I would
like at the very outset to seek to put into two or three
concise statements what I believe to be the Lord's object
for this time.
In the
first place, God is supremely concerned with ultimate and
time-outlasting values. Then, He would have those values
secured as directly and immediately as possible. Further,
the effectiveness of a believer's life, and of the life
of God's people together, is all a matter of the measure
of intrinsic value; not of comparative or superficial,
but of intrinsic value. And therefore, finally, it is a
matter of primary importance that the Lord's people
should recognise this and be committed to it. Now,
probably these statements will take on significance as we
move from chapter to chapter, and so it will be
profitable if they are repeated from time to time; but I
hope that the outstanding word in it has struck you -
that you recognise that really what the Lord is after is
intrinsic value, not comparative value, and that
therefore He works with that object in view. Surely, if
time is shortening, He will press that issue more and
more closely.
Now will
you turn with me to a passage of Scripture - 2 Timothy
1:8-10. We read this whole section because what we are
after is included in it and is a part of it.
Be
not ashamed therefore of the testimony of our Lord,
nor of me His prisoner: but suffer hardship with the
gospel according to the power of God; Who saved us,
and called us with a holy calling, not according to
our works, but according to His own purpose and
grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before
times eternal, but hath now been manifested by the
appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, Who abolished
death, and brought life and immortality
(Incorruption, A.R.V. margin) to light through
the Gospel.
The clause
which we take out as the key to our present consideration
is this - "Who abolished death, and brought life
and incorruption to light", or, to cut
that down still further - "life and
incorruption".
The
Great Issue Of Christ's Coming
This is a
statement as to the grand issue of the coming into this
world of the Lord Jesus; as to His life, His death, His
resurrection. The one great issue here is stated to be
the bringing to light of life and incorruption. That
coming, that living, that dying, that being raised, had
secured the substance of the Gospel, so the Apostle says
here, and that Gospel brought to light that great issue.
This whole great matter was brought to light by the
Gospel. The issue of the preaching, of the proclaiming of
the good news, was life and incorruption.
Logically,
therefore, the conclusion is that, apart from that
coming, that living, that dying, that rising, neither
life nor incorruption would be known, nor would it be
available. Some translations of the passage have the word
"immortality" in place of
"incorruption" - "life and
immortality": an unfortunate translation for us,
because "immortality" has taken on a much more
general meaning in the minds of people than the word here
allows. It is thought to mean continuance after physical
death, survival after the life here; but, although the
Bible teaches the survival of all after physical death,
that all have to stand before the judgment seat after
death, that is not what is meant by the word as it is
used here and in several other places in the New
Testament. The word here used is connected with several
different things (if I may use that word 'things' for the
moment).
In the
first place it is used in connection with God. He is
spoken of as "the incorruptible God" (Rom.
1:23). You would not put the word 'immortal' there in the
place of "incorruptible", because you at once
recognise that there is some element about
incorruptibility that is more, and much more, than just
eternal existence. He is the incorruptible God.
The word is
used in connection with the Lord Jesus - "Neither
wilt Thou give Thy Holy One to see corruption" (Acts
2:27). It was not possible that He should see corruption.
The Lord Jesus had an incorruptible nature and life, and
that meant that there was something there which conquered
death. It was not just death suspended or put aside;
there was some element that destroyed death. It was that
incorruptible element.
The word is
also used of the Blood of Christ. "Ye were
redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or
gold... but with precious blood, as of a lamb without
blemish" (1 Peter 1:18,19). You see, there is an
element in incorruption that is extra.
It is also
used of the glorified bodies of believers - "this
corruptible must put on incorruption" (1
Cor. 15:53). That is related to glorification.
And once
more it is used by the Apostle in relation to an
incorruptible crown. "Now they do it to receive a
corruptible crown" (1 Cor. 9:25). We know what
that means - something that not merely fades and dies,
but completely disintegrates, and becomes something very
other than glorious. "But we an
incorruptible" - the incorruptible crown
means more than just survival, as of a flower that does
not die, an everlasting flower. It is something with an
extra element in it.
And that is
the word that is used here: "Jesus Christ...
abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to
light through the gospel". It is the quality of the
life, the inherent and intrinsic nature of the life that
He has brought to light, that is the incorruptible thing.
