Reading: Galatians 3; 5:13.
Paul
was continually growing in the knowledge of Jesus Christ,
but it was a comprehensive knowledge or revelation which
took him immediately away into Arabia for an extended
period, that he might be occupied with its implications,
and when he came back it is quite clear he had grasped
the significance of that revelation; he had seen what
Jesus meant in God’s thought. One of the things that
had happened was that, with that revelation, he had gone
back over the whole of the history of the people with
whom he was joined by birth, right back over Jewish
history, right back over his own relationship with
Judaism, and he had seen very clearly that the Lord Jesus
was the centre of all that in the thought of God, that He
took up all the spiritual values into His own person, and
that Judaism as a religious system, traditional,
historical, no longer obtained in the thought of God, but
that what did exist in the place of it was Jesus Christ
in heaven. All that Judaism meant which was of spiritual
value was centred in a living person, and no longer to be
had in a system, in a tradition, in an outward order of
things, all of which was lifeless, ineffective, incapable
of bringing about heart satisfaction and the realisation
of heart longing, deliverance from sin and the quietening
forever of conscience. What Paul had now come to see was
that all that to which Judaism pointed, but which it was
incapable of realising or fulfilling, was to be had and
that he had it in the living, risen person, in Jesus
Christ.
Liberty
a Fruit of Revelation
That
is only one thing which Paul saw, but that had a
tremendous effect upon him. It did what nothing else in
all this universe could have done. It absolutely
delivered Saul of Tarsus, the rabid, vehement Jew, from
his Judaism. It emancipated him from the whole of that
system as an earthly system, although it had been given
of God for a purpose. Nothing could have delivered Saul
of Tarsus from that but a revelation of Jesus Christ. It
is always futile and dangerous to advise people to leave
one thing until they have a revelation of the fuller, and
only such a revelation will accomplish the true
emancipation. The word liberty and similar terms in this
letter is what is meant by that. It is the absolute
emancipation from the limitation, the bondage and the
tyranny of an earthly religious system which constantly
says, Thou shalt! and, Thou shalt not! You must! and, You
must not! bringing under the hammer of law all the time.
This deliverance emancipates completely from that into
glorious liberty, in which you may do exactly as you
like, because your lives are all lifted into the
heavenlies.
In so
saying let us be careful, because there are those who
take cover under grace, under emancipation from law, for
doing the desires of the flesh. There are many people who
serve their own pleasure on the Lord’s day, and
argue that they are not under law but under grace. Be
careful, because Paul says here, “For ye, brethren,
were called unto liberty; only use not your liberty for
an occasion to the flesh.” If you do that, remember
you are undoing the work of the Cross of the Lord Jesus,
and are violating the work of the Holy Spirit, and are
not at all in the realm of grace as set forth here. So
let us not think that because we are not under the law of
the sabbath day in which we are forbidden to do a lot of
things we can just do as the flesh likes; for the
difference here is between the flesh and the Spirit. It
is not a new bondage, but a new liberty, the liberty of
an entirely new power of life and direction in life.
Paul
says that his emancipation, the effecting of that
glorious deliverance, was by the inward revelation of
Jesus Christ. That is where we begin in our spiritual
maturity. We must come there. That is rest. People who
are still under law, even though it be Christian law,
hedged up by, Thou shalt! and, Thou shalt not! are people
who are usually very limited in their spiritual capacity,
in their spiritual measure. Those who have really seen by
revelation of the Holy Spirit what Jesus Christ is, have
been set free, and have been put in the way of a great
capacity for spiritual enlargement. They are at rest, and
rest is a basic factor for spiritual growth. There is
nothing which limits and defeats increase like unrest.
That is a law in the physical realm. If in the physical
realm you are without rest, then you do not make
progress, you do not grow, you do not develop. It is
those carefree people who arrive at the large physical
proportions in the natural realm. It is like that in the
spiritual realm with regard to our spiritual life, that
it grows apace once there is basic rest. The law is a
distressing thing, a wearying thing, a fretting thing.
Whatever the law is, whether Jewish or Christian, it is
an irritating thing, saying, You must do this! and, You
must not do that! The Lord would have us to be stripped
of that, and not be brought under that yoke of bondage as
His children, but be living in the enjoyment of the Lord
Jesus. We shall not do less because of that. We shall not
refrain on that ground from many things which we do by
compulsion. The matter of going to the gatherings of the
Lord’s people may serve us as an illustration here.
