Reading:
Romans 4:16-25.
We are
being led to see the relationship of faith to three
things.
Firstly, faith in
relationship to enlargement. We have taken note
that God's thought revealed for His people is enlargement
unto His own fulness. "All the fulness of God"
is the word which indicates God's thought concerning His
people. But every fresh movement toward enlargement, or
every stage in enlargement, comes about by a fresh
challenge to faith--faith being tested in a new way as
not hitherto - and by faith's triumph there is further
enlargement. The Scriptures show, from beginning to end,
that there is no enlargement, no increase of God, in any
other way.
Secondly, we see faith
in relationship to establishment. We have seen the
thought of God to have things in a state of stability,
endurance, steadfastness, trustworthiness; something
substantial, something deeply rooted and grounded and
immovable. God works along that line, seeking to
eliminate all those elements in us which are weak,
unreliable, unable to carry a weight and take
responsibility; to bring us to the place where we are
established in Christ. But every bit of this work of
confirming, establishing, rooting and grounding is
connected with some further testing or proving of faith.
Every fresh storm sends our roots deeper down, to take a
firmer hold. It is along the line of faith's proving that
we become established. Where there is no testing or
trying, no adversity, we are weak and unreliable. So we
see that, right through the Scriptures, God is moving
towards having things settled and fixed, after His own
nature: eternal, abiding, enduring for ever. The whole
Bible shows that this is brought about by faith.
In the third place, we
see faith in relation to life. That is to be our
occupation at this present time, with just a closing word
on faith itself.
Faith
In Relation To Life
I need hardly take you
through the Scriptures to see how these two things go
together. Much will come to mind as we proceed. I just
remind you of the familiar fact that this matter of life
bounds the whole Scripture. The Bible opens with the tree
of life, and it closes with the tree of life, and that is
the great issue from beginning to end. From one angle, as
we were saying earlier, the Bible is all about this issue
of life as over against death. We find, therefore, as in
the case of the other two things - enlargement and
establishment - that God has left us in no doubt whatever
as to His mind on the matter. He has made it perfectly
clear that His thought is life, and life in fulness. So
much so that the Lord Jesus, in His coming into this
world, reaching with one hand right back to the
beginning, and with the other hand right on to the ages
of the ages yet to be, declares that He is in that
position on one ground and with one purpose: "I am
come that they may have life, and may have it
abundantly" (John 10:10).
Enlargement
Depends Upon Life
Now these two things of
which we have spoken - enlargement and establishment -
are inseparably bound up with this matter of life.
All God's enlargements
are by life. We see a parable of this in the work of
creation. At the very beginning we find God filling the
void, the waste, the emptiness which was the primal state
of this world - we find God filling it in every realm in
terms of life. His increasing fulness was along the line
of life. That is a parable of God's way. Increase and
fulness in the Christian life, in the people of God, is
always in terms of life. When God adds, it is always
additional life. All God's work has the issue that there
is more life present than ever there was before. And so
progressively, by crises and stages, God is moving with
His people - where they will let Him, where they will not
waver through unbelief - in the direction of His ultimate
fulness on the basis of constantly increasing life.
Establishment
Depends Upon Life
The same is true in
relation to establishment - the work of confirming,
making things stable, solid, deep. This again is always
in relation to life: confirming in life, making strong in
life. The essential element in this life is its eternity.
An increase of life is always an indication of something
deeper having been done in the heart, the emergence from
some state of uncertainty, some difficulty, some dark
experience, in a crisis, through the victory of faith.
The emergence just adds more life - that is all. It is
like that every time: we find that we are experiencing
and enjoying more life. Life is the basis of our becoming
more settled.
There are many people
who think that there are other things which lead to
consolidation and establishment, to certainty and
assurance. But it is not that way at all. You do not get
established by more teaching, or by additional
information, even about Divine things. You do not even
become spiritually established by knowing your Bible
better. That is not to say that you should not seek to
know it better, but the real establishment is that which
comes through life known in ourselves. "And the
witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life"
(1 John 5:11). The testimony is not a form of teaching,
an interpretation of truth, a system of doctrine, or a
way of doing things. "And the witness is this, that
God gave unto us eternal life", and to be
established means to be knowing this life in constant
increase.
