
positive and He reaches His ends by contrasts. If God were to
come to us and
just begin to bring us under condemnation in itself, where
would the end of
that be? Well, that is a negative way, a very unprofitable
way. But if God
holds up something and then shows us the contrast between us
and it and then tells
us this is what He wants where we are concerned, that is a
positive way of
salvation. That is the revelation of Jesus Christ and it
brings this sense of
hopelessness in ourselves in order that we may discover that
our hope is in
Christ. You see, the true effect of an impact of Christ upon
the life is
despair to begin with, and the continuous effect of the
revelation of Jesus
Christ is that the more we see Him, the more we see the
hopelessness of
ourselves as ourselves. To see Him will produce the cry - "Go
away from me
Lord, for I am a sinful man" (Luke 5:8). It is the first
reaction to a true
seeing of Christ. "I am a sinful man."
The Beginning of the Way: A Grave
Now you
see, that helps us, for when
Christ officially takes up the work of revealing the Way (and
I say
'officially' because it was officially that that He did it at the
Jordan in His
baptism) He was stepping into His finished work as Redeemer,
and when He takes
up that work of revealing the Way, He makes the very beginning
of the Way a
grave. The beginning of the Way is a grave; that is the Jordan
- a burial. The
Holy Spirit makes much of that idea of burial. "We have been
buried with Him
through baptism into death" (Rom. 6:4). Those who have seen
Christ will at once
recognize not only the necessity but the blessed possibility
of being buried.
What I am in contrast with Christ! Let me get buried and out
of the way! That
is the effect. Let me get off this earth, let me get out of
view! The baptism
of Christ is the provision for us of a grave, providing our
old man with a
grave. "Our old man was crucified with him" (Rom. 6:6). "We
were buried". Thank
God! Let us get into that grave as quickly as we can! It has
to be the result
of conviction, not because the church says that baptism is
something you must
conform to and accept, not because in Christianity baptism has
a place in the
creed and in the practice, not because anybody tells you you
ought to be
baptised and it is the thing to do; Christ was baptised and you
ought to follow
His example. None of that. But it is because the Holy Spirit
has come to you
and made you feel, "Let me get buried as soon as I can!" It is
something wrought
in us. Do not entertain baptism until the Holy Spirit convicts
you. I am not
preaching baptism, I am preaching Christ, and saying that His
baptism is a
figure of our death with Him. He is representative and
inclusive, and in His
baptism we step right into what God says about us in
ourselves, for Christ has
taken our place officially and representatively to be carried
out of the sight
of God.
Ah, but
with Him it was a terrible thing,
for the counterpart of His baptism was the cry of anguished
despair - 'My God,
You have forsaken Me!' There is the despair Christ has entered
into which is
our despair when once the Holy Spirit gets to work upon us. He
has touched our
despair, our hopelessness, to its uttermost depths; tasted
that depth for every
man that in His despair our despair should be swallowed up and
carried to the
grave, that the thing of despair should be put right out of the
sight of God.
Oh, thank God for the grave! It is the grave of the humanity
that God knows it
to be. First, what God knows it to be is something that can
never stand in His
presence. It is the grave of the people who have come to
despair because the
Holy Spirit has opened their eyes to Christ.
So long as
any other hope exists, the way
is closed. That is a strange contradiction. So long as any
other hope exists,
the way to God is closed. If we hope in our works, if we hope
in ourselves, if
we hope in our own righteousness, the way to God is closed.
And that is one of
the great emphases of Christ's life on this earth. He
thundered about that.
Righteousness? - it is your righteousness that bars and locks
the door which
opens the way to God! Your works, your good works, your
religious works? - they
are the very things that are keeping that door closed. Your
goodness, something
in yourself that after all is worthy of God? - such an idea
keeps the door fast
closed. When you have come to despair about your
righteousness, your goodness,
your works, your religiousness, you are not far from the
kingdom of God, you
are on the threshold of the Way, you are at the door, for that
door finds
people at it, and only people who have lost their hope in any
other way or
direction.
Well,
baptism is something very much more
than an ordinance, is it not? Baptism is a funeral, baptism is
a conviction;
and you do not get convicted that you ought to be baptised,
you get convicted
that you ought to be buried.
If the Lord has provided a way
for your putting
your conviction into practical expression and that way is
baptism, then it is
just the meaning of baptism that is all-important and not the
thing itself.
Although the thing constitutes a challenge to our reality,
seeing that we are,
after all, human beings, men and women, and not disembodied
spirits, we are
called upon to put these things into very practical
expression, but that
follows something of the Spirit's work in us. People come to
me and say, 'Ought
I to be baptised?' I never say, 'Yes, of course', and I never
ask anybody if
they have been baptised. But if the matter arises I say, 'Has
the Lord spoken
to you about that? Has the Lord been troubling you about that?
