Reading:
Numbers 27:1-7; Joshua 15:13-19, Romans 8:17.
I have just one thought that I
want to pass to you here. It relates to inheritance. In the New
Testament that word is found to compass quite a lot. In the first
place, inheritance is there shown to be a matter of birthright;
then it is extended to a bequest, a gift; and then still further
it applies to reward for labour, for service. It is in this last
connection that my word lies.
While it is fully recognized -
not for a moment would we detract one iota from the grand fact -
that everything is of grace: even enablement to work for reward
is of grace - while that is true, this other aspect of
inheritance, or heirship, as a matter of reward for service and
suffering, is very fully revealed. Inheriting by labouring,
entering into the fruits of labour; inheriting by warfare,
entering into the spoil of battle; entering into suffering and
being recompensed for suffering. It is surely inherent in labour,
in suffering, that there should be some gratification, and the
gratification is the wages. While we know that it has been grace
that has enabled to suffer and to labour, nevertheless we have
suffered and we have laboured and we have battled,
and there is something for that, by the faithfulness of God -
there are wages, there is that sense of achievement. There is no
greater gratification than to know that, through labour and
suffering, something has been achieved.
Inward
Relationship to the Object in View
It is just there
that I put my finger. The very heart of suffering, the very heart
of co-heirship with Christ, is this wonderful sense of inward
relationship to the object in view, inward relationship to the
inheritance, inward relationship to the result, the reward. And
that is the explanation of suffering, of labour, of conflict. The
Lord does not just give to us without cost. He always brings us
into the cost of that which He is going to give. It will be grace
all the way through, but He brings us into the cost of the
reward. In the end, let us repeat, we shall acknowledge that any
part we have had in it of suffering, labour, warfare, has been
infinitely outweighed by what He has given - and that is where
grace will always be our theme; but I do believe that mingled
with our gratitude will be this sense that the Lord enabled us to
achieve, that He did not act without us and apart from us. He
brought us into it, and there will be this deep, inward,
heart-relatedness to the result, that we share with Him the
gratification. That is the very heart of suffering, I believe.
Now why am I saying this? Where
was this born? how was this born? Well, in a very practical way.
I have just returned from a time in the United States, and it has
not by any means been an easy time - very much otherwise. But we
have been profoundly grateful all the time that you dear friends
were so many hours ahead of us. In the Eastern part of the States
you were five hours ahead. When we got further West you were six
hours ahead, and we constantly reminded ourselves that your
prayer gatherings were ahead of us. They had gone before and we
were just following on, in our own prayer and in the conflict and
the pressure; following on, and, as we believe, being carried
through. And there came to me this: Those dear friends are right
in the battle, and if there is anything here that really is for
the Lord, if anything results for the Lord, it belongs to them,
quite as much as it belongs to us. It is theirs; in a certain
sense they will own this; it will be, so to speak, their
property. They have battled for it, suffered for it, endured for
it, toiled for it. They have gone on ploughing the way,
pioneering the way, and it is theirs.
That is the thought right at
the heart of this word, that there is something that becomes ours
through suffering. Yes, it is the Lord's, and it is all of His
grace, but it is ours.
Suffering
is a Purifying Thing
And that means surely that what
we have laboured for, suffered for, travailed for, becomes
something over which we are very jealous. Suffering for anything
is a very purifying thing. Take the matter of the child for which
there has been suffering, travail. Well, other people who have
not so suffered and travailed and gone through for the child can
see all the defects and pass all the criticisms and arrive at
their judgments, good or bad, about that child, and just stand
apart and say their say about the child. But the mother may see
very little of that. There is something for the mother which
transcends all that. 'Oh yes, you may say that, but that child is
very precious to me. I have suffered for that child, that child
is my child, the child of my heart and the child of my travail,
and, while I may see its faults, there is something which covers
them all, there is the jealousy of a love born of suffering'.
Now you see what I am getting
at. There is nothing that is precious to the Lord, and which He
would make the property of His people, but there will be
suffering for it. It will only become their property - in that
sense - as they suffer for it, and then woe betide who criticizes
that! If you are detached from a thing, if you are detached from
a testimony, from a work of God, you can do all the criticizing
you like. You have no inward heart-relationship to it, and so you
pass your judgments upon it. But if you are in it and you have
suffered, if it has been a costly thing where you are concerned,
then you are seeing more than all the failings, more than all
those faults. The people who can criticize like that and judge
and point out faults are the people who have not suffered.
