"And
the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of
the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for
in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die" (Gen. 2:16-17).
"And
the woman said unto the serpent, Of the fruit of the
trees of the garden we may eat: but of the fruit of the
tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said,
Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest
ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not
surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye
eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall
be as God, knowing good and evil. And when the
woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it
was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be
desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof,
and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her,
and he did eat" (Gen. 3:2-6).
"And
the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of
us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his
hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and
live for ever - therefore the Lord God sent him forth
from the garden" (Gen. 3:22-23).
"For
seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its
wisdom knew not God, it was God's good pleasure through
the foolishness of the preaching to save them that
believe" (1 Cor. 1:21).
"We
speak wisdom, however, among them that are fullgrown: yet
a wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age,
who are coming to nought: but we speak God's wisdom in a
mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden,
which God foreordained before the ages unto our glory:
which none of the rulers of this age hath known: for had
they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of
glory" (1 Cor. 2:6-8, R.V. mg.).
The Lord
Jesus did not come into this world as God incarnate,
taking human form, merely for His own sake, to do
something in isolation, in His isolated Person, and go
away again, as though He had accomplished His life-work
and that was that. The fundamental fact of our faith is
that the Lord Jesus is God's basis and model for the
constitution of every child of His. Christ is very
vitally related to us. God's thought is: "as he is,
so are we". We are "foreordained to be
conformed to the image of His Son". The significance
of Christ for us is a very real, very vital one.
Our
significance, therefore - and our hearts must be wholly
set upon being, as utterly as God has made possible, men
or women of God - our significance in this universe must
therefore be the significance of Christ. Exactly what HE
signifies, WE have to signify, and so it is
for us to understand, to grasp, to see, by Divine
enablement, what is the nature of Christ's significance.
HIS SIGNIFICANCE NOT OF THIS WORLD
We have
seen that His significance was altogether outside of this
world and its standards, its ideas, its mentality. It was
another significance. It was the impact of something
other upon this world and in this world. It was not just
an influence, it was not something abstract. It was the
very nature of His humanity. He was a Man in possession
of certain things which no other man possessed. All the
race beside Him did not possess the things which He
possessed, and those things are the things which are
going to give us our significance, as the significance of
Christ. For there is no doubt about it - these things do
make people significant.
THE NATURE OF HIS
POWER
We spoke
in our last meditation of the nature of His power. With
the world's ideas of power it had nothing in common. It
was power which worked through utter selflessness,
meekness, humility, so far as He Himself was concerned;
emptiness, absolute dependence upon sources outside of
Himself. That was the position He had accepted
voluntarily. But He would not have been such a man of
power if He had had it in Himself. Why should He spend
all night in prayer before He would allow Himself to
choose the men who were to be His disciples and later His
apostles? He would not allow Himself to do that out from
Himself. It was necessary for Him to be able to say
later, "I know whom I have chosen" (John
13:18), and any man making choice for such responsibility
would naturally never have chosen those men - least of
all Judas Iscariot. "Did not I choose you the
twelve, and one of you is a devil?" (John 6:70). He
spent all night in prayer before He did it. Many other
pointers there are to His power not being in Himself but
being drawn from another source. It is just the exact
opposite of the world's ideas of power.
THE ASSOCIATION OF KNOWLEDGE WITH
POWER
Now I
come to another point in connection with that - the
association of KNOWLEDGE with power. There is a
saying, 'Knowledge is power'. That may in a sense be true
in the natural world. It certainly is true in the
spiritual world. But natural knowledge is not powerful in
the spiritual world. We have only to go back to the
passages in Genesis that we read, to see that the idea
primarily was one of power. 'New power is going to be
reached by way of knowledge: knowledge is going to bring
to power' - so the devil said, and so the woman came to
believe, and the man and the race. Knowledge and power.
Yes, it is true, it is quite true. The lie of the devil
was not in that he said, in effect, 'Knowledge is power'.
