Reading: "Wherefore
he saith, When he ascended on high, he led captivity
captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended,
what is it but that he also descended first into the
lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same
also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he
might fill all things.)" Ephesians 4:8,9,10.
“That he might fill all things”.
That is a consummate statement. Into it, as you will see
by the whole context, the eternities and the ages are
gathered up as to divine Purpose.
We know that the letter to the
Ephesians was a circular letter sent to certain churches
in Asia; and in this letter the apostle poured like a
torrent the very quintessence of his spiritual knowledge:
a knowledge which had come to him by what he in other
places called “the revelation of Jesus Christ”
(Galatians 1:12) or: “It was the good pleasure of
God... to reveal his Son in me” (Galatians 1:15,16).
That revelation to and in the apostle was very full
indeed. It was a knowledge derived from experience,
experience which began on the Damascus road. What a
knowledge broke upon this servant of the Lord at that
time in that event! Knowledge which drove him to the
desert to think about it, to examine its significance, to
try to fathom something of its depths. It kept him there
in the desert for three years — the breaking of a
new world of spiritual knowledge upon him.
Later the apostle said that there
had happened in his life history another mighty opening
of heaven. He said he was “caught up even to the
third heaven... and heard unspeakable words, which it is
not lawful for a man to utter.” (2 Corinthians
12:2,4). It is an unfortunate word, that word “lawful”,
because it does not exactly convey what the apostle
really said. He really said, or meant: “which it is impossible
for a man to utter” — “unspeakable
words which it is impossible for a man to utter”.
That must have been a wonderful fulness of knowledge!
And we know that on several other
occasions the Lord Jesus came to him, stood by him, and
spoke to him: and out of all this experience his
knowledge was growing. It was not possible for the
apostles in those days to take journeys swiftly as we can
today. They had to travel and traverse long distances on
foot, spending many hours in that way, and nights aside,
and no doubt the apostle was much in meditation as he
went on his way from place to place, over weeks, and
months, and years, and this inspired meditation was
building up this wonderful spiritual knowledge in him.
From time to time, in relation to
specific needs and requirements here and there, to
particular situations, he embodied in letters some
fragments — mighty fragments — of this rich
revelation which had come to him, and was all the time
coming to him. Where did the apostle get all that that we
have, for instance, in the latter part of what, in our
arrangement, is the eighth chapter to the Romans? Going
right back before the world was, telling us what happened
by divine act when Adam brought the creation into bondage
and it was subjected to vanity. Where did he get all that
about foreordination? “Foreordained to be conformed
to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). And the much
more that is there that you and I are quite sure no man
could ever find by searching, or by studying, however
great a brain he might have. Those latter verses of
Romans 8 are a mighty fragment of revelation!
Again, where did he get that
fifteenth chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians?
It is all about the diversity of glorified bodies in
resurrection and the nature of the body of resurrection
of believers. It is a very rich chapter! We have explored
it long and deeply, but we know that we have not fathomed
it.
In his letter to the Thessalonians,
how did Paul come to know just exactly what would happen
when the Lord returns? What is happening to the saints
who have already left this earth: what is going to happen
to the saints who are here when the Lord comes? Where did
he get it all? It is rich, it is deep, it is full: but it
is only a fragment of the whole of that wealth of
spiritual knowledge.
But now, at last he is free from all
his travelling and all the diffusion of many activities
here and there. At last he is able to do what he had been
unable to do before. And if this letter suggests or
indicates anything, he is able to do now what he has
longed to do, what he has waited for the opportunity to
do — just pour out of that fulness which had been
accumulating through the years: just pour out of his
spiritual fulness.
And we are not surprised that that
word “fulness” is very characteristic of this
letter. True, it is the fulness of Christ, but the
apostle has been brought into much of that. So, at long
last, he is able to sit down and open up the floodgates
of that spiritual store and pour it into this letter.
Like the physical imprisonment of the apostle at this
time, his great store of light and spiritual knowledge
had been circumscribed and confined, but now the
sovereign Lord had ordained that the physical
imprisonment should make possible the release of the
light for the church for the whole of this dispensation.
But the release! You cannot read
this letter carefully and watchfully and feelingly
without feeling that it is like the release of a bursting
dam. You meet that feeling in the language which is
crowded into this brief letter, the breaking of all
grammatical barriers and the vastness of the concepts
that are here. Think alone of the many superlatives in
language which he uses! We referred to the repetition of
the word “fulness”. If you could really sense
the feeling of the apostle at this time you could
understand how that word dropped from his pen so often.