You can go legally, or you can go in liberty. You can go
because you are expected to, because people will wonder
if you are not there, and the Lord will be grieved if you
do not go. That kind of constraint is legal, and the
Lord, if you only knew it, does not want you to gather on
that ground at all. You will not gain very much if you
do. It will all become a great burden, and you will be
wishing there were not so many meetings. If, however, you
are living in the enjoyment of the Lord Jesus you will
not put in fewer meetings; you will be there, but you
will be there in life, in enjoyment; you will be there
unto gain, unto real good. That is liberty.
I
simply take that as an example, by way of illustration.
It applies to everything else. If you are really living
in the enjoyment of the Lord, no one will have to say to
you, You must not do that! Were they to do so you would
reply, “I do not want to, I have no interest in
that, I have something better.” Liberty is the
transcendence of the Lord Jesus, the infinite realm into
which we have come, the greater, the heavenly, the more
glorious, and we are out of all the other.
That
is exactly what happened with Paul in this great matter
of deliverance from Judaism. He saw what those Judaisers
were doing, that those who had been led to Christ through
his instrumentality were simply being brought down out of
that glorious realm of liberty and fullness in Christ, on
to the old legal basis again, that the Judaisers were
destroying all the work that Christ had done for their
emancipation. They were in fact setting Christ aside. So
Paul brings Christ into full view again and makes this
the issue — and it is a tremendous thing, it is the
old issue, it is the continuous issue — Christ or
law, Christ or Judaism, Christ or merely traditional,
historic religion; the living Person or the system.
Now,
he says, I was delivered from all that burden and nothing
but that revelation of Jesus Christ would have delivered
me. He goes on in this letter to speak of his life in the
Jews’ religion. He waxed zealous above those of his
own age, more exceeding zealous. He was a devotee of
Judaism, and he would go all lengths for that system of
things. Nothing would have changed him, but he saw Jesus
Christ. God revealed His Son in him, and that brought it
to pass.
It may
not be applicable to many of us, but the principle is
what I want you to recognise. You may not need to be
emancipated from anything like Judaism or legalism, but
the principle is this, that for all increase, progress,
enlargement, growth, maturity, it is essential that there
should be in the heart a continuous unveiling of Jesus
Christ, and you and I will never get to the end of that
unveiling. It is possible for some of us to say with
truth that this year we have seen more of the meaning of
the Lord Jesus than in all the previous years of our
lives. Can you say that? It is the most blessed and most
wonderful thing to be able to recognise that there is a
growing revelation of Jesus Christ within; you see more
and more of what He means from God’s standpoint, and
as that is so, there comes this increase of the Lord
Jesus, this increase to which this letter moves towards
its close, the fruit of the Spirit, love. An increase of
the revelation of Jesus Christ in the heart is an
increase of the love of the Lord Jesus, the fruit of the
Spirit. You are conscious that your heart is coming more
and more under the constraint of His love, and that
unloveliness is becoming subordinate to His love. There
is more joy in the Lord Jesus today than ever, because
you are seeing more of what He is. It is practical. That
is spiritual growth: “It pleased God… to reveal
his Son in me…”
The
Relationship of Revelation to Falling Away
Let us
lay the emphasis upon that principle as we pass on, the
necessity that every one of us should have a personal and
individual revelation of the living Christ by the Holy
Spirit in our hearts. If we do not have that, then we
shall be a prey to anything else that comes along. These
Galatians fell a prey to the Judaisers, and I see so many
of the Lord’s people who have fallen a prey to some
doctrine, to some theory, to something which is
altogether a sideline. Whether it be truth, or not, is
not the point, but people get carried away by
universalism, for instance, or British Israelism, and
become absorbed in these things. In some of these there
is no truth at all; in most there is sufficient truth to
make them a positive deception. But even supposing they
were entirely true, the point is: Are they leading
straight to God’s end or are they something just up
in a corner to hold us away from reaching that end? These
Galatians became locked up in a side-issue of theories,
of teaching, and they were not going on towards
God’s end.
How
did that come about? An answer which is more often true
than not is this, that they got into a low spiritual
condition. There was not a continuance of inward, living
seeing of the Lord Jesus. They had grasped Christianity
at its beginnings, but Christ was not formed in them in
this sense of taking shape, and because they were in such
a position, with Christ not formed, not taking clear
shape, not clearly defined and apprehended in the Spirit,
these other things came along and captured them,
sidetracked them, and now there they are in these little
side-interests and you cannot touch them. That thing is
everything to them, and it has kept them back from
God’s full purpose.
Revelation
must be Continuous and Progressive
It is
so important that there should be this continual, living
unveiling of Christ in the heart if we are to reach
God’s full end.