He ANULLED death, not just only non-existence, but
destroying the essential nature of death which is
corruption. Life and incorruption, in the way in which
the Apostle links them here, are one thing. Incorruption
is the nature of the life.
Effectiveness
Dependent Upon Incorruption
What we
are concerned with, then, at this time and you will
suffer this preliminary laying down of foundations,
because it is a very important thing to do - what we are
really concerned with now is the one supremely important
thing of being incorruptible. The thing of supreme
importance is incorruption. As Christ's concentrated
effectiveness depended upon certain spiritual factors, so
it will be with us, and the factors upon which that
concentrated effectiveness depended were the factors or
features of incorruption - those things in the background
or constitution of His life which were incorruptible
things. It was those that gave to His life its
tremendous, its immense, meaning.
What a
great amount of intrinsic value was found in three and a
half years. That is not much in a lifetime, especially
when you are looking back on life. But just consider
again all that those three and a half years contained. It
has not only taken two thousand years to touch the very
fringe of it: it will take all the ages of the ages to
exhaust the content of those three and a half years. It
is an inexhaustible fullness. From the baptism to the
glorification there was a concentrated fullness of value
capable of filling eternity. Men through all the
centuries have been drinking at the fountain of those
three and a half years, and they are still drinking - all
nations, all classes, all languages - and it is as full
as ever. It is still more full than all that has been
taken out of it. How pregnant were the values of that
brief spell of life here! What a seed plot for the whole
universe! How could it be that so much should come out of
so little? How could it be that for ever and ever
afterward there should be this flowing of the mighty
river of inexhaustible Divine values?
That is the
question, and that is the question to which, I believe,
at least to some extent, the Lord would give us an answer
here; and I say again, it was because during those three
and a half years that life was constituted upon
incorruptible principles, incorruptible elements. While
Jesus was the Son of God, and thus fundamentally,
infinitely, different from us as regards Godhead and
Deity, the New Testament makes it unmistakably clear
that the features of an incorruptible life are to be
reproduced and to reappear in His people; not the
features of Deity or Godhead, but these features of His
life. Otherwise what is the meaning of this - that they
are 'brought to light by the Gospel'? What is brought to
light? Just certain facts? No. Certain values for us,
which are to become ours and are to be true of us as of
Him, the incorruptible values and features and
characteristics of Jesus Christ as the Son of Man. And so
we say again that concentration of effectiveness, of
values, depended upon these incorruptible elements; and
our effectiveness, our value, will correspond to the
measure in which there are incorruptible values in our
life. Therefore certain things follow.
Incorruption
The Standard Measure Of Heaven
Firstly,
the standard weights and measures of God, of Christ, of
the Holy Spirit, of heaven, of eternity, are the one
standard of incorruption; that is, everything is weighed
and measured, from the Divine standpoint, from Heaven's
standpoint, from Eternity's standpoint, according to its
incorruptible characteristics. Have you grasped that? It
is a tremendous statement, but it is a very true
statement. Heaven has no other standard of values, God
has no other standard of values, the Holy Spirit has no
other standard of values, Eternity has no other standard
of values. Everything is weighed and measured by its
incorruptibility. Heaven takes this attitude - How much
will reappear and abide throughout eternity? How much
will come through when all else has gone? What will be
found ultimately as glorified? That is heaven's standard;
that is the law of the incorruptible.
The
Standard Of Incorruption Applied To Our Lives
Therefore,
again, we should judge everything of our lives and in our
lives by its incorruptible nature and value. You have to
sit down with that and think. Everything that makes up my
life, everything in my life, brought to the bar of the
incorruptible, i.e. that which can take on glory.
How much will stand the test, how much will pass, how
much of all that makes up my life will go when time goes,
when I leave this world, when all that is here ceases
where I am concerned? How much will go on and appear
again with eternal glory? It is a very serious challenge;
but that is how heaven is viewing things all the time,
and that is what heaven is at work upon. All the dealings
of the Lord with us are according to that law, that
standard - to make very, very little of the corruptible,
the passing, the transient, whatever it is, and to make
everything of the incorruptible. What will be the
proportion of the incorruptible to the corruptible
resultant from our time here? I suggest that very few
more solemn and serious questions could be asked or faced
than that. Oh, how much there is that makes up life, that
we are interested in, that we are dealing with, that we
are accumulating, how much time, how much expenditure,
how much worry, how much there is that is going and will
show nothing afterward, will not stand, will not
reappear! How much in all this and through all this is
incorruptible? How much of it is being turned really to
account for the incorruptible, or is just being spent on
our corruptible?