On the other side, we may know
all the terms, all the phraseology, all the doctrine, all the
truth, and it may be just objective, something we have heard; we
have lived in the midst of it, it is familiar to us. But what the
Lord will do if that is to become ours is to take us into travail
over the matter. He will relate that thing to our hearts in a
deep, inward way, so that none of us will be able to say, 'I know
all about that, I have heard all about that, I could tell you all
that you could tell me about that'. The Lord would so work in a
costly, deep and painful way in relation to that, to make it ours
through travail, that we are brought into a new position. We are
not spectators, looking on, criticizing; we are on the inside,
looking out, defending. We are jealous over it. Suffering is a
great purifying thing. It destroys selfishness. It destroys that
self-interest that is the cause of so much of the trouble. It
makes us in a disinterested way jealous for what is of God. Yes,
suffering purifies, and suffering makes this deep, inward link.
It gives an extra feature to
things. That extra feature where we cannot just be occupied with
faults and be people of a criticizing attitude, the extra feature
with a love which covers a multitude of sins. We have suffered
together. When we suffer together, what a lot we get over! We
have gone through it together, perhaps through the years. We have
been in the fire together, and there is a love, there is a
jealousy which, let people say what they will about the other
persons, simply rises up in us because we have suffered.
Joint-Heirs
with Christ Through Suffering
"Heirs of God, and
joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that
we may be also glorified with him" (Rom. 8:17).
This is not just an official thing, something that is a
gratuitous gift in a mechanical way, as much as to say, 'Well,
you have done a bit of work; here are your wages'. That thing has
been wrought in us through the suffering and the cost and the
warfare and the labour, and there is this sense of an inward
co-heirship with Christ, if we suffer. It will be a very blessed
thing, to us who know how much we are dependent upon the grace of
God, how little we can even bear without the support of His
grace; it will be a wonderful thing when at last He says, 'This
is the reward of your suffering'. We shall say, 'Well, after all,
it was our light affliction - in the light of the far more
exceeding and eternal weight of glory. How have we earned this?'
But there will be some gratification in recognizing that the Lord
has taken account of what we have gone through, and has brought
us into a sense of His own gratification, and given us to feel -
'Well, it was not in vain, it was not for nought'.
Why did I read those passages
in the Old Testament from Numbers and Joshua? They both have to
do with inheritance. I read them for this reason, that here were
people who, in the first place, were concerned, were jealous, for
the inheritance. And then they were people who were prepared to
enter into the cost of the inheritance, after which, when they
had got it, it was theirs. Yes, it was the Lord's, but it was
theirs. Do you see what I mean? It is theirs. And many of us have
gone through the years in toil, in suffering, in labour and
warfare in the Lord's interests, and if there is anything that
comes out of that at all, it is ours, in this sense - that we are
jealous over it with a right kind of jealousy. It belongs to us
in the Lord. Yes, it is the Lord's, but it belongs to us in the
Lord, the fruit of suffering and of travail and of cost. Your
faithfulness in prayer, and in prayer-gatherings - it is not
without cost that you continue like that. Your faithfulness in
the upholding of those who go out - it costs. Taking the years
over, it is not without price if there is anything. The Lord has
given it to you as your inheritance; that is yours. All that
eternal spiritual value is yours in Christ. Now look after it,
cherish it, watch jealously over it, and from all attacks defend
it. If only we had this inward sense of relatedness to everything
that costs, what a difference it would make, how less ready we
should be to see the defects and the faults!
The Lord bring us to understand
that the meaning of the conflict and of the suffering, from His
standpoint, is not only - and I say this quite reverently - not
only in order to get something for Him. It is because He wants us
in an inward relatedness to it, as a very part of ourselves. I
believe that is the very essence of this joint-heirship with
Jesus Christ. What does it mean to inherit if we suffer? Surely
it means - 'This is what you have earned through the grace of
God. Here it is: you have paid for this in fellowship with
Christ'. I do not understand all this in the New Testament about
'suffering together with Him', 'filling up that which is lacking
of the afflictions of Christ for His Body's sake, which is the
Church' - I do not understand unless it is this, that the Lord
wants us not just as bits of a machine to work out some piece of
work for Him. He wants a real heart-relatedness: so that, as we
suffer with Him - and we are suffering with Him, there is no
doubt about that - as we suffer with Him, we shall be gratified
with Him. Glorified - yes, but gratified; the deep sense of
gratification that we had a share in this. The Lord give us a
right attitude toward all the cost.
First published in "A Witness and A
Testimony" magazine, Jul-Aug 1952, Vol 30-4