The
seed plot of this series of meditations is found in a
little fragment at the end of the letter to the
Galatians:
“And
as many as shall walk by this rule, peace be upon them,
and mercy, and upon the Israel of God”(Galatians
6:16).
We
will put alongside of that some other passages.
“Yet
it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to
grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin,
he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the
pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall
see of the travail of his soul, and shall be
satisfied” (Isaiah 53:10,11).
“Who
hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall
a land be born in one day? shall a nation be brought
forth at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought
forth her children” (Isaiah 66:8).
“Therefore
will he give them up, until the time that she which
travaileth hath brought forth: then the residue of his
brethren shall return unto the children of Israel”
(Micah 5:3).
“For
we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth
in pain together until now. And… we ourselves
groan… waiting for… adoption… the
redemption of our body ” (Romans 8:22,23).
“Verily,
verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament,
but the world shall rejoice: ye shall be sorrowful, but
your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is
in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but
when she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no
more the anguish, for the joy that a man is born into the
world” (John 16:20,21).
“My
little children, of whom I am again in travail until
Christ be formed in you…” (Galatians 4:19).
Now
let us bring together particularly that phrase from
Galatians 6:16: “The Israel of God”, and the
fragments in Isaiah 53:10 and 11: “He shall see his
seed”; “He shall see of the travail of his
soul”. “His seed… the travail of his
soul”.
We
have before us a very full, deep and far-reaching matter:
nothing less than that of the producing, securing,
training, and using of a spiritual seed — a new
spiritual Israel. We begin with a brief consideration of
a principle, found in a word occurring in all but one of
the above passages — the principle of travail.
Let us
first of all remind ourselves that this is a law which
God established after the fall. There is an established
law of travail. You will recall what the Lord said, first
to the woman, and then to the man, as recorded in Genesis
3:16-19. He there linked this law in two realms with
production and reproduction: in one connection with
children; in the other connection with the earth. And in
these two connections of the law of travail we find three
things.
Reproduction, and Hence Travail,
the Justification of Life
First
of all, the very justification of life is in
reproduction, in multiplication, in a seed. Life is never
intended to be an end in itself. Its only justification,
according to God’s law and principle, is that it
reproduces. And so the law of travail is linked with
reproduction. That runs through the whole realm of grace,
and through a large part of the realm of nature. But if
there is no reproduction without travail, then the
travail becomes the basis of the justification of
existence. That is something much deeper than perhaps
appears. One might put it like this, quite bluntly: If we
are without travail, there is no justification for our
existence. We shall come back to that later.
That
was implicit in what God said to the woman. Then He
turned to the man and spoke about the travail of his
labour — of the ground bringing forth thorns and
briars, that it would be by the sweat of his brow that
the ground produced, and that this was the preservation
and sustentation of life. This was the justification of
life: the preservation and sustentation of life on the
principle of travail.
And
then, of course, in both cases the issue is a triumph.
That is made perfectly clear in both connections. Paul
puts his finger upon that, you remember, in his letter to
Timothy (1 Tim. 2:13-15). Yes, travail, but
triumph. God will see you through in spite of it. It is
the triumph of life in both connections — the
children and the earth; it issues as a testimony to
something having been overcome, a victory over forces at
work which would prevent or make it infinitely difficult.
Travail, you see, is God’s law by which He is not
defeated. That is where the test comes always for us: HE
is not defeated. Out of the adversity, out of the
difficulty, out of the suffering, something stands as a
great testimony to triumph, to victory.
Travail Implies Something Costly
Now
note the implication of this principle of travail —
and there are many connections in which the law of
travail operates: just go through the Bible and see the
great number of connections where struggle and conflict
and pain and anguish presages the emergence of some
tremendous new thing of God. But note the implication of
such a law. What did God mean by it? I think simply this
— and perhaps much more, but certainly this —
that nothing was going to be easy and cheap. To put it
another way: that God was really establishing the
tremendous value of everything. He was saving man from
regarding things as being of little concern or value,
forcing him to recognise that this thing is costly
because it is valuable. Surely this is the offset to the
whole tendency of man’s nature to get things easily
and cheaply, not to pay a price for them, to escape
suffering, to escape labour, to get it all without any
cost. And God has written in the universe this law that
anything that is of Him, whether in creation or in grace,
has a price attached to it, is a costly thing; it is
infinitely precious and valuable, and worth suffering
for!
