Reading:
John 11:38-44
It is that last verse that we shall be considering
especially:
"He that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot
with graveclothes; and his face was bound about with a
napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him and let him
go."
I would just like to place alongside of that a fragment
from the tenth chapter:
"I came that they may have life, and may have it
abundantly" (John 10:10).
We have said more than once that we are here in the
presence of God manifested in the flesh in the person of
Jesus Christ, His Son, and, being in the presence of God,
we are being made aware of God's mind concerning man.
What Jesus says is the expression of the mind of God for
man.
THE
FULLNESS OF THE GOSPEL BY JOHN
I think
that you have learned that what is written in this whole
Gospel by John is more than an earthly story, or a
collection of sayings and doings on the part of Jesus
Christ. There is in every one of those sayings and
doings, and in every part of the story, a setting forth
in one way or another of some eternal and unfathomable
truth because it comes from God. God is unfathomable,
unsearchable, incomprehensible, profound beyond our
understanding. He has a depth and a fullness never, never
to be exhausted, either in time or in eternity, and
anything that emanates from God in word or deed carries
with it that significance. It is not just human language.
These are not just the words and works of a man. Every
fragment contains the profound depth of God, and this
chapter, which is marked out in the organization of the
matter for our convenience as chapter eleven, is a
wonderful example of what we have just said. Every bit of
it goes far beyond the thing that is said or done. It is
so comprehensive, so far-reaching, so full of depth and
meaning. I have been reading the Gospel by John, and, of
course, this chapter, for over sixty years, and I have
spoken on it many times, but I am still in the presence
of that which is far beyond me. I am not just giving you
something that has been said before. The whole Gospel is ALWAYS
divulging that which we have not seen or known before.
Now that does not mean that you have never seen what I am
going to say at this time, but what I am saying is that
there is a fullness here, and that, whatever and however
much you have seen, there is more yet that God means in
the fragments of this chapter.
We are always wrestling with our limitations both to
understand and grasp, and certainly to utter what is
herein contained. Some of us are very poor at this
business, and we know it. A little grandson of mine heard
I was going to America and he asked his mother: 'What is
Grandpa going to America for?' She said: 'Well, to
preach.' He said: 'To preach? He is not very good at
that, is he?' And Grandpa fully agrees! So now you know
what you have to put up with! Well, that is just how we
feel when we come into the presence of the divine stature
of God's words.
I think you all realize something of the vastness of this
chapter, but I trust that we shall yet see a little more,
though by no means the fullness of what is in the passage
which we have just read, and especially the fragment in
verse 44.
THE
ASPECTS OF THE GOSPEL BY JOHN
Now, before
we come to that, let me just say this word that is
necessary, I think, and leads up to it. We must recognize
the aspects of this Gospel. First of all, it is a
backward aspect. That is, John wrote this Gospel long
years after all that is in it was completed. The whole
thing was finished, as to the actuality of the content of
this record, and the Lord Jesus had left this earth. All
that is here lay in the past when John wrote it. It was
something completed as to history. John was writing it
from that standpoint, with the backward aspect. But you
will notice that the Gospel itself is written on the
forward aspect. That is, it was all written in the light
of the day that was to come. Jesus is here saying
repeatedly: "In that day... in that day... when...
when..." and that relates to the day of the advent
of the Holy Spirit. "When He is come... in that
day." This Gospel was written for a coming day, and
we are living in that day, that is, in the dispensation
of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was making it perfectly clear
that what He was saying and doing in the flesh related to
that day which was yet to be, the day when the Holy
Spirit inaugurated the present dispensation. This Gospel,
therefore, is written to us precisely because we live in
that day.
You, perhaps, are asking: 'Why is he saying this? It is
simple and obvious. We know it'. Well, do we? I have said
all that in order that we might recognize that this verse
44 belongs to us. It was written for us. In the day in
which we live, this very dispensation day, this verse
belongs to us.
One other word about that. The backward aspect of this
Gospel, written after it was all actually accomplished in
history, was the objective side, when everything was
outward. All that Jesus was doing was outward. His
meanings were put into outward things, ways and means.