The lie was, "Ye shall be as God"; that is,
'You will be able to dispense with God, you will be as
God yourself; you will have the power in yourself, and
that will make you equal with God, and you will have the
secret of life, the secret of pre-eminence, the secret of
dominion; you will have it in your own hands, in
yourself.' The lie was there.
The
truth was that in the day that their soul-eyes were
opened, when they acquired a soulish or psychical
knowledge, in that day their spiritual eyes closed. In
the day that they saw in one realm, they became blind
forever in another. The whole race was blinded by seeking
knowledge - not by knowledge in itself, for knowledge is
not evil, it is not wrong - but by seeking knowledge as
personal power, to give personal advantage and to glorify
the flesh, to glorify man. The end, as we said earlier,
is man's undoing. The more he knows, the more by his
knowledge he brings the race into proximity to utter
destruction.
THE NATURE OF CHRIST'S KNOWLEDGE
Let us
come to the Lord Jesus. The significance of the Lord
Jesus was His knowledge. His power worked by way of His
knowledge. It was not just putting forth force. His power
was because of His knowledge. But what was the nature and
basis of His knowledge? The nature of His knowledge was
that He knew God, He knew the Father; He knew heaven's
standpoint, heaven's standards. He knew eternal laws and
principles. He knew with the knowledge of heaven - that
was His power. It was spiritual knowledge which He
possessed. They could not understand. As we said, He was
a stranger in this world. They did not understand. "Whence
hath this man this wisdom...?" (Matt. 13:54).
They referred to what seemed to them to be His store
of information. He could speak about almost anything. He
could speak about the sea, He could speak about boats, He
could speak about fishes, He could speak about everything
on a farm; He could speak about anything. That was
impressive enough, but that was not the thing that
perplexed them. There was something more than that.
"He taught them as one having authority, and not as
their scribes" (Matt. 7:29), who were the
knowledgeable people according to this world. There was
some element in His knowledge which defeated every
attempt of theirs to fathom. It was spiritual knowledge,
and that spiritual knowledge met men's need as nothing
else met that need - when men's hearts were open to be
met and when they realized that they had a need. It met
need in the deepest way for man.
Of
course, we know that ourselves. You know very well the
difference between information and Divine spiritual
knowledge. If the Lord speaks spiritually, how utterly
satisfying it is, how it meets us right deep down in our
being, how it is food, how it is life! But the mere
imparting of Bible or religious information - that is
another thing in another realm. It may be the cleverest
person doing it: it does not touch us. I have lately been
trying to read a book on doctrine, Christian doctrine, by
an eminent religious scholar who took a whole year off
from his work at Oxford University in order to write it.
I had to read every sentence two or three times before I
knew what he was talking about. I thought: 'Something has
happened to me, I have lost out - I can't cope with
this!' Until I met a man who is miles and miles ahead of
me intellectually and I said, 'Have you encountered such
and such a book?' He said, 'Yes, but it is a weariness to
the flesh; I do not know what the man is talking about!'
That was a great comfort to me, purely naturally, in the
flesh! But, you see, that kind of approach, in dealing
with the things of God, is death.
But when
the Lord Jesus spoke, He spoke out of knowledge which was
not of that kind. "The words that I have spoken
unto you are spirit, and are life" (John 6:63),
and the hungry heart knew it and ever has known it. There
is a knowledge which we, like the Lord Jesus, may
possess. He is not apart from us in this. He accepted our
position, to have, in the days of His flesh, all things
as we may have them. In saying that, nothing is taken
from His Deity, His Godhead; but I must accept His
absolute humanity, and that, for the duration of that
humanity, He, of His own will, accepted our position - to
go our way, and not to have power in Himself, but to have
it only in God and to obtain it all from God. The purity
of His Spirit, of course, made for possibilities beyond
anything we can imagine. "The pure in heart... shall
see God" (Matt. 5:8), and therefore He could see and
discern and perceive as perhaps we never shall. But, on
the same basis, we are permitted to have knowledge, of an
order, in a realm, which means the very heart
satisfaction of others and which, being that, is a power
beyond anything that is academic, however great it may
be. It is heart knowledge and heart satisfaction that
matters. It is that that is going to make you and me men
and women of God. In a word, we shall be men and women of
God just in proportion to our spiritual knowledge of the
Lord. That is our measure as men and women before God.