Note,
it is intended to bring the soul in — “the
travail of his SOUL”; “My SOUL
is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” —
to bring the soul into relation with things; and when we
say that we mean love. What we get cheaply and easily we
do not really love. But that which costs binds our hearts
to it — it becomes a matter of the heart, of love.
And so by travail the soul is saved from lightness,
carelessness, frivolity, cheapness, and brought to
recognise that there is something here that is infinitely
precious. How far-reaching is that truth and that law!
What a lot of ground it covers! God is not going to let
the creation off in this matter. This is the explanation
of so much. And nations and peoples that just give
themselves up to frivolity, to cheapness, to escapism and
all that sort of thing, are on the high road to a bad
time in their history. It will not be too long before
they pass through some fiery ordeal, in order to bring
back the preciousness and the seriousness of things.
And if
this is true in the realm of nature and the world, how
much it explains in the realm of God’s spiritual
things! Oh, the infinite tragedy of trying to make the
things of God cheap and easy — even salvation, and
the Christian life! — appealing always to the
pleasure side of men, trying to eliminate the cost. The
Lord Jesus never did that. Salvation is something of
infinite cost: everything to do with salvation is
infinitely precious, and there is not one fragment of all
that is of God which is not of surpassing and
transcendent value. It is not just going to be had
willy-nilly. “Through many tribulations we must
enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Yes,
suffering is attached to anything of value, and that is
particularly true of spiritual things.
At
that very point, you and I need to have our minds
“converted” — we need a tremendous change
of mind. Unless you recognise that, unless that has
become true for you, there are some things in the Bible
you cannot understand. They sound flippant, garrulous;
they sound as though they are just words, words,
words… Listen: “Our light affliction, which is
for the moment…” (2 Cor. 4:17). What are you
talking about, Paul — “our light
affliction”? Well, listen to his catalogue of
sufferings! Listen to him as he tells us of all that he
had to go through for the Gospel’s sake, and read
the much more that Luke tells us, that Paul never
mentions personally. What that beloved servant of God
went through for the Gospel’s sake —! And yet
he talks like this: “Our light affliction which is
but for a passing moment”. You cannot talk like that
in the presence of suffering unless you have seen the
infinite preciousness of that toward which God is working
and bringing you. “Though now for a little
while… ye have been put to grief in manifold trials,
yet… ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and
full of glory…” (1 Pet. 1:6,8). Now look at the
context of that: fiery trials. You cannot get through,
understand, endure the travail, unless you have some
sense of the value of things.
All Divine Operations Effected
Through Travail
(a) Initiations
This
law is carried through from nature to the purpose of God,
to the divine purpose, and is seen in the Scriptures to
be the principle or law of all divine realisations. If
you look again, you will see that in all new beginnings,
in all the initiations of God, this law is ever present.
Everything of God emerges from some agony, from some
convulsion, from some death struggle. Look at your Bible
again. It is like that all the way through: without or
within, some tremendous travail marks every new beginning
of God. Can you put your finger upon any instance in the
Bible where God began again and there was no association
with the principle of travail? You will have difficulty.
It is the law of birth, you see, and it relates to the
spiritual world, the purpose of God, just as much as to
any other realm.
(b) Enlargements
And
what is true of God’s beginnings and initiations, is
true of every enlargement. Whenever God sets Himself for
increase, for enlargement, to get something more than
that which He has already got, it seems that He plunges
things anew into travail. Every spring-time, for
instance, is to see nature enlarged, growing beyond what
it was before, and in its increase there is a new
travail. Perhaps you will think me unduly fanciful, but
you can almost hear the trees travailing at certain times
as you walk in the woods. Probably if our ears were more
attuned to that realm — and there are sounds, real
sounds, to which our ears are not attuned — we
should hear the groaning of the creation. Paul says this:
“The whole creation groaneth and
travaileth…” (Rom. 8:22). Why? It is pent up,
it is held back, it is under arrest; it is groaning for
its expansion, its enlargement, its liberation.