“Exceeding”, — “Exceeding greatness
of his power” (1:19): “The exceeding riches of
his grace” (2:7). “The riches” —
“The riches of the glory of his inheritance”
(1:18): “the riches of his grace”. And “glory”.
Underline the word “glory” in this letter. See
how it is constantly coming out. “Glory”
everywhere here. “Abundantly” — “Exceeding
abundantly above” (3:20). “Surpassing”.
This is an attempt to express himself in language which
calls for every kind of superlative at his command. And
yet he is defeated!
And as for the grammar! Perhaps you
have not worried yourself very much about that when
reading the letter, but if you try to study it and reduce
it to something simple, you have found yourself quite
defeated. For instance, there is the longest sentence
without a period in the New Testament at the beginning of
this letter. And as for breaking the barriers of
language: he starts off along a line, and then goes off
at a tangent and puts in something altogether irrelevant,
it seems. A long paragraph — and then he comes back
to where he broke off, or where he started. That is not
very helpful, you know, if you are trying to follow
closely a sequence of thought. Yes, he is full of
tangents and interruptions in his statements here.
And then, as to the concepts, these
fragments: “He chose us in him before the foundation
of the world” (1:4). “In the heavenlies”
five times repeated. (By the way, you may need your
mentality adjusting on that word. He is not talking about
the heavens; he is talking about the heavenlies.
And the difference is: the heavens are a realm, if
you like a geographical realm. The heavenlies are
a spiritual concept. The letter is based upon the
spiritual concept of things, not a geographical.) This
five-times-repeated “heavenlies”, that is the
church’s place. The celestial principalities and
powers looking on and learning from the activities of God
in the church: “Now unto the principalities and the
powers in the heavenly places” (3:10). And then the
diabolical forces in the heavenlies. What concepts are
here! How tremendous this Paul is! And that very phrase
itself: “Our wrestling is... against the
principalities, against the powers, against the
world-rulers of this darkness” (6:12). Those hosts
of wicked spirits in the heavenlies, in the spiritual
realm, that goes beyond all our power to understand.
“Foreordained”! These words which have been the
bane and trouble of the theologians all through the
centuries — foreordained, predestinated, adoption.
What a wealth there is in every one of them! And what
about this six-fold repetition of the word “mystery”?
And then to come to our mighty
fragment: “That he might fill all things”. Are
we not right in saying that the apostle is too full for
words, that the gates have burst and this mighty torrent
of spiritual knowledge is breaking up almost beyond his
control? But what is it all about? What is all this? And
the answer? No, it is not just doctrine, not just light,
truth, teaching. The explanation is that for Paul Christ
had burst all the bounds and bonds of this universe. All
this was but his hopeless attempt at bringing Christ into
view as he had come to see Him, to understand Him, to
know Him. Yes, it was an impossible task, and we would be
right in concluding that no-one felt it more than the
apostle who made this mighty effort to bring the
greatness of his Christ to the church. Christ, Who for
him had out-ranged all bounds of time, took him back into
the ages of eternity past, before the world was, and
carried him on — as he uses the phrase — “unto
the ages of the ages” (Galatians 1:5 — R.V.
margin). Christ for him had out-ranged all time limits,
had outbounded all limits of space. He ascends into the
highest heavens and Christ is there; descends into the
deepest depths and Christ has fathomed and plumbed them.
Christ has compassed the all-above and all-beneath of
space and, as Paul says, has embodied all the divine
fulness: “It was the good pleasure of the Father
that in him should all the fulness dwell”
(Colossians 1:19). And more: Christ has transcended all
other authorities and all other rule, every principality
and power and every name. Christ was above all. The
greatness of Paul’s Christ led him to make this,
which, as we have said, he, perhaps more than anyone
else, felt to be a hopeless effort: defeating all
language to bring Christ as He really is in His
dimensions and fulness, into view.
But that, of course, is not all.
With this, and set over against any idea that might come
into our minds, and the minds of the Lord’s people,
that all this about Christ was exclusively isolated to
Himself — that is, to Christ — Paul had seen
that an elect body, chosen in Christ, was bound up with
and included in all this that he had seen in Christ. Here
he calls the church the very complement of this Christ.
It is the fulness of Him. The real word is “the very
complement”, the completion of Him “that
filleth all in all” (1:23). Paul had seen this elect
body as bound up with this immensity of Christ. And that
accounts for this sublime thing in the letter —
thirteen times he uses the word “grace”.