"Let
not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the
mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory
in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this,
that he hath understanding, and knoweth me"
(Jer. 9:23-24).
THE AUTHORITY AND POWER OF
CHRIST'S KNOWLEDGE
Then I
said that He spoke with authority. His knowledge gave Him
an authority. It was not official authority - it was not
that God had placed Him in a position of official
authority. It was the authority of spiritual knowledge.
He could speak straight out, without the slightest
wavering in His certainty. 'Moses said' - and Moses was a
great authority - "but I say unto you"
(Matt. 5). Here is an authority transcending Moses. 'The
scribes and Pharisees say, but I say...' It was not just
the asserting, self-sufficient, self-assured declaration
of some conviction. It came out of a hidden secret
knowledge which brought Him absolute certainty. He could
say it, and commit Himself and everything to what He
said. I very often hesitate to say some things that I
say, and I often keep things back on the point of saying
them, and sometimes when I am thinking of things
beforehand, I make up my mind I am not going to say that,
not because it is not true, but because I am afraid of
the consequences. The Lord Jesus never had a reservation.
He could say a thing, and know that sooner or later that
would come about and they would have to acknowledge that
He had spoken the truth.
Think of
some of the things that He said. Speaking of the temple,
He said, "There shall not be left here one stone
upon another" (Matt. 24:2). 'Before this generation
passes away, Jerusalem will be compassed about with
armies; families will be betraying one another; the most
ghastly things will he happening here.' "This
generation shall not pass away, until all these things be
accomplished" (Mark 13:30). Was it true? Fifty years
later it all happened to the very letter. That is only an
outstanding example of what I mean. He could commit
Himself absolutely to what He said, knowing that sooner
or later it would be proved, because it was true. And if
you and I are on His basis, taught by His Spirit,
something of that significance will come into our lives
also. People will say - That is what So-and-so said, and
there it is; it is just what they said. That is power by
knowledge. Oh, it is not just using power for
self-vindication or self-justification. I am speaking of
power like that of the Lord Jesus - of His knowledge
being His power and the power of tremendous authority.
So I
could go round the clock and touch on all sorts of things
relating to authority, relating to His hidden knowledge
giving Him His significance in this universe. It was what
He knew that gave Him His significance; not what He did
only, but what He knew. If you know the secret, you are
in a position of great power. Some years ago I tried to
illustrate this. An engineering firm sent in an account
for some work they had done. The account was a very heavy
one, and the people who were asked to pay sent it back
and questioned it. 'This is much too heavy! We want you
to explain why you are charging us so much.' And the
engineering firm sent it back again, detailing the
account item by item: materials - so much; time and
labour - so much; so they itemized it. But that did not
amount to the whole, that did not account for the total,
by a long way. There was still a large balance, and this
was summed up by one item: 'To knowing how'! It would
never have been done otherwise. There was all the
material, all the labour, all the time - but 'knowing
how' is the big thing.
THE COST OF SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE
And it
is the costly thing. This spiritual knowledge is costly.
It is like power, as we said in our last meditation. It
is Calvary knowledge. The Cross will have to strike very
hardly and deeply into our own certainties, our own
self-assurance, our own self-confidence in what we think
- yes, into that whole store of knowledge that we thought
gave us significance. It will have to strike deep into us
until we have to say, 'I do not know, I do not
understand; I cannot follow, I cannot see. What is it
that the Lord is doing with me? There is an end to all my
own understanding!' Spiritual knowledge comes by way of
the Cross, as every other spiritual thing does. It is
Calvary knowledge. It is the weak things who have been
broken by the application of the Cross who become the
powerful factors in the realm that counts most.