I said that
our first statement would take on significance when we
began to look into this matter. God is primarily
concerned with intrinsic value, and that is not with Him
a comparative matter - it is an absolute matter.
"The fire... shall prove each man's work of what
sort it is" (1 Cor. 3:13), the Word says. That is a
universal and an imperative dictum. "The fire
shall..." - that is imperative - "prove each
man's work" - that is universal; and I think, in the
light of the New Testament, we would be right in adding
'the fire shall try every man', and not only his work.
The fire shall try every man. Fire may mean many things.
It may mean the personal fiery trials of which Peter
speaks, the fiery trial trying faith, proving the gold.
It may be the ordeal of the Church in persecution and
suffering - and God knows how much more that may be, in
the near future, than it has been in many parts of this
world - the fiery ordeal for the Church. But whatever the
fire may mean in its manifold application, it is that
which puts things into the categories to which they
belong. The fire puts the corruptible into the category
of the corruptible, and makes it know that it is
corruptible, that it belongs there: the fire declares it.
The fire, on the other hand, puts the incorruptible into
its category, and shows it has no power over that: that
belongs to the incorruptible, and the fire has no power
over it. It has defined its nature: either that it is of
the perishable and the passing, or that it is of the
imperishable and the permanent. The fire does that.
And do not
let us think merely objectively. Are you in the fire now?
Is the fire not at work in your life now - the fiery
trial of testing, of adversity? How many words could
define the work of the fire in us! Yes, it is a BURNING
in our experience. We know already the individual
ordeal of fire. What is the fire doing? Why the fire? For
one thing only, under the hand and in the intent of God -
to put things in their place, to make us think ever more
lightly of the corruptible and to lay store by the
incorruptible, to make the incorruptible the transcendent
in our standard of values. The fire shall try every man
and every man's work.
Therefore,
again, this law of the incorruptible must be applied to
everything. It must be applied firstly to ourselves. When
we have lived our lives and have gone hence, what will go
on as the substance of the incorruptible resultant from
our having been here at all? - a universal question,
though a difficult one. What will there be that defeats
time, defeats decay, defeats death, defeats the whole
realm of corruption, and appears again in glory for ever,
as the outcome of our having been on this brief journey
on the earth? We have to apply this question of the
incorruptible to ourselves.
Applied
To Our Knowledge
What about
all our Christian knowledge all the teaching we have had,
all the truth we possess? We have to apply the question
here. How much of that great store of teaching and truth,
doctrine and knowledge, is producing the incorruptible in
us, is going to appear again in eternity? We must test
our conferences by this. We have been, perhaps, to many
conferences, we have had a great deal of teaching by one
means and another. Well what is the upshot of it all for
eternity, when the fire tests our teaching, when the fire
tests all our knowledge, perhaps in this life? A great
deal of teaching has been given and now the fire is
testing the incorruptible value of that teaching. What
can survive and triumph over the fire? In all that we
know, in our Christian profession, as we bear the name of
Christ embodied in the title 'Christian', Christ's one,
how much of that very profession is more than a
profession? Is it a possession, an intrinsic value,
incorruptible reality? All our Christian tradition handed
down from our fathers, all that we inherit through the
centuries of Christianity: how much of it now is of this
particular quality, this essential value, this essence of
Christ, and how much is just form, habit, an established
and recognised and accepted thing? How much of it in our
case is incorruptible? All our emotion, our excitability,
our noisiness - is there behind it all that substantial
element that will stand up against the fury of Satan, the
hatred of hell?
As to
ourselves, this matter of the incorruptible is a very
pertinent thing, and, if I mistake not, this is going to
be the kind of thing that will be pressed home by God to
the nth degree at the end-time. If, therefore,
we are in the end-time, and it is not easy to doubt that,
such a word is of importance. If we were to turn aside to
consider that matter, we should find that never before
was there so much in the Scriptures that was never
understood, even by its writers, which today is
intelligible with a mere modicum of intelligence. The
very language of Scripture which could not possibly have
been understood at the time when it was written is as
patent as anything can be patent today. - But that is an
aside. We are unmistakably and undoubtedly at an
end-time. Therefore God would gather His people, those
who really mean business with Him, and He would begin to
say, 'That is good, but there is something very much more
than that: this is the thing that matters - the intrinsic
value, the essential value'. He would put His finger upon
the absolute essentials. How much of the very essence of
Christ is wrought into us? That is the point.