That
is a law in spiritual things. Every fresh measure of
Christ, every bit of spiritual increase, is fraught with
a fresh baptism into His passion. We should recognise
that, because so often we do not understand why it is
that, when we ask for spiritual increase and enlargement,
we immediately are plunged into a bad time. The increase
comes that way, does it not? Some of us have learnt that
so well that, if we say these things to the Lord, it is
so to speak with our tongue in our cheek! We are very,
very careful what we say to the Lord. We have learned
that the way of enlargement is at cost, through fresh
travail, and we cannot get away from it. Yes, there are
successive baptisms into the passion of Christ. The law
of His universality is the law of His passion. “I
came to cast fire upon the earth… But I have a
baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened
until it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:49,50). By
the travail of His soul, the passion of His Cross, the
straitening was removed, the fire was scattered, and the
enlargement took place. But that is equally true of the
church as of Himself. The church has never expanded and
been released without some convulsion. That is a matter
of history.
(c) Consummation
Again,
what is true of God’s beginnings, and of God’s
continuations and enlargements, is true of His final
consummation: that in the finality of things there will
be one mighty convulsion. If you like to change the word
— travail. I am not sure that the church has not
entered upon that already. It is certainly coming, and it
will be, at the end, the explanation. It is true to the
Word. That ultimate, final, intrinsic thing of glory and
preciousness, God is going to bring out of the fiery
ordeal at the end. Yes, the travail of the church at the
end will issue in the final emergence of the church in
glory and in the consummation of the divine purpose. The
Bible sees a great travail in the church and in the
creation, out of which the Kingdom in fullness will
finally come. “When these things begin to come to
pass… lift up your heads; because your redemption
draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28). It means your escape,
your release, your exodus, your WAY OUT.
Travail has Universal Significance
Now
this principle is, of course, comprehensively gathered up
in Christ Himself and in His Cross. Christ’s Cross
— His passion — is central to the whole
universe, and it is central in this particular respect:
it is travail through which the universe is redeemed.
Yes, the heavens and the earth. The Cross of the Lord
Jesus affects the whole range of things in the earth and
beyond the earth. His travail is of universal
significance, of infinite reach. And in every experience
of true spiritual travail there is something that is of
far-reaching significance and account.
Here
is this one little man, Paul, thought very little of,
despised, by the world both in his own day and through
centuries since. A certain writer — a great man in
his own eyes — calls him “the insignificant
little Jew”, Paul of Tarsus. Well, that is the
world’s estimate of him. Here he is saying: “I
fill up… that which is lacking of the afflictions of
Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the
church” (Col. 1:24). In other words: “I sip His
cup, and, in so doing, I touch the whole Body of
Christ.” It is a tremendous statement, is it not?
But was it true? Has history proved that it was true?
I
would like to stop here with a parenthesis on the
historical side of things. Fifty years ago, the whole
realm of biblical scholarship, as it is called,
“finished” Paul. They wrote him off; they
decided that Paul’s teaching was not Christ’s,
that it was in another realm altogether — it was not
Christian. That was Paul finished, they thought! But
somehow or another, he has had a mighty resurrection. The
remarkable thing is that the whole realm of biblical
scholarship is now anew giving Paul his place, seeing the
immense significance of the man. It is a quite
fascinating thing to follow the course of biblical
interpretation, and to be able to see today the
tremendous come-back that is taking place. Why it is, of
course, we know, and they are all going to be made to
know that this man, because he shared the sufferings of
Christ, has a universal significance for the whole Body.
While
that is interesting — and I could add so much more
to it — the point is this. Here is the principle:
that, if you and I really do share in the spiritual
travail of Christ, we are lifted out of anything that is
local and small and placed right in the universal. It is
a value secured for the Body of Christ beyond anything
merely earthly and parochial. That is the principle of
His travail, which is placed at the centre of the
universe; and to share that does mean such enlargement,
such release. You see, we come back to that again:
release, enlargement, expansion, fullness, reproduction
— use what words you will. The law is always the law
of travail.