The day for which all that objective was done and said is
the day of the subjective, when it is taken from history
without and made history within, when it is no longer
something just outside of us, but something to be planted
inside of us. That is the real meaning of the coming of
the Holy Spirit - to lay hold of everything in the
Scripture which is there objectively and place it right
within the centre of the life of the believer, so that it
becomes a part of the very inwardness of the believer's
life.
If we do not recognize these things we may miss our way
in reading the stories, and just think of them as
wonderful stories of what Jesus did, particularly this
one of the raising of this man Lazarus from the dead. It
was done and recorded in order that it might become our
inward experience, a very part of our own being. That is
the foundation upon which we build what we have to say as
to this whole Gospel.
CORRESPONDENCE
BETWEEN THE GOSPELS AND EPISTLES
May I add
another word, which I hope will have some value to you?
It is always necessary, in the light of what we have
said, and important to take account of the correspondence
between the Epistles in the New Testament and the
Gospels, because the Epistles are, after all, only the
subjective expression of the objective Gospels. How can I
put that to help you? Well, you read your Gospels. If you
like, read this chapter. There is the story, the account
of what happened; all the parts, the phases and the
stages of it. That is very wonderful, but when you come
to the Epistles you are told what all that means. It is
there that you get the explanation for your own life of
what is in the Gospels. The Gospels will remain the
history of two thousand years ago until you come to see
what God meant them to be in your own life, and you find
that out in the Epistles. Always read the Gospels in this
twofold way, and remember that this in the Gospels is
explained somewhere in the Epistles. Read the Epistles
and you will say: 'This is explaining what is in the
Gospels.' So read your New Testament in that way. We have
to look at the Book of the Acts and the Epistles for the
real meaning of the Gospels, and before we can get the
real inward value of the Gospels.
Now we have said all that, we come to this verse in the
eleventh chapter of John: "He that was dead came
forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes; and his
face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto
them, Loose him, and let him go." Do you know that
you have the vast amount of the remainder of the New
Testament (after John) that is exactly in keeping with
that? It tells you what that means for us. Here in this
chapter is what it meant for Lazarus and his sisters, but
what did that mean in God's mind for us?
LIFE,
BUT LIMITATION
First of
all, it is possible for us to have life by the word of
Jesus Christ, resurrection life, divine life, that which
is called eternal life; it is possible for us to have
that life by which we have been brought from the death of
our natural state into this newness of life by the fiat
of the Son of God, and yet be limited in every way while
we have it. Limited in ministry - 'his hands bound';
limited in progress - 'his feet bound'; limited in
understanding - 'a napkin around his head and over his
eyes'. Those three things are three of the major things
in the teaching of the Apostles.
Let me repeat that, for it is so true, and it is true of
multitudes today. It is one of the problems in
Christianity that, while through simple response to the
Word of the Lord Jesus, many have been born again and are
His people, are children of God and have divine life, it
is so possible - and is actually so in numerous cases -
to be limited in almost every way as to that life, and
that life is so limited in them. Here the symbolism is
bound hand, bound foot and bound head. The hands are the
symbols of ministry, or fruitfulness of life, and are
there not many Christians whom believe in the Lord Jesus
and have that saving faith in Him, yet whose ministration
and fruitfulness of life are exceedingly limited, bound
and tied up? Oh, how many Christians are just tied up in
this matter of real fruitfulness, real ministry - and
when I use that word 'ministry' I am not just talking
about platforms, or Bible preaching, but the ministration
of the Lord Jesus. In the next chapter we read that Jesus
came back to Bethany and they made Him a feast. Martha
served and Lazarus was one of those who sat at meat. It
would have been a poor lookout for that whole occasion if
Lazarus had been tied up in his grave clothes! But, no,
he is able to share with the others in this experience,
and if you think I am trying to make something of
nothing, look again, because it was at that point that
the Jewish rulers took counsel to put Lazarus to death
also, because by reason of HIM many believed. That
is what I meant by loosed hands, ministry, fruitfulness:
"By reason of him many of the Jews went away, and
believed on Jesus." Is it not true that multitudes
of Christians are not in that release of life where many
believe because of them? They remain isolated, tied up,
bound. They are Christians, but in the meaning of hands
of fruitfulness, of service, of the ministration of
Christ, of the testimony of Jesus, they are still in the
grave clothes. And that is why Jesus said: "I came
that they might have life", but, more than that,
"have it abundantly". And Lazarus had the life,
but not abundantly until he was loosed.