The
'Evidence Of God' Is Life
We will now take a look
at what we will call some of the 'evidences of God'. Let
us say at once that the inclusive evidence of God is just
life. The evidence of God - the proof, the
testimony to God, and the testimony to what is of God--if
life. Let us go back to that original criterion in the
symbolism of the beginning: the tree of life. It is
perfectly clear that that tree of life, and what it
represented and symbolized, held the whole issue of
whether God was going to continue with man or not,
whether man was going to continue with God or not,
whether their relationship was going to remain intact.
The 'evidence' of God was centered there.
Now that tree evidently
represented another and different life from what man
already possessed. God had brought in the living things.
The waters swarmed with living creatures; the air swarmed
with the living fowl; the earth was full of living
creatures and living vegetation. Then man had been
created, into his nostrils there had been breathed the
"breath of life" (Gen. 2:7), and he had become
an animate being. He had what we all have by nature -
this natural life. It was after the imparting of
that kind of life, and man becoming a living soul, that
God pointed to the tree of life, and made that the issue
of life and death. It was not the life that was in man
that was the issue of life and death, because man did not
forfeit that life which was in him when he disobeyed. The
tree evidently represented and symbolized another life
than that which God had already breathed into him - a
different life altogether.
Divine
Life Forfeited
Death, therefore, came
to mean two things. In the first place, it came to mean a
change in man as he was. Although he would continue as an
animate being over a tenure of years, a change took place
in him. We will not stay to analyze that change, but by
disobedience he became different even in his own natural
being. Secondly, he forfeited his right to this other and
extra and really true life, as represented by the tree.
He never inherited that, he never possessed that. It
throws a little light upon John's words about the Lord
Jesus, that "to as many as received Him, to them
gave He the right to become children of God, even to them
that believe on His name" (John 1:12). You see the
whole question of faith coming in relation to the right.
It is the right, in other words, to this other, Divine,
life, which is through being begotten of God. The right
to that life was forfeited by Adam through disobedience,
or unfaith. The right to that life is restored through
faith in the Lord Jesus.
Now Satan said, 'Hath
God said, Thou shalt surely die? Thou shalt not surely
die!' What a categorical statement! Now note: Adam, apart
from his known rupture in fellowship with God through his
disobedience because of unbelief, probably was not
conscious of what had happened. True, a frown and a
shadow came over the face of God; there was no longer the
light and the clearness of fellowship; but man went on
living. He did not there and then fall dead and perish.
He went on living quite a long time, went on growing,
developing, enlarging. When you see the tremendous
enlargement after its kind that came from that man - his
children, family, tribe, race - it looks very much as
though the Devil was right. 'Thou shalt not surely die'.
God was wrong, the Devil was right.
The
Delusion Of A False Life
But what has happened?
There has entered into man a deep and terrible delusion -
the illusion of a false life, in which there is a lie
right at the very core. And that has surely worked itself
out, and is still working itself out. There is increase
of days, unto many years, it may be; there is development
and enlargement, of its kind, in the matter of this
world; but right at the core of it all there is
bitterness and disappointment. At last, at most,
emptiness, disillusionment. What has it all been for?
What is it all about?
And the most
dissatisfied people are always those who have the most.
That is true, is it not? The people who have the most and
have not the Lord are the most dissatisfied people in
this world. The evidences of it are patent. As I was
saying on a previous occasion, a year of two ago I was in
a part of the world where the last whim and fancy is
satiated to the full. Everything that the soul of man
could crave or ask for seems to be available. In Southern
California, you see acres and acres and miles and miles
of the most wonderful fruit. I picked sackfuls of the
most beautiful grapefruit and oranges that you ever saw.
