They part My
garments among them, and upon My vesture do they cast
lots. Psalm 22:18 (A.R.V.).
The soldiers therefore, when they had crucified
Jesus, took His garments and made four parts, to every
soldier a part; and also the coat: now the coat was
without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said
therefore one to another, Let us not rend it, but
cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the
scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They
parted My garments among them, And upon My vesture did
they cast lots. John 19:2324.
Read: Ezekiel 43:112.The Man Created
As we dwell upon that
seamless robe, and see how it was under the very careful
sovereign preservation and protection of God, it is
difficult to fail to see that the robe speaks in a
typical way of the humanity of the Lord Jesus, of that
which the Son of God assumed as His garment. What has the
Son of God come to wear? He has taken the garment of
humanity. He took upon Him the form of a Man. He was
found in fashion as a Man. This is signified in the
vesture. The vesture, in a word, then, speaks of His
humanity. This robe is presented to us as something
complete, whole, a perfect unity; of one piece, woven
from the top throughout. That is Gods
conception of man. That is the Man conceived in the mind
of God. That humanity is the product of the counsels of
God from eternity; man, in himself personally,
individually, and corporately a complete whole, a perfect
unity, of one piece, woven from the top throughout.
Such is man as produced
by the hand of God, as the result of that Divine
activity, Gods weaving, shall we say. The humanity
of the man, Adam, was a figure of Him that was to come.
Before there was any complicity with the adversary,
Satan; before there was any disobedience through
unbelief, man was in his own being and nature a unity, a
harmony, an accord, a whole. The man created was not a
discord, not a tangle, a contradiction, a divided being.
He was a figure of Him that was to come; a unity, of one
piece. Yet only a figure.
The
Man Ruined
What is the nature of
the ruin? It is as of a one-piece garment rent and torn
to shreds. If you have a one piece garment torn, you know
quite well that you cannot make that good. If you have a
two piece, a three piece, a four piece, you know that the
part where the tear takes place can be removed and
replaced. But when it is a one piece thing, it is ruined
when it is torn. You can patch it, but you have not
restored it to its original perfection. You can sew it
up, but you have not made it as it was. There have been
many efforts to sew up torn humanity, to patch it up; but
the patch always reveals the damage, the sewing up always
betrays that something has happened, and before long,
under given strain the thing breaks again. The Lord Jesus
says, No man putteth a piece of new cloth into an
old garment...; the rent is only made worse. No,
this humanity once torn is ruined, and there is no hope
but in a new garment, because of its essential oneness
before God.
I ask you, Is it not
true that man is anything but a unity in himself, a
oneness, a harmony, a perfect whole? We know ourselves,
that we are torn and rent, as it were, into many
fragments, contradictory elements. Is not Romans 7 the
great unveiling of the dividedness of man? Even when he
is brought under Divine law, that dividedness is brought
all the more to light. For that which I do I know
not; for not what I would, that do I practice; but what I
hate, that I do. Here I am, straining in one
direction and going in the opposite. I am a division. I
am a contradiction. I am not one piece. I desire right,
but against my desire I do wrong, and in spite of all my
purposing I do it. I am not one. A river always flows in
one direction, in one way, but not so human nature. It is
sadly otherwise with our nature now. We are not flowing
all one way. Even when perhaps the greater part seems to
be working harmoniously to one end, there is always a
reactionary something in us, a kick back. It
needs no stressing that we are anything but a unity. No,
the garment has been rent. Even our righteousnesses are
as filthy rags. Mans humanity now is in rags at its
best. Man is ruined, torn, disrupted.
The
New Man Pre-figured
It is not necessary to
do more than to point out that in the Old Testament there
is a pre figuring of the new man. In those men who came
into a living relationship with God in the Old Testament,
you find pre figured the spiritual and moral threads of
the new man; the threads being woven typically into the
form of the new man. It may be the faith of an
Abraham, the meekness of a Moses, the worship
of a David, the truth of an Elijah, the life
of an Elisha, and so on. These are all threads in typical
men, being woven into the One Perfect Man, the garment of
a renewed humanity. All of them are to be found in the
new Man when He comes. He takes up all those moral
elements, all those spiritual features: they are woven
from the top throughout in His humanity. See the wonder
of His faith, the beauty of His humility, His meekness.
See the devoutness of His worship, His honouring of God,
His Father. See the zeal for truth which burns with a
blazing heat more than that of Elijah. See Him as the
life, the power of life triumphant over death, as in an
Elisha; and so on. These are all the threads of His
humanity, and all this is pre figured in the Old
Testament.