Paul
came to that revelation right at the beginning. It was
initial, but also a directive revelation continuously. It
was the basis of the direction of his life. “When it
pleased God… to reveal his Son in me…
immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood, neither
went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before
me…” Why did he not do that? If he had accepted
a system of teaching he would have gone and discussed it
with other people who were interested, and who were in
that system of teaching, to see if he had grasped it
aright. He would have compared notes and said: “Now,
look here, I have accepted this teaching; you are
interested in it, and I want to know whether I have been
right in my understanding of this teaching.” Is this
what it means? That would be conferring with flesh and
blood. He would have sought out the authorities at
headquarters on the matter. But no, “I conferred not
with flesh and blood, neither went I up to Jerusalem to
them which were apostles before me…” If you
follow this letter through, you will find that here is a
movement which is not a wrong kind of independence, but
is the true movement of a personal knowledge of the Lord
Jesus. It is directive throughout his life. He speaks of
going up by revelation of Jesus Christ; a revelation of
Jesus Christ was given to direct his movements. Mark you,
it was not a revelation which took the form of a
dictation: Paul, you go here, you go there, you go
somewhere else. It was a revelation of a Person.
You
may find difficulty in understanding that, but if the
Lord should open our understanding on that matter we
should see that all the movements of the Spirit of God
are in some way bound up with the person of the Lord
Jesus. They are an expression of Christ in some way. He
is continuing His doing, and His speaking, He is going on
with His work to the end of the dispensation. He has not
abandoned the field, not left the scene of activities and
withdrawn, and given it to us to go on; He is going on.
He is the chief worker, the one who has all in His hands.
But what He has in His hands is not a multitude of things
that He is doing, it is an expression of Himself in some
way. The Lord Jesus is putting Himself into things, and
bringing things into relation with Himself. You look to
the end of God, and you find that universally Jesus
Christ is to be expressed in a spiritual way. What He is
will at some future time fill this universe, and you need
to know what the Lord Jesus is in order to have your life
directed. You need to be governed by what He is; you need
a revelation of Him.
We can
take an illustration from the tabernacle in the
wilderness. That tabernacle is a comprehensive expression
in type of the person of Jesus Christ, and if we look at
it at any point, whether of its constitution or of its
operation, we see something of the Lord Jesus Christ. If
we look at a pin of the tabernacle, we shall see
something of Him expressed. So that the tabernacle
becomes a great spiritual system, and Christ is that.
Christ is not only a person, Christ is, in effect, in
outworking, a great heavenly, spiritual system. When we
come into Christ we come into a heavenly order. That is
not some manual of instructions but a living person. If
the Holy Spirit gets a real hold upon you and me, so that
we are moving by the Holy Spirit, all our movements, on
the one hand, will in some way be an expression of
Christ, and, on the other hand, a bringing of things into
relation to Christ, so that Christ becomes raised up in
them. The question is not, Shall I go here? Shall I go
there? Shall I do this, or shall I do that? The question
is, Is Christ going to express Himself in some way? Is He
going there? Is He going to manifest Himself there? Then
I go with Him to be His instrument, His vessel. It is a
matter of the person, not of a lot of things to be done.
That
is a very difficult thing to explain, but Paul does make
it clear that his life was governed by revelation of
Jesus Christ. He went up by revelation of Jesus Christ.
He recognised in the spirit that Christ was on the move
in a certain direction, for a certain purpose. That was
revealed to him, and so he moved by the Spirit because it
was a case of the goings of Christ. That is how life is
to be governed. Our prayer must not be, Lord, shall I do
this, and shall I do the other? Shall I go here, or shall
I go there? Our prayer is, Lord, art Thou going there?
Art Thou going to do this or that? Dost Thou want me for
Thy purpose here and there? It is all related to a living
person. Otherwise you build up a great system of
activities which we say are for Christ, instead of it
being the direct, pure work of Christ. There is real
value and meaning in that. It is a governing factor. What
was initial in the life of the apostle was continuous;
that is, his whole life from beginning to end was
governed and actuated by a revelation of Jesus Christ.
A
Position of Complete Dependence
It all
amounted to this, that Christ had become everything for
him. It was not a new religion, and it was not a new life
work. It was not a new mission on the earth. If you have
not got there already, you will, if you go on with the
Lord long enough, come to the place where you do not want
any more life-missions or work, or any more commissions;
you will come to the place of such utter weakness and
dependence and helplessness and self-emptiness that your
whole attitude will be, Oh Lord, do save me from ever
attempting anything unless Thou art going to do it. Lord,
if Thou art not going to do that, then in mercy keep me
from putting my hand to it. Paul was not out in some new
enterprise; Paul was bound up with the person of Jesus
Christ, and he says, “that life which I now live in
the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son
of God…” Christ and His life actuates the
apostle. It is Christ’s mission, Christ’s
purpose, not his. It is what the Lord is doing, and not
what he is doing for the Lord. That is what it means;
Christ becoming everything. So that for this we have no
life apart from Christ, no strength, no wisdom, no
knowledge; we have nothing, not even ability to live
apart from Christ, to say nothing of ability to do; all
natural energies and resources reduced by the sovereign
act of the Lord, so that it shall be no longer I, but
Christ, to live and to do.