Has the Lord
been showing you that that is necessary to express some work
of His Spirit in
you?' If the answer is 'Yes', what is left for anybody to say?
There is no need
to come and ask about it; of
course the answer
is 'Yes'. If that is not the cause of it, do not be baptised
on any other
ground at all. It is the Holy Spirit bringing the greatest
truth home to the
human heart, which is that we are fit for nothing but the
grave. The Spirit
would tell us that, and many of us know that. Perhaps some of
you are knowing
that as very really now.
Christ's Death Representative and
Inclusive
Christ's
baptism was representative and
inclusive. That has been said many times, but what I mean by
that is this - He
takes a position as representing us. It is not so many
baptisms as there are
Christians who are baptised. It is not your baptism and my
baptism; it is His
death and He takes that place for us and as us and by faith we
step right into
Him, and, so to speak, we go down into His death and His
grave. That is what He
did.
And let us
say this simple thing again,
that it is not something that will happen today. It is
something that did
happen. This whole thing took place hundreds of years ago. The
apostle does not
say, 'We are baptised with Him' or, 'We are buried with Him
when we are
baptised.' He says that we were crucified with
Christ, we were buried
with Him. We only recognise, acknowledge and accept what took
place back then
when we ourselves bear this testimony. That is, perhaps, too
simple, but it may
be necessary. The great, governing phrase of the New Testament
is that little
phrase "in Him". Sometimes it is put, "together with Him". It
is "in Christ".
The Death of Christ an Active
Thing
One added
word on this. The death of
Christ is no mere passive thing. The death of Christ is a
power, is dynamic. I
think it was Dr. Mabie who many years ago said, long before
this present time
when we are so familiar with these terms, "The death of Christ
is radioactive."
Now you know what radioactivity is. You touch some ground
which has been
affected by radio action! You know you must be insulated, you
know it is going
to affect you, to disintegrate you; it will make you fall to
pieces physically.
"The death of Christ", said Mabie "is radioactive"; the death
of Christ is a
power right up to date. If you and I really come into vital
touch with the
death of Christ we meet a registration. Let me put that
another way. If you and
I have really spiritually entered into the meaning of Christ's
death, then if
we touch something that that death was against, we know it.
You touch it, and
see if the death of Christ does not register - keep off that;
leave that alone;
you have died to that; the death of Christ cuts you off from
that; the death of
Christ witnesses against that; the death of Christ said no
more of that! Touch
it and the Holy Spirit brings back the power of Christ's
death. You say, 'Oh, I
wish I had not touched that; I wish I had left it alone;
somehow or other that
death has touched me.' Anybody spiritually alive knows that
that is true. We
are not talking about ordinances, performances, rites and
ritual, burial as
such. We are talking about the death of Christ, and that is a
mighty thing. It
affects us. It is not a performance, something that we do
which is objective to
ourselves. It affects us, it testifies in us against a whole
world, a whole realm.
It witnesses against all that is not of God, and it is a
living witness right
up to date because the Holy Spirit has charge of that matter
and He is alive
right up to date.
So, you
see, baptism is not some thing. It is a
declaration of a deep reality. It is the declaration of the
meaning of Christ's
death. It is interesting that as soon as Christ steps out into
His official
work, it is at Jordan - baptism is the door. As soon as the
church starts on
its course on the day of Pentecost, it is baptism. The very
first thing -
"Repent... and be baptised." Baptism comes into view. It is the
door to the Way,
and if the church is going to really express and represent
Christ as the Way
and in effect be the Way for man, it has got to be a baptised
church, that is,
a crucified and buried church, raised from the dead. You and I
will never,
never help people to God except in so far as we are crucified,
dead and buried,
so far as our old life and nature and relationships are
concerned. Only a
crucified church can bring the mighty power of the death of
Christ to affect
other lives.
When John
was baptising at Jordan, Jesus
came, and different classes and sets of people came to be
baptised. The
soldiers came, we are told, and the soldiers, whether they
were the Roman
soldiers or the temple soldiers, represent the strength of
this world and the
strength of this world, the power of this world, has got to go
down into the
grave. The publicans came, and they were the commercialists,
the embodiment of
this world's wit and wisdom and cunning and acquisitiveness,
possessiveness
along the line of cleverness, and it has all got to go into
the grave. And the
Pharisees came, and they are the embodiment of a religion that
is Christ-less,
and it has to go into the grave. Every class in this world is
in the grave to
be buried. And then the only One Who has an open heaven and
the seal of God is
a different kind that has come up out of that figurative
grave: "My beloved
Son, in whom I am well-pleased". He is the only One to survive
the grave and be
accepted with God.
That leads
us to His anointing in the
next chapter.