But my friend, on whose fruit-farm I was staying, said,
'Do you know, it is so prodigal that, in order to keep
any market at all for it, tons and tons of this beautiful
fruit are put into a ditch, and acid is poured over it,
so that no one will get hold of it to try to make a
business out of it.' Poor people who might make a little
out of this surplus are deprived of it in order to keep
some sort of market.
And it is like that, not
only in natural products, but in pleasure. The word
'Hollywood' has come to connote the very ultimate in the
gratification of human desire. You can see it all there
in display. But oh! The feverish, the restless, the
uncertainty, the anxiety! The biggest hospital in the
world is there in Los Angeles, and four thousand cases
are treated every day, in a country like that where every
possible aid to health is available. What is it all
about? It is the strain of coping with life. Out in a
very beautiful suburb, I saw, as I went along, house
after house up for sale, or to let; and I asked my
friend, 'What is the meaning of this?'; 'Oh, everybody
within miles of this city is living as if they were on
the edge of a volcano, over this atomic bomb business.
They are all moving out, as far out as they can get,
because they think that any day the atomic bomb may be
dropped on Los Angeles.' With everything conceivable to
fill life, people are living in strain and tension and
fear. I have not exaggerated the picture, because I could
not.
I have cited this as an
illustration of the truth that the more men have, the
more dissatisfied they are. The more you give to this
life, the more it will take - and can take - and the more
it will demand, and the more unsatisfied it is. It wears
out in no time. The whole thing fails to last - it just
does not last; and that is the life that the Devil has
given in place of this other life. You and I may have
very little in this world - nothing at all comparable to
a Californian set-up - and yet have the Lord Jesus in our
hearts and be perfectly satisfied. The difference is a
very practical thing. The Devil said, "Thou shalt
not surely die", and man just swallowed it: he
thought that God was wrong, and the Devil was right; and
this is what it has led to - a false life, hollow at the
core, never, never answering to man's real need; a
mockery in the end, the fruit looking beautiful but
falling from the trees before it is ripe.
But in that other life,
represented by the tree of life, it is all the other way.
This life has nothing to do with things at all: it has to
do with a Person. This life does not wear out: it wears
infinitely - it survives. It is not, like the other, kept
going by artificial respiration and stimulants - and how
artificial they are! This life is maintained from a
living source.
That is very searching.
It is very, very important to be quite sure that this
thing has taken place with every new convert: that there
is no illusion or delusion about this, but that they have
really become, definitely and surely, the recipients of
this other life - this life that will not require a
constant succession of stimulants from without, but
which, when all outward things cease, will still go on.
That is going to be the test.
Now this illusion can
get into religion, and that is the place where the Devil
likes to have it more than anywhere else. The Lord had
something to say on that very matter to the church at
Sardis: "Thou hast a name" - a reputation -
"That thou livest, and thou art dead" (Rev.
3:1). A reputation for life - and yet dead. The eyes of
flame see through the false situation - the false
reputation, the false name. It would not be difficult to
imagine or portray what a church like that would be. We
need not stay with it. There are many things that have a
semblance of life, that look like life - what people call
life - but they are not life. They require external
'stimulants' to be applied all the time to keep the thing
going. What the Lord calls life is another thing
altogether.
Marks
Of Divine Life
(a)
Freshness
One of the thoughts
associated with this Divine life is newness, or
freshness. "That… we… might walk in
newness of life" (Rom. 6:4). That word 'new' in our
English versions has two Greek words behind it. One means
something that never was before; the other carries the
thought of that which is young and fresh. This Divine
life is, of course, something that no one has ever
possessed before, outside of Christ, but its mark, its
characteristic, is its freshness - its freedom from the
'earth touch'. This earth is an accursed earth; it is in
death, it is under judgment, and all that belongs to it
is under judgment: if this earth touches anything, it
touches it with death. This life of which we are speaking
is completely free from the earth touch, and free from
the touch of man as he is by nature. It is fresh,
therefore, and for its freshness it demands that it shall
be kept free from this earth and kept free from man's
touch.