Now you get into the Epistles with that fragment only,
and see how much there is about the life of the believer
being an effective life, a fruitful life, and a
responsible life, a life that is really producing
something. Indeed, we could say that one of the major
purposes of all the Letters that the Apostles wrote was
to get these Christians (and need I remind you again that
more than ninety per cent of the New Testament was
written to Christians? That is impressive and
challenging!) who had the life to have it more
abundantly, that is, to be loosed in this matter of their
newness of life.
Well, perhaps that is enough for the moment on that.
LIFE,
BUT NO PROGRESS
And what is
true of the meaning of the hands is true of the feet.
Lazarus was "bound hand and foot". Again, is it
not true that many, many Christians, born-again
believers, are making no progress in the spiritual life,
are not going on? You meet them once, and three, six and
ten years afterwards they are just where they were when
you first met them. They have not gone on, for their feet
are bound. They are not going on, not making spiritual
progress, not gaining ground, not overtaking the course,
not - to use Paul's phrase - "attaining". They
are in a state of spiritual stagnation, spiritual arrest.
Their feet are bound, and that is not God's idea. Jesus,
God incarnate said: 'Loose him, and let him go. Release
those feet that he may walk, that he may run in the way
of My commandments.' That is God's idea for us. That is
not only a statement of truth, but a challenge as to
where we are.
LIFE,
BUT NO SPIRITUAL SIGHT
What about
this head, wrapped in a napkin about the eyes and about
the mouth? We mention the eyes in particular for our
purpose at the moment. Again, is it not true that there
are many who are the Lord's people but who are not really
seeing more and more, and ever more of what He has for
them and through them? Many Christians see no further
than their hand before their eyes. It is a little world
in which they live, a very short horizon of spiritual
perception and understanding, apprehension and spiritual
knowledge. Their heads are wrapped around and their eyes
are covered over. They have life, but that is all.
Having said these things, in order to indicate what we
mean by the great fullness that there is here, even in a
verse, let us look at it again.
THE
GRAVE TOUCH
Lazarus
came forth and he had life, but at that moment when he
came forth he was still in contact with the grave. There
was still that about him which spoke of that sepulchre,
and the limitations of that sepulchre. Again, what are
these limitations? Well, we come over to the Epistles. I
am not going right through them all, but I will give you
just enough to indicate what is meant.
LOOSING
FROM THE NATURAL LIFE
If you turn
to the first Letter to the Corinthians, and have any
knowledge of what is in that Letter, you will know what
we mean by the grave touch still upon born-again
Christians. Paul opens that Letter by addressing the
Corinthians as "saints", which means those who
are the Lord's, but as he writes on and on an awful
situation is unfolded, is it not? They have life, but you
cannot say that they have it abundantly. The grave
clothes are on them, that is, the grave touch is still
there, and in the first Letter to the Corinthians it is
the grave touch of the limitations of the natural life.
They are Christians, yes, but they are bound and limited
by the ties of the natural life. That is the word which
the Apostle uses specifically: "The natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God... and he
cannot know them" (1 Corinthians 2:14). That is
limitation, is it not? You proceed into the Letter and
you find that these people are behaving as worldly people
behave. In their behaviour, their conduct, their
procedure, they go on just exactly as do worldly people.
Someone has done a wrong to another believer, and
apparently that happened in more than one case at
Corinth, and the result was that this believer against
whom the wrong was done thought this was criminal and
should be set right in the court of law in the world. So
he hauled his fellow-believer before the judge in the
worldly court to get his rights. That is exactly what the
world does, and that is an instance of a whole handful of
things that were going on at Corinth. Some were worse
than that. 'There are divisions among you, and when there
are divisions among you are ye not carnal?' Not
spiritual, but carnal.