The
New Man Provided
No longer is it now the
figure, but the Man Himself. His humanity is not the
humanity of fallen Adam, but a perfect humanity. There is
all the difference between God creating Adam and God
providing Jesus Christ. But we will not stay for the
moment with the comparison or contrast between Adam and
Christ. We point out that the new Man is provided, and in
this new Man you cannot detect any join; you cannot trace
any place where two things have been sewn together. He is
not in parts, He is whole. Oh, the wonderful
completeness, perfection, balance, wholeness, harmony of
His humanity. He can be angry, with a burning anger,
without ever losing His balance and allowing fleshly heat
to come in; but, being angry, He can at the same time be
full of love. He can turn from one thing to another, and
on the surface these things may seem to be altogether at
variance, and yet in Him they are so perfectly poised
that you are no longer sensible of any contradiction in
His Presence. We could stay a long time with the perfect
balance of His humanity, the oneness of His nature. He is
not a patchwork; He is not so many parts joined together;
He is a perfect whole. He is of one piece, woven from the
top throughout.
The
New Man Tested
The new Man provided!
Ah, yes, but tested! This humanity, like the garment, is
subjected to the test. All the strain is loosed upon it.
Its power for taking moral strain is tested. Every one of
those threads in the garment is put to the test.
Meekness? Cast Thyself down from the pinnacle of the
Temple! What would such an act have been? A proud boast!
And men would have said, You are a wonderful Man; we will
follow you! No, to have yielded would have been to have
forsaken meekness. Behold, thy King cometh, sitting
on an asss colt (John 12:15). But that
meekness was oft times put to the test. On another
occasion the multitude would take Him by force and make
Him King, and He escaped through the midst of them. Then
it is given us to see His devotion to His Father, that
devotion which is the essence of worship, the fear of the
Lord, that utter abandonment to God. That was the great
characteristic of Davids life. Whatever were the
faults of David, you cannot get away from the true
worshipfulness of his being toward God. The sublime
touches in the darkest hours of Davids life are
those. Even when he has sinned in numbering Israel, and
God visits his sin with terrible judgement, he goes down
before God and says, Lo, I have sinned, and I have
done perversely; but these sheep, what have they done?
let Thine hand, I pray Thee, be against me, and against
my fathers house (2 Sam. 24:17). What fear of
the Lord! What reverence for God! What a falling down
before God in utterness of surrender and yieldedness!
That was the spirit of Davids life. And the
perfection of that spirit, that devotion to His Father in
the life of the Lord Jesus was put to severe tests.
If Thou be the Son! Right at the end, when
men come and take Him with swords and staves, Son of God
as He was, He tells them that if He should ask His Father
He would send twelve legions of angels; but that devotion
to His Father must mean that the angels must stay where
they are.
We might dwell upon all
the moral features of Christ, and see how they were
tested, tried under strain. This fabric underwent a very
severe test in every thread.
The
New Man Proved
Tempted in all points
like as we are, yet without sin! Not only without sinning
in the act, but without sin is this Man. Sin is a deeper
thing than sinning. He was not only tried, but proved.
The
New Man Perfected
How? Through suffering.
This is the word of the Lord. He was never anything but
perfect! But I quote Scripture: Made perfect
through sufferings (Heb. 2:10). That is said of
Him. We need not stop to argue the doctrine. To quote the
Scripture is enough. He was sinless: He was perfect; and
yet He was perfected. If you cannot understand the
seeming contradiction look again. It is only another way
of saying that He was perfected through the strain placed
upon the fabric.
A sapling may have no
vices in it. It may be a perfect tree as a sapling. But
show me that sapling grown to the full tree in a few
years time, and I will say, It is perfected through
sufferings; not that those sufferings bore witness to any
vice, but its perfections were being brought out to
perfection through the storm, the stress, the strain. It
is a matter of the measure of perfection, not so much of
kind.
The
Man Installed
I see the heavens
opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right
hand of God (Acts 7:56). Inasmuch as He hath
appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in
righteousness by the Man Whom He hath ordained...
(Acts 17:31). The Man is eventually coming again to be
the instrument of the judgement of this world in
righteousness. God shall judge the thoughts of men by
Jesus Christ: He gave Him authority to execute
judgement, because He is the Son of Man
(John 5:27). It is into the hands of the Son of Man that
God has given all authority in heaven and in earth. Thank
God that there is a Man in the glory. Thank God for all
that means for you and for me in our need of a perfected
humanity. He is installed there as Gods standard,
and the earnest of our full conformity to the image of
Gods Son is that He has given us His Spirit. We
have the earnest of that. When He shall appear, we
shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is (1
John 3:2). What is the earnest, the guarantee, the title
deed? The Spirit of Christ now dwelling within those who
have been born anew, born of the Spirit!
The
New Man Related, and Corporately Expressed
And gave Him to
be Head over all things to the church, which is His body,
the fulness of Him That filleth all in all (Ephes.
