"That which is
born of the flesh is flesh: and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6).
"But when the
fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of
a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them
which were under the law, that we might receive the
adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth
the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba,
Father" (Galatians 4:4-6).
"For they are
not all Israel, which are of Israel: neither, because
they are Abraham's seed, are they all children: but, In
Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, it is not the
children of the flesh that are children of God, but the
children of the promise are reckoned for a seed" (Romans
9:6-8).
We are now to consider
oneness with God in His purpose, but before we come to
that I want to say a general word.
I think it must be very
clear to everyone that what we Christians have been
brought into is a very great thing. I do not know what is
your conception of the Christian life. It may be just a
matter of having your sins forgiven and being given the
promise of heaven, or it may be something more than that,
but we ought to be realizing that this into which we have
been called is something immense, something which the
longest life here on this earth can never exhaust.
Abraham lived well over a hundred years, but he never
came into the fulness of all that unto which God had
called him. He is included with the large number about
whom the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews said: "These
all died in faith, not having received the promises"
(Hebrews 11:13). Many of those referred to in that
chapter had a long life and walked with God, but at the
end of their long lives they had not exhausted all that
unto which God had called them.
You may wonder why I am
saying this, but there are many young Christians in this
conference, and I feel that one of the greatest needs
amongst young Christians today is to know how very great
is the thing into which they have been called in Christ.
Those of us who travel from Far East to Far West in this
world are really shocked by the little knowledge that
Christians have of the full meaning of Christianity. It
is quite the exception to find anyone who knows more than
the elementary things of Christianity. If I said nothing
more than this, it would be important.
This is not just extra
Bible teaching. This is the living provision which God
has made in His Son, Jesus Christ, for every one of us. I
could desire nothing more than that you should go away
from this conference saying: 'Well, what I have come into
is something bigger than anything I ever imagined it to
be!'
So we proceed at this
time just to look at a little more of this great meaning
of our calling.
If you were to try to
sum up the whole meaning of the life of Abraham, you
would have to do so in one thing. Why did God call him
out of Ur of the Chaldees and deal with him in the way He
did through his long life? The answer is found in one
thing: The purpose of God was to secure a heavenly people
on the basis of sonship. Abraham was the first of a new
race of heavenly people. God said to him: "In
thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be
blessed" (Genesis 22:18), and that was to be
realized through his son Isaac - a people of a heavenly
nature in terms of sonship. Here again we touch perhaps
the greatest thing that has ever been revealed to man:
God's intention and purpose to have at last a race of
people who are His sons. There is nothing greater in all
God's revelation than this - that He would make us into
His sons.
We have said that in
Abraham's case this was to be realized through Isaac, but
those of you who know your Bibles know quite well that
Isaac was a natural impossibility. If Isaac was to be at
all, an absolute miracle had to be worked by God from
heaven, and when he did come Abraham was more than
ninety-nine years old. Sarah was just ten years younger,
and that speaks for itself. The Apostle Paul put it in
this way: "He (Abraham) considered his own body
as good as dead" (Romans 4:19). Isaac was
impossible - but Isaac was born. It was a miracle of God
- and all the sons of God begin there. It is absolutely
impossible to be a son of God unless He works a miracle.
That brings us to our
well-known Scripture. Well might Nicodemus say: "How
can a man be born when he is old?" But Jesus
just brushed aside that word 'how?' and said: 'Nicodemus,
it must happen. You must be born again. You,
Nicodemus, are thinking of the natural, while I am
speaking about the spiritual. That which is born of the
flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit, and that is what I am talking about. That is a
miracle of the Spirit of God. Therefore it is possible
for you to go right back and start life all over again
like a little child.'
Every child of God is a
miracle. Nothing, and no one, can make you a child of God
but a miracle of the Spirit of God. You will not become a
child of God by going to church every week, or by
adopting the sacraments of the church, whether that
sacrament be the sacrament of baptism or of the Lord's
Table. Those things do not make us children of God. They
are in the New Testament as things which children of God
do when they are children of God, but you can
accept all the sacraments, you can go to all the services
and may know in your head all the doctrines, and not be a
child of God. A child of God is one that is born by a
miracle of God. All these other things to which I have
referred may, after all, be things of the flesh. The
first phase of a true child of God is supernatural,
spiritual birth. It is one of those wonderful things of
God which lie at the very foundation of the Christian
life.
So the first phase of
sonship is spiritual, supernatural birth. You see, it was
in Isaac that Abraham came to sonship, for Isaac
represents the spirit of sonship. "God sent
forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts"
(Galatians 4:6), and the receiving of the spirit of
sonship is a divine act: not a process, but a crisis.
There may be a process leading up to it. You may be a
long time on the way to it, but when you do come to it it
is a definite, positive experience. Abraham was a long
time coming to Isaac, and Isaac was a long time coming to
Abraham, but when Isaac was born he was not a process -
he was an act. I suppose it happened within twelve or
twenty-four hours of one day: this morning Isaac is not -
this evening Isaac is.