"Behold
your calling, brethren" - in other words, 'You see
your calling, brethren: how you are called, the basis of
your calling.' "Not many wise... not many mighty,
not many noble... God chose the foolish things of the
world" (1 Cor. 1:26-27); because it is not the
wisdom of this world and the strength of this world - it
is another kind. Have you noticed how some who are very
ignorant and foolish so far as this world is concerned,
some who would never pass an examination, who could not
answer a general knowledge paper of the most ordinary
kind - how, when they have come to the Lord and come
under the power and instruction of the Holy Spirit, they
begin to take on significance and weight, and how very
often it is just to such people that others needing help
go? That is the thing that makes for significance -
knowledge of the Lord. How often, on the other hand, have
we found those who, according to this world, are
tremendously advanced, very knowledgeable and very highly
educated, have the very best scientific knowledge and
equipment - and yet they are like little babes in
spiritual things. I confess that I have often been taken
aback by that. I have thought, Here is someone who is
very intelligent: with their great academic achievements
and accomplishments, and their very able minds, they will
be able to understand things and we shall have a good
time. We have started off, and soon they have taken on a
far away look and do not know what you are talking about,
and we do not get anywhere at all.
I am not
saying, of course, that that is always so. When the
Countess of Huntingdon heard that passage read -
"not many noble" - she said: 'Thank God, it
says "not many" - there can be some!' I am not
saying it is necessary to be without education in order
to have spiritual knowledge, nor am I saying it is
necessary to have it. But spiritual knowledge is of
another order, something different altogether, and it is
that that gives the meaning. If you know the Lord, if you
have that opened heaven, that which the Lord Jesus had of
a life with God, a walk with God, a fellowship with God,
you will count for something, not only as an influence,
but as one who has the secret for other people, who can
help by enlightenment and instruction, who has something
to give - and oh, how much that is needed! Is it not true
that the poor, weak, retarded state of the mass of
Christians today is due to the absence of a teaching
ministry that is truly under the Holy Spirit? Surely it
is! We can see what is bound up with this matter of
spiritual knowledge, spiritual understanding, in giving
significance.
Now I
started here - do you really want to be a man of God, a
woman of God, as swiftly as it is possible for God to
make you one? Then, if so, your heart will be set upon
knowing the Lord more than anything else. It will be your
one ambition, your one passion - to know the Lord. You
will be seeking to walk with the Lord, to know the Lord -
but it is going to cost you.
FAITHFULNESS IN TESTIMONY
In our
last study, in connection with power, we cited one or two
passages of Scripture. "Jews ask for signs, and
Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified,
unto Jews a stumblingblock, and unto Gentiles
foolishness" (1 Cor. 1:22-23). And then, "Blessed
is he, whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling in
me" (Matt. 11:6). Now the offence of the Cross
comes here in this matter. In order to be a man or woman
of God, are you prepared to be called a fool, to be
regarded as silly, weak, foolish - and the world does
think Christians are foolish - and because you know that
they think of Christians like that, are you either going
to hide your light and not let them know too clearly that
you are a Christian, or are you going to try to meet them
on their own ground, and 'be up to them' with natural
ability, thinking, deludedly, that you are going to win
them, or are you going in some way to convince them by
being as they are, taking their standards? Both of those
courses, needless to say, are disastrous. The only way to
be of real account in the eternal sense, in the heavenly
sense, as a man or woman of God, is to come right out
with it, plainly, clearly, unreservedly - 'I am a
Christian, I belong to the Lord!' - and all that that
means, risking everything upon a very clear testimony;
leaving the Lord to support, to vindicate, but taking the
consequences, which for the time being will probably be
sneers, jeers, discounting, calling you names that hurt
the flesh, perhaps ostracising or isolating you. But,
sooner or later, your significance will come into light;
sooner or later you will find that conditions are forcing
men beyond their own resources to the need of something
which you alone have got, and that God gives you the
opportunity because of your faithfulness. God will never
give you opportunities unless you have been faithful. You
have to be faithful in the least before you have your
opportunity increased.