Well, gather up the whole of that Letter and it is a
terrible story of those who are the Lord's and who have
the life just behaving as other people do, living in the
way that the world does. You find the women behaving as
worldly women did in their dress, in their demeanour, in
their behaviour, and even in the assembly. I do not want
to pick out the women particularly, but I am indicating
that there is the spirit of the world amongst believers
in Corinth, and (read the Letter again in the light of
this) that is keeping them still in this bondage, in this
limitation of their spiritual life. It is grave clothes,
and you are not surprised that at Corinth the world is
not feeling the impact of their testimony, that the
church at Corinth is not counting in the world, because
the world has got into the church, and into its members
individually. In this sense the grave clothes are still
on them, by reason of the limitations which come upon the
spiritual life when the natural takes charge and governs,
controls and directs. It is terrible spiritual
limitation. There is life, yes, but not 'life
abundantly'. Do you see what I mean? Their testimony is
bound. There is still something of the grave, and that
Letter to the Corinthians was written in the same spirit
and with the same idea, intention and object as the Lord
had when He said: "Loose him and let him go".
Paul is striving to get these Corinthians loosed as
Christians loosed, liberated, set free into the fullness
of the life which they had.
LOOSING
FROM TRADITION AND LEGALISM
We pass
from Corinthians into Galatians, and no one who knows
that Letter will dispute the statement that here you are
in touch with the grave very truly. You know all that the
Letter to the Galatians is about, and you know the two
prominent words - Liberty - "Stand fast therefore in
the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be
not entangled again with the yoke of bondage"
(Galatians 4:1 - A.V.) - and sonship. Not servanthood,
nor slavery, but sonship; the liberty of sons. They are
the two great words of that Letter, but what are the
grave bands there in Galatia? They are the grave bands of
tradition, of legalism, and all such things. You know,
dear friends, it is very easy to get tied up with these
grave clothes! The persistent peril through the ages of
Christianity is to crystallize itself into something set,
something fixed. You have some light, some revelation,
something of the immensity of truth, just a fragment of
it, and it is not long before you begin to form that into
a set system and make it the limit, saying that this is
what people must believe, they must come within this
horizon, and they must behave like this. It becomes a
system again: 'You must... you must not!', and there is
no difference between that and the Old Testament 'Thou
shalt... thou shalt not!' Christianity has fallen into
that peril, and is continually doing it, circumscribing
the great revelation, making Christ smaller than He is,
crystallizing truth into something fixed and set: 'This
is how...', and the meaning of that is: 'This is the
ultimate'.
Now you notice that when the Spirit did come, as we have
the record in the Book of the Acts, the one thing that
these old Jewish disciples experienced was a marvellous
emancipation from that bondage of Judaism; and how the
Holy Spirit was working all along against any fixed
barriers! Peter will argue that he is a Jew, born, bred
and dyed-in-the-wool, and that never has anything unclean
entered HIS mouth, according to Leviticus chapter
11. All right, Peter. You are just putting your
interpretation upon the Scriptures, and you are putting
your limits upon what Christ has done by His Cross, and
so he is told: "What God hath cleansed make not thou
common" (Acts 10:15). The Holy Spirit reacted to
Peter's traditionalism, legalism, limitation and bondage,
and made him go and do what he would never have done
otherwise. Again and again, right to his death, the words
of the Lord Jesus to him, in the last chapter of this
Gospel, were made good: "When thou wast young, thou
girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but
when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy
hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee
whither thou wouldest not" (John 21:18). That
principle was being applied over Cornelius and his house,
and Caesarea and the Gentiles. He was made to go whither
he would not. He was saying: 'No, Lord', and the Lord was
saying: 'Yes, Peter'. "Whither thou wouldest
not" is heaven's reaction to this legalistic
limitation, these grave clothes on an Apostle. And that
was not the only battle that Peter had, but we will not
stay with it.