Now, I know that many
of you older Christians are not at all interested in
this, for you know all about it. But while we all need a
fresh realization that our Christian life begins with a
miracle, and that our very existence as Christians rests
upon a supernatural basis, the young people need to
understand this very clearly. I feel that I must take
time over this, because the Christian life is being made
all too easy. All too often the tremendous thing of new
birth is not made clear. To become a child of God is not
to put something on the outside, even the name of
Christian, but to have something done inside that no one
but God Almighty can do. That is the beginning of
sonship, and Abraham's experience with Isaac, his son, is
the great illustration of this truth.
You see, God took very
great pains that it should be like that. As we have seen,
Abraham tried to do this in other ways, but it was a
tragic failure. God pushed this thing so far that it was
absolutely impossible naturally; and if we have not seen
that to become a child of God is a miracle, we have never
understood what Christianity really is. All that, and
much more, is in this simple word that we know so well:
"You must be born again." There is no
substitute for new birth.
When we have commenced
the life of sonship, then we commence the life of the
training of sons. There is one chapter in the New
Testament which especially deals with this - the twelfth
chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews. There it says: "My
son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor
faint when thou art reproved of him; for whom the Lord
loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he
receiveth. It is for chastening that ye endure; God
dealeth with you as with sons" (Hebrews
12:4-7).
I think we have a wrong
idea of that word chastening. We think, perhaps, that it
represents God as having a big stick in His hand and
knocking us about all the time. You have only to make a
mistake and down comes the big stick! That, of course, is
a wrong idea of God, and is not what the word means. The
word 'chastening' just simply means 'child training'. It
is not a sign of love for your child if you never train
him. If you do not train him he will not be liked by
anyone later on, so it is not kind not to train him.
While training does, of course, mean correcting, and
sometimes using the stick, the idea is to do anything and
everything to make that child a responsible man or woman.
It is a poor kind of man or woman who can never take any
responsibility, whom you can never be sure of, who is not
reliable and who always has to be told what to do, not
having any intelligence in himself or herself. The idea
of sonship in God's mind is to have people who are
absolutely reliable and responsible, who know in their
own hearts what is right and what is wrong, and do not
have to be constantly told.
You see, dear friends,
God is going to put very big responsibilities upon us in
the coming ages. The Word says: "If we suffer,
we shall also reign with him" (2 Timothy 2:12
AV), and what do you think 'reigning' means? Do you think
it means sitting on some kind of a throne and doing
nothing for all eternity? Well, if that is the idea, I'm
afraid I don't want it! I want to have something to do
that is worth doing. There is a word near the end of the
Bible which just says: "His servants shall serve
him; they shall see his face" (Revelation
22:3,4 AV). There is a great work of government in the
eternal kingdom for which we are being prepared; the
greater part of our experience as Christians in this life
is training for eternity. There are many things which
cannot be explained if that is not true. Here is someone
whom we think is indispensable to the work of God. We
cannot do without him! He is so useful and so
necessary... and then God puts His hand on him and lays
him aside for months, or even years, or He takes him
right out of the work to Himself in heaven. We cannot
understand those things. We would say that that person
was absolutely necessary. We cannot get on without him -
but God has greater service in His presence than He has
here.
You see, there is this
phase of sonship which is childtraining. I wish we could
always look on our difficulties in the light of this! It
does seem that the life of a Christian is more difficult
than any other life, and more troubles come to us than to
anyone else. God does not protect His children from
troubles, but, whether we recognize it or not, and
whether we like it or not, these difficulties and
troubles which come to us are to train us for something
and to develop in us the spirit of sonship, that is, to
develop spiritual intelligence and spiritual ability in
us.
Now I must come to the
third phase, which will not take very long. It is what
the Apostle Paul calls: "The manifestation of the
sons of God" (Romans 8:19 AV). Here are his words: "For
the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the
revealing of the sons of God... for we know that the
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together
until now" (Romans 8:19,22 RV).
Here is a very
wonderful idea. No one will question that the whole
creation is groaning. The Apostle pictures it in a state
which is saying: 'Oh, I wish it would happen soon! Why
does it wait so long? When will this thing happen that I
feel is going to happen? I am just in agony about it
all.' That is how the Apostle explains the conditions in
creation, and it is like that, isn't it? This poor
creation is in a very bad way. It is groaning and
travailing in pain and then the Apostle, with the light
which God has given him, tells us why it is in that
condition. God has a purpose hidden in the history of
this world, and in the history of the nations, hidden
from the eyes and the understanding of men: God is doing
something through the ages which men of the world do not
understand. What is this thing that God is doing
secretly? He is securing sons, who are hidden from the
world, but the very existence of the world demands that
this thing shall come to light one day. This secret
purpose and work of God must be made manifest, and Paul
says: When that happens the whole creation will be
delivered from the bondage of corruption (Romans
8:21). What is this thing for which the whole creation
waits? Here it says: "The manifestation of the sons
of God." The sons of God are going to be the
explanation of all the groanings of the creation, and
when they are manifested the whole creation will say: 'This
is what I have been waiting for!'
The Apostle John says: "Beloved,
now are we children of God, and it is not yet made
manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be
manifested, we shall be like him" (1 John 3:2).
That is the full meaning of sonship - we shall be like
Him, God's Son.
I think you will agree
that what I said at the beginning is right: It is a very
great thing that God has called us unto in fellowship
with His Son.