That
represents a position that is painful to us naturally,
exceedingly painful. Even though we may sometimes come to
the place where we say to the Lord: “Well, Lord, we
are prepared to have infirmity and weakness and suffering
if only it is made a background of Thy more exceeding
power”, we say, at the same time, “If it can
be, deliver us from our infirmity.” There is always
a kickback from that utterance. Here is the man whom we
are taking as a personal representation of the truth
which came in through him. If ever there was one man who
stood in the light of God’s full purpose in this
dispensation it was the apostle Paul. Here he is and he
is saying very much about his infirmity, the weakness
which was in his flesh. He tells these Galatians that
because of the weakness and infirmity of his flesh they
did not despise him; nay, that they would have plucked
out their very eyes for him could they have done so;
showing what that infirmity was, something which made him
despicable. I think there is a close resemblance between
this statement and that in 2 Corinthians 12: “There
was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of
Satan to buffet me…” He says that it was given
to him lest he should be exalted above measure. Here is a
statement that the infirmity, the trial, the temptation
that was in his flesh they despised not. At the close of
his letter he said: “See with how large letters I
write unto you with mine own hand.” Now all that is
the human background of this work of bringing the saints
to maturity.
Maturity
demands that there shall be ever a lessening of the human
element, the natural element of the flesh, of our own
strength, our own wisdom, our own competence, our own
self-reliance. We must be brought down, so that we cry to
God: “Do not allow us to be brought into things
unless Thou art going to do them”. When you get
there, you are in the way of being a vessel unto the
maturing of the saints. It is true that the more there is
of us the less there will be of Christ through us to
others; the less there is of us the more there can be of
Christ through us to others. It is the way of maturity.
That is what is meant by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
What
is the nature of our revelation of Jesus Christ? We have
found Him our strength in weakness; we have found Him our
life in death; we have found Him our wisdom in
difficulty, in problem, in mental defeat; we have found
Him our rest in trouble, our joy in sorrow. We have found
Him. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ to us by the
Holy Spirit. That is the way of growth. That is the way
of a ministry of growth. This is emancipation, this is
liberty, this is life-union with the living person by
revelation of the Holy Spirit. Paul shows that there are
a good many other things which come out of this
revelation. There is deliverance from the flesh along
this line. You remember he cried, as recorded at the end
of chapter 7 of his letter to the Romans: “O
wretched man that I am; who shall deliver me from the
body of this death?” Deliverance is through our Lord
Jesus Christ: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our
Lord.” Now Paul says to these Galatians, “They
that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh, with the
affections and lusts”; they are delivered from the
flesh by revelation of Jesus Christ. “I thank
God…”; I see the way out; it is through Jesus
Christ. He sets this over against the law. How did they,
under the law, hope to get deliverance from the flesh? By
all kinds of rites, and ceremonies, and forms, and
religious practices, and observances, by the “Thou
shalt”, and, “Thou shalt not”; and it
never came. When the Holy Spirit reveals the Lord Jesus
there is that deliverance. There is no spiritual growth
and fullness until there is the deliverance from the
bondage and tyranny of the flesh.
Now
that requires a great deal more time than we can give to
it at the moment, but we have so often said that if we
really do see the Lord Jesus, the one in whom the whole
question of sin was fought and finally defeated, and the
power of the flesh was entirely overcome by the power of
the Spirit; and we see Him because of the full, complete
triumph which took place in Him over the flesh by the
Spirit at God’s right hand, there is a virtue in
what He is there for us as victory over the flesh. We
gather round the Lord’s Table and eat and drink of
symbols of His Body and His Blood. What does that mean?
It is an act of faith that we take Him to be our life
down here. This Blood is the incorruptible life of the
Lord Jesus, sinless, deathless. It is for me down here
now until my work is done, to maintain me in the midst of
these conditions. There is a living Lord to minister to
me, to maintain me against the working of infirmity until
God has finished with the vessel. There is something in
Jesus Christ for our deliverance now from the working of
all the old creation.
Let us
pray on the ground of His victorious humanity, and let us
live on the basis of His victorious humanity; He is there
for us. All the virtue of what He is in glory is to be
ministered to us by the Holy Spirit now. By revelation of
Jesus Christ we are delivered from the law, from the
flesh, yes, from all things. If you do not understand
that, nevertheless it is important and valuable. Ask the
Lord to make it so for His glory.