1:2223). What is the expression of that? Or, shall
we put it in another way: What is the significance and
implication of Christ related as in the simile of a
seamless robe? As Head of the Church which is His Body,
He is a oneness of nature, a oneness of life, a oneness
of everything! His Headship represents the oneness that
is in Christ Jesus.
We can hardly divide
these last two features. They are really the two sides of
one whole; related, and corporately expressed. They are
represented by two Letters, the letter to the Colossians,
and the Letter to the Ephesians. One sets forth the
absolute sovereign Headship of Christ; the other the
unity of the Church which is His Body. They have their
own emphasis and meaning and value. The Colossian letter
sees all things gathered up into Christ, summed up in
Him, and all things holding together in Him; and then the
statement is made that He is the Head of the Church, His
Body. As Head, in that perfected, glorified humanity,
there is secured and established a oneness which is
indestructible.
Look back for a moment
upon that seamless robe. The Psalmist has prophesied.
Hundreds of years afterwards the scenes of the Cross are
transpiring. The scenes pass rapidly with their many
details and incidents, and in the course of the whole
these men, the roughest, most brutal, insensible, cruel,
thoughtless, caring really nothing about fine things,
having crucified Jesus, sit down to watch Him, so we are
told by Matthew. They have stripped Him of His garments,
and their eyes fall upon them, and they see the
possibility of some capital in those garments. They were
avaricious men, whose whole thought was any kind of
acquisition, gain, profit; yes, profit out of a thing
like this. Did ever man sink so low? To crucify a Man,
and then in the presence of that dying One to think only
of what they could get out of His garments. So they,
being four, find four pieces, and take one each. Then
coming to a fifth and recognizing that this is a garment
which is of one piece and that there is not much to be
gained by dividing it into four, they toss for it. That
is what it amounts to. The dice is brought out and cast,
and one man is lucky and gets the seamless robe in
addition to the other. It all looks like a horrible bit
of the whole evil programme.
The
Seamless Robe and The Sovereignty Of God.
And yet, standing back
in the shadows, is God Almighty, exercising His sovereign
power, bridging the gap of hundreds of years. A Psalmist
had prophesied under the inspiration of the Eternal
Spirit, and God is watching that word to perform it, and
the most brutal, cruel, insensible men come under that
sovereignty unconsciously, that the Scripture might be
fulfilled. Even the worst of men are compelled to fulfil
the counsels of God, and that oft times unconsciously.
Anything that belongs to Christ is watched over by God.
It is because of the principle lying behind it, the
spiritual meaning in the thought of God.
What does that seamless
robe mean? God is careful of His types, of His
prophecies, even of His foreshadowings, until He brings
them to fulfilment. Not one bit of the type has failed of
fulfilment, and this shall not, and God brings it through
in His sovereign over ruling. Of what does it speak? It
speaks of a unity which Christ represents which is
indestructible, a oneness in Him which cannot be divided.
It means, in one broad, glorious word of affirmation,
that in Christ victorious all the damage by the fall has
been put away, and God has secured His thought. There is
no rent here. That has all been removed. The old garment
of Adam has been destroyed, and God has brought in His
new seamless garment, and established it in the place
where it can never again be rent. Satan cannot get at
Him. Sin cannot get at Him. All these have tried
themselves out to the limit upon that garment, and by
sovereign power He has triumphed. By the glory of the
Eternal Spirit in Him He has overcome. The oneness of
Christ by the Eternal Spirit has been preserved, and it
is there in a related position, related to you and to me.
Turning it round the other way it means that through
faith in Christ and by receiving the Holy Spirit, we are
related to Him and all His perfect humanity.
What is the corporate
expression? Till we all attain unto the unity of
the faith... unto the measure of the stature of the
fulness of Christ (Ephes. 4:13). Joined to
the Lord one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). What is the
Church? What is the Body of Christ? It is that which by
the Eternal Spirit is linked with the exalted and
perfected Lord in one life and in one substance.
When we take the loaf and the cup we are testifying to
the fact that we are communing by faith and in the spirit
with that perfect humanity. We look, in other words, into
the face of Jesus Christ, and, as we look, we are changed
into the same image. Oh, that we might see, on the one
hand, what Christ installed and related means, and then
what the Church is as the expression of the unity of
Christ, the oneness of Christ, through partaking of Him.
To use the word in Colossians, Holding fast the
Head. It is not too late even now for the Lord to
have a company on this earth who will hold fast the Head.
What does it mean to hold fast the Head? In a word, it
means to allow the Lord Jesus to express Himself in us in
absolute sovereignty; to bring us into the unity of the
Spirit, the unity of the faith, the unity of direct
government from heaven. That is the only way to unity.