First, the unspeakable greatness of
Christ, the immeasurable greatness of Christ, the
transcendent glory of Christ, the unspeakable
significance of Christ in God’s universe from
eternity to eternity. And then he says: “God,
...even when we were dead through our trespasses,
quickened us together with Christ”(2:4,5). “He
chose us in him before the foundation of the world”
(1:4). We are brought into this as our inheritance in
union with Him. No wonder the word “grace”
falls over itself in this letter again and again! Grace!
“The riches of his grace” (2:7).
Whether you and I are moved by this
or not, we have said — and it was very true —
the apostle could not contain himself any longer. We have
seen that he no sooner got into that imprisonment —
and between the times when the visitors were coming
— than he just gave himself up to this two-fold
object of setting forth, on the one hand, the greatness
of Christ as he had seen it, and, on the other hand, the
greatness of grace in calling him and the church
into that divine fulness.
Grace! “Even when we were dead
through our trespasses, (God) quickened us together with
Christ” (2:4). That is the beginning of grace: union
with Christ in His new risen life. But trace grace
through this letter and see how it is leading on and on
until at last it sees this church in the ages of the ages
together with Him in His ultimate and final fulness, His
eternal and universal fulness. What grace!
So we are led, to our fragment:
“That he might fill all things”. This
incomprehensible “He” — the centre of all
things. Look at some other fragments in that connection.
You remember John himself had spoken
about this. In the first chapter of his gospel he tells
us that “All things were made by him” (John
1:3). Turn to the companion letter, the letter to the
Colossians, chapter one: “For in him were all things
created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things
visible and things invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or principalities or powers; all things have
been created through him, and unto him; and he is before
all things, and in him all things consist. And he is the
head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the
first-born from the dead; that in all things he might
have the pre-eminence... and through Him to reconcile all
things unto Himself” (Col. 1:16-18,20). Then the
letter to the Hebrews. It may not have come actually from
the pen of Paul, but undoubtedly from the influence of
Paul. — “At the end of these days spoken unto
us in his Son whom he appointed heir of all things,
through whom also He made the worlds.” (Hebrews
1:2): “For it became him, for whom are all things,
and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons
unto glory” (Hebrews 2:10). This phrase “All
things” of which Christ is the very essence and
substance.
Now it is this One about whom we are
thinking, on whom we are concentrating, this centre of
“all things” — Jesus Christ. The Bible
throughout is a progressive history of this One: the
unfolding of this mighty “He”, who is to fill
all things. That history begins with an intimation. Just
an intimation which is very often missed and overlooked.
That history ends with this passage about His filling all
things. The intimation? “In the beginning God”
(Genesis 1:1). That is where the Bible begins: but that
name “God”, as you know, is in the plural form
indicating that there is more than one person. There is
another — and a third — gathered into that form
of the name of God. And as the story grows the second One
intimated as being present there becomes more and more
discernible. It is not long before He assumes a name and
is seen and heard by men. He appears to men in the many
theophanies of the Old Testament. Sometimes at the
beginning they describe Him as a man appearing, but when
He goes they speak of Him as the Lord. You will call to
mind those occasions. This One — the Lord. In those
divine appearances His becoming known by men. Later He
takes human form in a specific incarnation and lives and
moves and works and teaches among men. Later still, in a
still more intimate way, He reveals Himself in a
resurrection body to individuals, groups, companies, and
they are in no doubt about it. Whereas at the beginning
they had questions, wondered whether they had seen a
spirit, at the end they had no doubt. They knew who He
was. They could say, “We have seen Him. We know Him.”
And then finally He is seen by all creatures in heaven
and earth, so that every eye beholds Him. He is
known by “a great multitude, which no man could
number” (Revelation 7:9).
So we are shown Him in the Bible in
His aloneness with the Father before times eternal. We
are shown Him in the busy activities of the creation,
creating all things. We are shown Him with the wayward
nation in its wilderness wanderings as the angel of His
presence. We are shown Him in this same Bible returning
as the victorious Monarch, the King of Glory, and the
everlasting gates opening to receive Him back after His
campaign here with evil and the false rulers of this
world. We are shown Him coming again to judge the
nations, to set up His Kingdom. Are we right in saying
that the Bible is a progressive history and unveiling of
this One, this “He” who is to fill all things?
Notice: we have marked seven stages
in this history, His history. In the eternal past, in
creation, in the Old Testament age, in the earthly life,
in His present session and intercession in heaven, in the
great Day of the Lord and in the eternal future. That is
really the Bible story. It is the story of a Person, the
story of this mighty “He” of whom we are
thinking, who is to fill all things.
In that seven-fold progressive
revelation of Him in the Bible, the outstanding feature,
the feature which comes to our hearts with such comfort,
is His expanding grace. Note how grace is growing,
is developing. What grace! His expanding power and His
expanding glory. Trace that three-fold development —
grace, power and glory — in Christ Jesus right
through the Bible.