Applied
To Christian Work
This
question of the incorruptible has to be applied, of
course, to Christian work and works, and everything must
be tested by it. It is all very well - size, appearance,
seeming, immediate effects, the trappings and the means -
but what about the essential, intrinsic value? God does
not judge by the size of a thing as it appears, by the
seeming of things, nor by the immediate effects produced
by man's means and methods. God is looking through, His
eyes are the eyes as of flame, and He looks right in to
find the measure of the incorruptible that will not be
gone in a week, a month, a year or a few years, but will
go right on and appear again. He is looking for that.
There are
two kinds of starting-points you know - man's and God's.
Man usually starts with big frameworks, with a big plant,
machinery, publicity, structures and so on. That is how
man usually starts when he is going to do something for
God. It is a propensity; it is our way. We may argue that
God is worthy of something big. That is man's way. God's
way is never like that - it never was. You search in vain
to find any instance of God beginning like that.
Pentecost came out of very deep and drastic dealings with
twelve men. God's starting-point is always the intrinsic.
God has always begun with life, with the inherent, with
the potential. Man's beginnings usually end in only a
small percentage of lasting value. God's beginnings
always end in a very great percentage of lasting value.
But God's beginnings seem so small, they appear so
little. But so does a seed: it is a small thing, a little
thing; yet look at the potentialities in one seed, one
grain of wheat. It is the intrinsic with God. That is
where God begins. That is why anything really of God has
a long and hidden history of deep dealings on His part.
God's
Secret Work
The thirty
years of our Lord's hidden life had a great bearing on
the three and a half. The forty years of Moses away back
there in the desert, looking after those sheep of his
father-in-law, had a great bearing upon the rest of his
life. They were not lost, wasted, futile years. And so we
could take up one after another - Abraham, David, and
others, who had a long, deep, secret hidden history: it
was out of that that the effectiveness came. Very often
more is done, when God has been at work, in the last few
years of a life than in all the years previously. That
does not mean that all the previous years have been of no
account, having no place. It means that God has been
working to get intrinsic values, and now at last these
values are coming out. Be careful, young people, that you
do not write off older saints as back numbers. You may be
violating the very principle of your own life - that of
intrinsic value. But God have mercy upon an old man or an
old woman who has no intrinsic values. As we get older,
we ought to be the substance for the generation to
follow. And God help the generation that follows that has
not an inheritance of intrinsic value. No, let us be
careful how we judge things. It must not be by time, but
by the incorruptible.
Let me
repeat that God begins with the intrinsic. His greatest
things are the coming out of intrinsic values to make
themselves known. Therefore He takes a lot of time and a
lot of pains in secret history with that one object, and
it may be that, though you may be thinking the years are
going, and what does it all amount to? - soon life will
be past, all over, and you have missed the way, and it
has all been a problem, an enigma - it may be that in a
few years an infinitude of spiritual value will come out
of the time through which you are going, out of this
which you think is lost time. Only adjust yourself to
this, that God is not careful at all about our standards
of values, either in time or in method or in any other
way. What God is careful about is to have the inherent,
the potential, the essential, the intrinsic. Lay that up
in your hearts and cherish it and let it be a real
governing factor with you. God works for depths, God
works for solidity, God works for intensity: therefore He
works through testing, through hiddenness, and with very,
very little appeal to our natural pleasure. Incorruption
is therefore a very testing thing, and may demand a
complete adjustment of our whole mentality.
Having
reached this point, we are committed to an enquiry into
the nature of the incorruptible. If all the foregoing was
true of the Lord Jesus, and if it is true that the Word
of God teaches that, Deity and Godhead apart, what was
true of Him in this way is to be reproduced in His own,
then we want to know what were the incorruptible things
that constituted such a life, and we shall go on to look
at these, for it is in this way that we shall have the
best explanation of what we have already been
considering.