That has been the issue
all the way along. The life of God comes in, and is
regnant and wonderfully fresh and beautiful; and then
what? Man must needs take hold of it in some way, put it
into his mould, run it according to his ideas, organize
it and set up machinery for it, and it is not long before
the freshness has gone. It is touched with something that
takes the bloom off it; in the course of time it has
become old; and - perhaps I may be permitted to say this,
as one who is no longer young! - God has no interest in
anything that is old. God is only interested in that life
in us which is of Himself, and His interest is to keep it
fresh. "Even to old age… and even to hoar
hairs", there is still freshness if the life of God
is the principle upon which we are living.
Yes, but we must keep
out hands off, and we must keep the earth touch away. Oh,
man's terrible habit of wanting to take hold of, and run,
the life of God. It has killed more works of God than
anything else, brought an end to wonderful movements of
the Spirit. Man has taken hold, brought things into his
framework, under the control and direction of his
committee. Very well; the Lord withdraws, and the
freshness of His life is no longer found. Freshness,
newness, is the mark of God's life.
The Church is His new
creation. The Church is His new cruse, to refer to Elisha
and the falling fruit of the trees of Jericho because of
the lack of this vital element in the water. "Bring
me a new cruse", he said, "and put salt
therein" (2 Kings 2:20). The waters were healed. And
Pentecost is the counterpart of that. The Church is the
new cruse with the life in it, to counteract all the
death in this world: there is newness of life, and
newness of vessel. The Lord Jesus put His finger upon
this very principle when He said: "No man" (He
might have added, 'much less God') "putteth new wine
into old wine-skins" (Mark 2:22). It is folly. 'If
you do that, you will lose everything', He said. "No
man seweth a piece of undressed cloth on an old
garment" (vs. 21); neither does God do that kind of
thing. He must have everything new and fresh. We are
citizens of the new Jerusalem (Rev. 3:12; 21:2);
and so we could go on. If you look up the words 'new' and
'newness', you will be surprised how much they cover in
the New Testament. Everything is new where this life is.
(b)
Productivity
The second feature of
this life is its productiveness, or productivity. That is
God's method of increase. There is all the difference
between putting on, adding to, accretion, from the
outside, and increase from the inside. That is God's
principle, the organic principle of increase and
multiplication by life from within, and it really does
happen that way. Life produces life, and life produces
organisms after its own kind: the seed has the life in
itself to reproduce, to multiply a hundredfold.
That is a testimony, but
it is also a test and a challenge. If there is no
increase, then there is something wrong in the matter of
the life. If you and I are not bearing fruit, if we are
not really in the way of increase, then we need to look
to this matter of our life. For it is inevitable, it is
spontaneous. If there is to be productivity, there must
be life: and if there is life, then there is
reproduction - unless, of course, we thwart the life or
get across the life. If somehow or other we block up the
wells, then our fruitfulness ceases.
(c)
Inexhaustibility
Further, this life is
characterized by its inexhaustibility. There is no end to
it, no exhausting it; it just goes on. As we have already
said, it does not get old. We may get old, but that life
in us does not get old at all. It goes right on; it is
inexhaustible.
(d)
Incorruptibility
And then, because it is
God's life, it is incorruptible. Life is symbolized by
salt in the Bible. The symbolism of the new cruse and the
salt is just that of the vessel of God with the life of
God in it. The presence of that life is the counter to
the presence of corruption, wherever it is.
This, of course, is
quite clearly seen in the first chapters of the Book of
the Revelation, containing the challenge and message to
the churches. It was clearly a time of spiritual decay:
but we would go further, and say 'of spiritual
corruption'. Strong language, but justifiable. "Thou
sufferest the woman Jezebel" (2:20); "Thou
hast… some that hold the teaching of Balaam, who
taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the
children of Israel" (2:14). Here is corruption, and
the challenge to that state of corruption in the first
place is indicated by the announcement of the Lord
Himself. "I am… the Living one; and I was dead,
and behold, I am alive for evermore" (1:17-18). It
is as though He were saying, 'I am measuring you by the
standard of this incorruptible life, on the principle of
this incorruptible, deathless, death-conquering life: I
am challenging you in your corruption.' The import of the
message is this: 'These conditions of corruption are due
to something having arrested the life. If you had the
life vibrant and regnant and triumphant, there would be
none of these conditions at all.'