All this brings us back to our
little clause — it is wrong to call it a little one!
— “All things”. He has expanded to the
full range of “All things”, and, having done
so, He is to fill all things Himself. You know that it is
a phrase scattered in the New Testament, particularly in
the letters of Paul as we have noted, related to Christ.
“All things”. In creation — and I would
have you note that it is not only said that He created
all things Himself, that is, that all things were created
by Him, but they are created in Him. It
opens a door to very much profitable reading of the Word.
God has through Christ, His Son, by the Eternal Spirit,
created all things in Christ. That is, He has made
Christ the encompassing, encircling sphere of all things in
creation itself. The creation is bounded by
Christ in the thought and intention of God. Eventually
there will be no created thing in this universe outside
of Christ, because they were all created in Him. If they
have gone out, they have been given the option in this
dispensation to return into Christ. If not, they are for
ever expelled from the whole domain of Christ, and all
that does remain is found, as was intended, in Christ.
You and I, the church, are a new
creation in Christ. Creation! And, as we read in
Colossians 1:20 “through him to reconcile all things
unto himself”. All things are reconciled in Christ.
Again: “that in all things he might have the
pre-eminence” (Col. 1:18) All things under His
pre-eminence. Again: “In him all things hold
together” (Col. 1:17 — R.V. margin). And
finally “That he might fill all things”.
What is the concern in our hearts as
we say all this to you? Would there not be a wonderful
and glorious emancipation from nine-tenths — if not
ten-tenths — of our troubles if we only had the
apprehension of Christ that the apostle Paul had? Put it
in another way. Most of our troubles are due not to our
mental failure, but our heart failure really to grasp and
apprehend the greatness of the Christ to whom we have
been introduced, and to whose fellowship we have been
brought by the grace of God. Is it not the need, the
greatest need today everywhere, and particularly in the
church of God, to recover something of this immensity of
Christ? We are too small, are we not? Too petty. That is
the cause of our trouble, of all our troubles. How mean
we are! How paltry! How little! What small-minded,
small-hearted people we are! How occupied we become with
the little things that really, after all, don’t
matter so much! What a low level we are content to live
upon! How this very nature of ours is always bringing
things down and down and down to the level of what is
unworthy of Christ!
Perhaps you have had similar
exercise to myself over many things, and, not least, how
this man Paul at this very time of writing this letter,
could write it! How could he write it? He is in prison,
cut off from all his activities and work, separated from
all his friends in the churches. There is a movement on
foot to isolate him spiritually as well as in other ways,
leaving him, departing from him; there is a mighty
movement to discredit him and his work, and destroy it.
Churches are by no means answering to all his prayers and
entreaties and outpourings. His was a life just given for
them — and see how they are! “All that are in
Asia turned away from me” (2 Timothy 1:15). And so
on. His own condition and position, and the state of
things for which he had given his life, and much more
— and then, for the man to sit down and write a
letter like this, a document like this! As we have
described it — a pouring out like a mighty torrent
and deluge of wonder and amazement at the greatness of
his Christ and of the calling of this elect body. I
wonder what sort of letters would come from us under
similar conditions!
Well, what is the secret? What is
the answer? A rebuke to our hearts, to yours and mine
— a real, sound rebuke. Paul had such an
apprehension of his Lord that was more and greater than
all these troubles, these afflictions, these
disappointments, these adversities, these sorrows, these
sufferings of body and of soul. It was his apprehension
of Christ that explained a letter like this. Are we not
right in saying that is what we want, what we need? It is
a mighty, emancipating thing, isn’t it? It really
is! The first revelation of Jesus to Saul on the Damascus
road effected something that all the tortures and laws
and prisons and oppositions that were heaped upon him
could never have done, that is, emancipated him from
Judaism, from Israelism, made him the great apostle of
the church and of the nations.
That was the first effect of
apprehending Christ, and that is no small thing. It is
tremendous! This enlarged, increased revelation of that
same Christ accounted for this ultimate, this final
emancipation from all that which would have crushed him,
broken him and sent him into utter despondency.
This is but an introduction. But it
is the only way to get at anything. We will never get
anywhere at all until we have come to look at the Lord
again and see Him. I do trust that all that has been said
has not been to you as words, as language, ideas, as just
teaching of doctrine, but that you, with me, have just
caught a glimpse, a fresh glimpse of the greatness of
this One who is to fill all things.
May that emancipating work be done
in us by a fresh seeing of this great “He” from
eternity to eternity, “that He might fill all things”.