Then John says that when the Lord Jesus said those words
to Peter He was signifying "by what manner of death
he should GLORIFY God". Years afterwards
Peter wrote: "Knowing that the putting off of my
tabernacle cometh swiftly, even as our Lord Jesus Christ
signified unto me" (2 Peter 1:14). We do not know
the manner of his death, but tradition says that Peter
was crucified. Only Jews could be crucified by Gentiles,
for Gentiles dared not crucify one of their own. So Peter
went that way, but because Paul had Roman citizenship
they could not crucify him, so they beheaded him. Peter
was selected for the same kind of death as His Lord's,
and he knew it for he said: "As our Lord Jesus
Christ signified unto me." He was girded by another
and carried the way he would not choose to go, but the
way of the Spirit is the way that goes against our
limitations, our grave clothes, and takes us along ways
of which we would never have thought. Indeed, our
theology would not accept that way, our doctrine might be
against it, our tradition would forbid it, but the Holy
Spirit says: 'This is the way. Loose him, and let him
go.' That is Galatians, is it not? I said that we need
the Epistles to explain the Gospels, and just one verse
in the Gospel by John contains all this!
LOOSING
UNTO FULL SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE
I close
with one other thing. Look into the Letter to the
Ephesians, and you, having come through the loosing of
the hands in Corinth, and the loosing of the feet in
Galatia to walk in the Spirit and stand fast in liberty,
now move to the head. In Ephesians Paul takes the napkin
from the head and does it thoroughly. Ephesians has to do
with the napkin around the head. What do we mean? Well,
Paul hardly begins that Letter before he says: 'I bow my
knees unto the Father of glory, that He would grant unto
you Ephesian Christians that you should have the whole
counsel of God given to you, to grant unto YOU a
spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him,
Christ, that the eyes of your heart be enlightened, that
you may know what is the hope of His calling, the riches
of His inheritance in the saints, the exceeding greatness
of His power to usward who believe.' 'That you may KNOW...
the eyes of your heart being enlightened' - there is the
napkin off the head! This Letter to the Ephesians is a
wonderful revelation as to the eyes of the heart being
unveiled, unbound, as to the greatness of our calling and
vocation, as to the immensity of that for which we have
been brought into union with His Son. How great it is!
Beyond all our grasping, dear friends. Believe me, it is
no exaggeration, and Paul says: "that you may KNOW".
There is one little prefix missing in our translation
which is the key to the whole thing. The Apostle says:
'That you may know... that you may know', and in the New
Testament we have that word given to us in part and in
whole. It is not given to us in our translation, but it
is just this: Knowing, in itself, is applied to our
beginning knowledge of the Lord. To quote John again:
"And this is life eternal, that they should know
thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send,
even Jesus Christ" (John 17:3). That is the entering
into life, the receiving of divine life but when Paul
speaks here about 'knowing', he is using a compound Greek
word which we do not have in our translation. It is 'epignosis',
FULL knowledge. 'You know', he says to these
Ephesians, 'that in the space of two years I ceased not
to preach unto you the whole counsel of God.' They knew,
and on that initial knowledge they had come to the Lord,
but now he is praying, at the end of his life from his
prison: 'that you may come unto full knowledge.' It is
more than life; it is life abundant. It is more than
seeing; it is seeing with a great range of divine purpose
and meaning for our calling and our having life.
Will you tell me that all Christians are like that? Are
there not many around whose heads there is a napkin,
which obscures their spiritual vision, limits their
spiritual sight, and narrows down the range of their
comprehension of the great purpose of their calling? Real
revelation, dear friends, is not just information. It is
liberation. To see fully, and more fully, is to be
released.
We have often said about this man Paul that there was
nothing on earth or in hell, or in a combination of both,
that would have changed the rabid, fanatical Pharisee
into the greatest friend that ever Jesus Christ had
except light from heaven. Nothing could have done it -
but light from heaven did it. The napkin was taken off
and the man was set free to walk up and down in the
greatness of Jesus Christ.
I think we can see that that one verse in the whole of
John's Gospel contains the Bible. Is it not true that
God's mind for man, God's thought for His people, is:
'Loose him. He has got life, but loose him and let him
go!'? "I came that they may have life, and may have
it abundantly."
From "A Witness
and A Testimony" Nov-Dec 1971, Vol. 49-6, based on a
spoken message given in March 1966.