The issue, then, for the
overcoming, the setting aside, of all corruption, is that
of life. The corrective for false teaching - for
heterodoxy - is not orthodoxy. Let us say, changing the
words: the corrective for error is life. That is what the
Scriptures show. It was so with the seven churches. John,
who wrote the Revelation, at about the same time also
wrote his letters, and these likewise deal with
falsehood, error, decline, decay, corruption, Antichrist,
and all the rest - a bad state coming amongst believers;
and John's great word in his letters and in the
Revelation, as well as in his Gospel, is life.
That emerges from the most elementary study of his
writings.
John begins his Gospel:
"In Him was life; and the life was the light of
men" (1:4), and that is the keynote to the Gospel
all through. His letters are on that note all the time.
"The witness (testimony) is this, that God gave unto
us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that
hath the Son hath the life; He that hath not the Son of
God hath not the life" (1 John 5:11-12). At the
beginning of the Revelation you find: "I am…
the Living one" (1:17-18); you pass on to the
"four living ones" (4:6), and their testimony
and influence; and you close the Revelation with the
"tree of life" and the "river of water of
life" (22:1-2). It is all about life. But that is
all presented in a day of corruption. The answer to
corruption is not argument, but Divine life.
(e)
Intelligence: Life Recognizes Life
This life is something
which is only appreciated and understood by those who
have it. Those who do not possess it can see its effect
or its fruit, but they do not understand it at all. They
may say, 'Well, those people have got something that I do
not know anything about: I do not understand it at all, I
do not know what it is. They seem to be happy about it,
but I am certainly a stranger to all that.' Or it may not
affect them at all. They may come in where there is
abundant life and go away unaffected. They just do not
understand it or appreciate it. But those of us who have
this life both appreciate and understand it. We cannot
explain it to anyone else, any more than we can explain
what natural life is. No one can explain what life is.
But if we are spiritually alive, really spiritually
alive, and we go in amongst other children of God, we
sense something. It may be we feel death, a lack of life,
something here that is not alive; there is some check to
life here. On the other hand, we may sense the presence
of life. Now, that capacity to appreciate and to
understand is the guide of the Lord's people. It is a
very intelligent faculty - it is, indeed, our
'intelligence', in more senses than one. Why do we say,
'Something is wrong here', because we do not sense the
life; there is something that is not alive. We are 'alive'
to the fact that something is wrong!
I believe that is
exactly what Paul knew when he found those disciples at
Ephesus. They were having some wonderful Bible teaching
from Apollos, who was a man mighty in the Scriptures; but
Paul had to say when he came down to them: 'You have a
lot of Bible teaching here, and you are professing
disciples of the Lord - but what is the matter with you?
There is something amiss here. Did you receive the Holy
Spirit when you believed?' (Acts 19:2). The Holy Spirit
in Paul, as the Spirit of life, registered here the
absence of life: there was no witness of life, even with
all the Bible teaching and the profession. The Spirit
enabled Paul to put his finger upon the situation, and to
clear it up.
Life
Through Faith
Now, all the Lord's
progress with us, as we have said, the Lord's enlarging,
the Lord's establishing, is along this line of life. But
this life is all governed by faith. We are thinking much
of Abraham, and we have something to say about him yet.
With him, every fresh movement toward enlargement and
consolidation and increase of life was by way of fresh
testing of faith. Everything rests upon this matter of
tried and proved faith.
If you and I pass, then,
into a time when our faith is being sorely tried, really
being put through it, let us ask the Lord to help us to
adjust ourselves to this: for this is not unto death, but
unto life. This is not permitted by the Lord in order to
bring an end in death. This is meant by Him to bring us
into larger life yet. If only we could rest in that
assurance, it would rob the dark times and the difficult
times of their deathliness, and make them the very ground
upon which we might come into newness of life through
fresh victories of faith. Faith is the way to life
through trial, testing, suffering, adversity.