Travail Reveals “Heart”
or “Hollow”
The
Lord allows travail — indeed, He not only allows it,
but appoints it — in order to find out whether
really there is a heart-relationship to His things. A few
months ago, I found a tree lying at the side of the road,
not far from my house. The day before, it had been
upright and growing, and looking like all the other
trees. It had all the leaves of profession, all the
proximity of association with other trees, and outwardly
it could pass off as being the real thing. But a storm
came, and now it was lying there; and when I looked at it
I found that it had no heart: it was a completely hollow
thing — there was only a framework. That is a
parable. That is what is happening, and what is going to
happen, and what God will cause to happen everywhere. The
travail will come — the suffering, persecution,
trials, whatever it may be; and, whatever may be its
form, whether it be within or without, it is going to
come in order to discover whether there is a heart there
for God, or whether, after all, it is hollow, it is
profession, it is simply association on the outside, and
not real on the inside. God must expose what is not real,
and God must test everything to prove it.
But
what had happened to the other trees — those that
stood near the fallen one? Well, they survived the storm,
and they are still standing. But is that all? Not a bit
of it! The next storm that comes will probably find that
it has got a little harder work to do than last time to
move these. Those roots have felt the strain and they
have reached down and taken a tighter hold. They have got
a grip on things; they have realised that storms are
realities, and that it is a matter of life and death as
to whether they stand.
It is
so easy, is it not, when things get difficult, to walk
out, give up? How often we pray that the Lord will
protect from difficulties and troubles! — but the
Lord never answers prayers like that. These things come
to us personally, and they come to us in our little
companies — storms, shaking storms, things
calculated to devastate and scatter, destroy and finish
what is there — and the Lord does not protect. But
what is He doing? On the one side He is finding out
whether there is a heart for Him, and whether there is
reality in every member, or whether it is only outward
show and hollow inside. On the other hand, He is seeking
to bring out the expression of preciousness: that this
thing is too precious to let go easily; it means far too
much for us to abandon at the first onset of adversity
and trial. That is the meaning of it, and it explains
very much, does it not?
The Two “Israels”
Now
this comprehends God’s whole conception of a
spiritual Israel. Why have we taken that fragment —
“the Israel of God”? You know, Paul was almost
invidious when he used that phrase. If you look at the
letter to the Galatians, you will see that he is dealing
with two Israels, and in that phrase he is saying that
there is a true Israel and a false. I think Phillips, in
his "Letters to Young Churches", has put
in a word which, while it is not in the text, is what is
generally believed to give the meaning of Paul. His
rendering is: “To the TRUE Israel of
God”. That is exactly what Paul meant. There is
another Israel, which Paul says is not the true one. But
there are those who “walk by this rule”, this
measure, this standard. What standard is this? If you
look at the letter you will see. “My little
children, of whom I am again in travail till Christ be
formed in you…” (4:19). “As many as walk
by this measure… the true Israel of God.” The
measure of Christ is made complete by travail. The true
Israel of God is the “seed” which is “of
the travail of his soul”.
We
see, then, that, whether we like it or not, this is an
established law. We can, of course, do many things in
order to avoid or get rid of the travail, but God’s
law means that there is something of preciousness that
comes out when it is suffered for, when you suffer for
it. May we never get to the place where we try to make
the Christian life cheap and easy — a perpetual
holiday. While there is the joy — and it should be
there; while there should be the deep worship,
thanksgiving and praise to God: surely the truest reality
even of the joy is that it comes from deep experience
through suffering. It is not the superficial, flippant,
frivolous kind of Christian who really knows the Lord
most. No: “We rejoice”, said Paul, “in our
tribulations” (Rom. 5:3). There is something
precious for the Lord bound up with suffering, and you
and I have to face that.
A few
months ago I received, as out from China, a message given
by brother Watchman Nee just before he was put in prison
about four years ago. The subject of that message was
— the necessity for the breaking of the vessel in
order to reveal the preciousness of the treasure within.
It is true. Now he is experiencing it. But: “He
shall see his seed… He shall see of the travail of
his soul, and shall be satisfied”.