COUNTING FOR GOD
Does
this matter to you - whether you are of that kind of
significance or not, whether you count? Some of you have
settled that long ago; but it is so easy to stand up and
sing - especially with a tune that helps and is perhaps
rather soulish - "Jesus, and shall it ever be, a
mortal man ashamed of Thee?", and all those
wonderful things that follow in that hymn; but is that
true? You say that this is very elementary. Let it be
elementary. I am going by elementary stages in order to
get at the thing itself. The thing itself is this: you
are counting, or you are not going to count, according to
your measure of spiritual knowledge - your knowledge of
the Lord. That can only be had in a walk with God as the
Lord Jesus walked with the Father, and that is going to
be by way of the Cross. It will be for us Calvary
knowledge. It will mean that we are emptied of all
self-resource, brought to the place - yes, many times -
where, unless the Lord helps us, we are finished.
But that
is the way of spiritual knowledge. That is what the Lord
would bring us to, and here I close. We go through it as
Christians - so much suffering, affliction, trial,
adversity, disappointment - oh, yes, so much of it. But
what is the meaning of it? Why does the Lord not shield
His own loved children and spare them? Why does He allow
them, perhaps more than any others, to know affliction
and suffering and weakness? It is for this very thing.
There is no other way now for us to know the Lord, the
flesh being what it is. If everything is going all right,
if we are all hearty and well, we do not feel our need of
the Lord, we do not go seeking the Lord with all our
hearts. We can only know Him by the way of the working of
the Cross, which is the death of ourselves, and the Lord
will bring us to the place where He would have us and
where we would say, in the time of affliction, There is
something to learn in this, something to get out of this:
something of the Lord is bound up with this. The enemy
will have us revolt against the means the Lord uses,
tempt us to break away from it, to escape it, to get out
of the difficult place, to run away. The Lord would have
us to say, In that difficult place, in that painful
experience, there is something of the knowledge of Him to
be had. Do not allow yourself to be pressed out and do
not run away. Say, Rather let me have this, if it has
something of the Lord, than be free from it.
That is
the way of stature, measure, manhood. We grow when we get
there. That is significance. "The cup which the
Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" (John
18:11). That is manhood, that is to be full-grown. Oh,
the temptation for the easy way that was constantly
pressed upon our Lord! 'The kingdoms of the world and the
glory thereof - you can have them on the simple condition
that you acknowledge me, the prince of this world!' It
was the temptation to the easy way all along. 'Save
yourself! Spare yourself! Get out of the difficulty by an
easy short cut.' No, His very measure, His spiritual
measure, meant refusing, repudiating, anything like that,
and accepting the cost. This was the way of the Father,
the knowledge of the Father.
I have
tried to pass on to you something that is so difficult to
explain. Let us sum it up again as we started. This is
the kind of man and woman that is going to bear
significance of the true kind, of the eternal kind, the
kind that matters. It is those who know - whatever else
they do NOT know - those who know the Lord. They
may be like the man in the Gospel who is such a great
example of this very thing. On the one side, there was
the sin of Adam bringing blindness; on the other side,
the works of the devil destroyed by the Son of man
bringing sight to the blind. When challenged: 'What do
you know about this man, what do you know about this and
that?' - he replied, 'Oh, I do not know this and that,
but whatever I do not know, there is one thing I do know
- that, whereas I was blind, now I see' (John 9:25). 'I
know': that is authority, that is power - by seeing. The
Lord wants witnesses like that - men and women who know
Him because they have made it the one passion of their
hearts to know Him, at any cost, at every cost. And,
seeing that this knowledge is by way of the Cross,
through Jesus Christ crucified, every occasion is present
for being offended - offended because of the foolishness
from this world's standpoint, the weakness by the world's
standards. "Blessed is he, whosoever shall find no
occasion of stumbling in me" (Matt. 11:6). The Lord
make us men and women of spiritual stature.