Now some of the things we are up against are just in that
realm. The question arises, Is it to be ecclesiastical
government or government by the Holy Spirit? That is one
of the great issuesthe government of a man
established system, or government by the Holy Spirit? Is
it to be an order imposed from the outside, or is it to
be the life expressed from the inside? In a word, is it
to be organized, or is it to be organic?
These are tremendous
issues. The answering of those things all bears upon this
great question of holding fast the Head. Is it to be the
Holy Spirit, or is it to be the counsels of men? The head
governs the members. The members of the body do not
conspire or confer to tell the head what to do; to
arrange the plans and programmes for the head. Neither
does the head ask the members to make the plans. The
members are but informed of what the plans already are,
or of what the next step is, and their responsibility
begins and ends with obedience. Which kind of order will
obtain depends on how far the truth of holding fast the
Head is being expressed. The oneness of Christ in His
thought, His purpose, His way, His means, His time, His
everything, expressed in the saints, is what is in view.
It is not too late to have that in a company.
Old Adam is not a unity
like that, and that is why you get such a contrary
expression in what is called the Church. Discords,
divisions, contradictions, contrasts, schisms, etc.! Oh,
the history of the Church as an earthly thing is just a
history of internal friction. But Christ is one, and I do
not believe that you will get three or four different
interpretations of the same Scripture if you are under
the government of the Holy Spirit. I do not believe that
you will get three or four different orders of Church
government if you are under the government of the Holy
Spirit. He is one. Christ is one. It is not for us, mark
you, to say, Well, we are right and everybody else is
wrong! Beware of any spirit like that! But I do say this,
Be quite sure that the ground upon which you stand is not
the ground of your study, your reason, your comparing of
one thing with another; but upon the ground of the
absolute sovereignty and Headship of Jesus Christ by the
Holy Spirit.
We come to this
position at length: The Cross surely does come in and
cleave between Adam in all his dividedness, his discord,
his torn and rent state. Individually and collectively,
the Cross cuts that whole thing off, in its ruined
fabric, and it is put away. It is rolled up like a
garment and buried for ever, and in the resurrection of
the Lord Jesus the new Man comes forth, a unity, a whole.
We can test our
relationship to the Lord Jesus in two connections.
Firstly, that we find that there is a progressive triumph
in our own being of that which is ruling out the
contradiction, a progressive victory taking place over
the schism in our own being; that Christ is getting the
upper hand more and more, and bringing us to that
glorious peace which is the peace of harmony. That, of
course, wants a lot of explaining and breaking up, but
let us touch it at one small point and you will see what
we mean, and it will open a great field. As we go on with
the Lord, walking in the Spirit, or in other words, as
Christ is becoming more and more Master in us, so there
is a lessening and a decreasing of those awful conflicts,
and of that awful unrest and lack of peace that springs
from our trying to explain the ways of the Lord. Faith
has ruled out our reasonings, and we are learning to
trust the Lord, and peace comes in. We are in the
ascendant, and the dividedness, the stormy conflict of
our own souls, is silenced, is hushed; He is bringing
about a harmony. I believe as we become more and more
spiritually mature we shall have fewer storms between
ourselves and the Lord, and more peace. Not because
things will become easier, not because problems will
cease to exist, not because mysteries will disappear, but
because faith is trusting the Lord, and all this schism
in our being is being subdued; and we are coming to a
poise, a balance, a rest, a settledness. It is the
oneness in us of Christ. How long this takes is
determined not by time, but by the Lordship of Christ
within. It may be very swift, or it may be long delayed,
it depends upon our abandonment to Him.
And then what is true
in the individual becomes true amongst the saints, and we
can again test our relationship to the Lord, our
progress, by the transcendence through His love of those
human elements, those natural things, which come between
us, so that while the natural things are still there, and
people are still themselves, and the old Adam is not
eradicated, nevertheless there is a growing ascendancy
over that in others, a forbearance, an understanding, a
love, and the seamless robe is governing; for the beauty,
so to speak, is being expressed in the Body.
Woven from the top!
Where is that? Where the Head is. Woven from the top
throughout!
In closing let us be
reminded that the seamless robe is not in process of
being woven. It is already an actuality. The unity of
Christ is not something to be achieved. It stands
complete now. Whatever may be the immature state of the
believer or the Church as seen here, the fact that in
Christ we are complete is not affected. A responsibility
rests upon us to glorify Him by living according to the
heavenly fact. We must recognize that all in Christ are
one, for There is one Body, and one Spirit... one
hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father.... We must put on the seamless
robe, and not contradict in conduct the high and holy
garment which we wear. Putting away all strife,
anger, malice, etc. We have not to make
the garment; it is made. Ours it is to be suited to it.
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Mar-Apr 1936, Vol 14-2. This version from Emmanuel Church, Tulsa, OK.