Reading: Eph. 1:17-23; Colossians 1
and 2.
We want to point out how the letter to the Ephesians and the
letter to the Colossians are all of a piece with the great truth
that is contained in the fact of the church of the firstborn,
especially underlining the words in Ephesians 1:17:
"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
knowledge of Him (that is, our Lord Jesus Christ)".
The word in the original is "the full
knowledge of Him". It is important to note that, because
there is a knowledge of the Lord Jesus which is not an Ephesian
knowledge, so to speak; which is not the knowledge of the Lord
Jesus that is brought into view in these later letters of the
apostle. When we come to Ephesians and Colossians we come to
something very much fuller to the Lord Jesus, and what the
apostle is desiring as he writes, is that the believers may come
to this full knowledge of the Lord Jesus which he is seeking to
set forth. So that what we have in these letters is the full, or
the fuller knowledge of the Lord Jesus for the saints, and unto
that full knowledge he prays that the Father of glory may give a
spirit of wisdom and revelation.
"Having the eyes of your heart enlightened..."
It is not just the case of the eyes of the heart being opened.
The eyes of the heart are opened when we first see the Lord.
That is a part of the work of our conversion; we see the Lord.
But here is enlightenment for those opened eyes; enlightened
unto full knowledge.
"...that ye may know..."
That you may know, not only that you are saved, not only that
you are accepted, in that your sins are forgiven. All that is
taken for granted, is taken as established when we reach this
point. This is something more...
"...what
is the hope of his calling..."
It is not that we may know His calling, for we know that, but
that we may know the hope of His calling, what the calling is
unto.
"...what the riches of the glory of his (Christ's)
inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of
his power to usward who believe..."
Here again, it is not the exceeding greatness of His power unto
our salvation, with a view to save us, but it is the exceeding
greatness of His power unto us who believe in relation to the full
knowledge of Christ. The full knowledge of
Christ demands the operation of the exceeding greatness of God's
power.
"...according to that working of the strength of His might
which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead
and set Him at his own right hand in the heavenlies... and
gave Him to be the head over all things to the church, which
is his body, the fulness of Him that fills all in all".
We have hinted that the church referred to here is all of a
piece with the "church of the firstborn". The church comes
specially into view in the letter to the Ephesians, which is, as
we understand, of all letters the church letter. It is the
church of the firstborn, linked with the Levites in a typical
way. These words in Ephesians 1 will help us to understand what
the Levites were for; what their calling was, and their
vocation, as we read backward
What is Meant by God's Full
Thought
The Levites stood to represent God's full mind and thought as
to His people as a whole, and their vocation was to hold
everything in relation to that full thought of God. This first
clause sums up the very life and nature and vocation of the
Levites, "the full knowledge of Him".
What is God's full thought? No one would ever say that God's
full thought is realised in His people when He has got them out
of Egypt, through the Red Sea, into the wilderness. It is quite
impossible to read the Word of God with reference to Israel's
history during the forty years and to say that is God's full
thought, that is all that God intended, and God has reached His
end. Everything contradicts that, and no one would suggest that
it was so.
Yet they were redeemed with precious blood; they were saved by
a mighty hand; they were brought out of the world typically, out
of the authority of darkness, and were made a people for God's
own possession. But withal the full thought of God lies far
beyond that. God's full thought was in the direction of the
land, with all its typical meaning as representing the fulness
of Christ and what that fulness is.
God's full thought for the saints is never realised in their
salvation from sin, from the world, and from the power of Satan.
That is a great part of the Lord's thought, but it is not the
full thought. That is only the beginning of His thought. That is
the foundation. What is the full thought of God? Firstly, it is
"the hope of His calling" to know which requires that He, the
God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, shall give us
a spirit of wisdom and revelation unto the knowledge of the hope
of His calling.
Israel in the wilderness were living - inadequately, it is
true, all too weakly - with a hope. Every step that they took in
their march was a step with a hope. Whenever they were caused to
tarry, they only did so in the thought that it would not be long
before they were on the march again. They were governed by a
hope of their calling. What was the hope? A sphere in which
there would be fullness: fulness of life, fulness of power; a
realm in which they would have all that God could give them, and
all that God in His grace and covenant had promised them; a
realm in which they would be in the place of government,
dominion, power, and much more than that. That was the hope of
their calling.
Now, says the apostle, that is the hope of the church's
calling, not just to be saved from the old state and realm, but
to be saved right through unto all the fulness of God in Christ;
"...the church which is his body, the fulness of Him that
fills all in all". The hope of His calling is a tremendous
thing.
Then there are "the riches
of
the glory of His inheritance in the saints". I am quite
sure we shall never get to the bottom of that, but it is something
to dwell upon. It will grow as we dwell upon it. The time was, no
doubt, when every one of us in reading that clause wondered what
in the thought of God it meant. It was far beyond us. We have been
getting just a little glimpse of light. It has been growing, and
is still growing, and it will grow as we contemplate it: "the
riches of the glory of His (Christ's) inheritance in the saints".
If
we understood it, and if it gripped us, as such a thing should
grip us, it would be a tremendous factor in our pressing on to
make our calling and our election sure. We will come to that in a
moment, and say a little more about it.
His full thought - the hope of His calling, the riches of the
glory of His inheritance in the saints! Next there follows, "The
exceeding
greatness of His power". We note that it is
power in accordance with the strength of His might which He
energised first in raising Christ from the dead. That is no
small matter when you consider all that had to be met of the
power of death spiritually. Then the second step is the setting
of Him at His own right hand, the getting back there through all
principalities and power, and upon that giving Him dominion far
above all other rule, and authority, and power, and every name
in all ages, putting all under His feet (His enemies); and then
giving Him to be Head over all things to the church, which is
His body.
All this is said to be the working of the exceeding greatness
of God's power, and the full knowledge of Christ is to know
that. To know the full knowledge of Christ, is to be taken
through exactly the same course in the power of resurrection,
ascension, exaltation, enthronement, dominion, fulness of Him.
That is the full knowledge of Christ. These are not small
matters. We are not straining, not exaggerating. We are simply
dwelling upon what it says, and that is the content of the
single phrase "in the full knowledge of Him". That is
God's full thought for His own.
We are called to hold everything in relation to God's full
thought, and if the Levites are in type the church of the
firstborn ones, and we are the antitype, the church, which is
His body, then the church, which is His body, is called into
being to become the embodiment of, and to hold all things in
relation to, the full thought of God.
If you look back and study the history of the Levites from
every standpoint - and their life and activity was many-sided,
from the receiving and slaying of the sacrifice, and the
receiving and taking of the blood, to ministry in the sanctuary,
in the maintaining of the light, and the bread, and the incense;
and when in transit through the wilderness in the carrying of
the sanctuary, the tabernacle (its various parts apportioned to
three families) and so much more - you will see that every part
of it was linked with this full thought of God, that they were
there to hold everything in relation to God's full thought for
His people. That is all summed up in this, "the hope of his
calling". The hope of His calling was there in the shed
blood, in the receiving and sprinkling of the blood, and in
every other part of their life. Further it was the riches of the
glory of His inheritance in the saints, and the exceeding
greatness of His power toward them. It was, in the comprehensive
phrase, "the full knowledge of Him".
The church which is His body steps into the place of the
Levites spiritually for that same work, ministry, life, vocation
in a spiritual way, to hold everything and to function in every
way, in relation to the full thought of God, that the saints may
come unto the hope of His calling, and the realisation of that
hope, the fulfilment of that hope; that the church may come to
provide Him with the riches of the glory of His inheritance in
it; that the church may be that in which there is the operation
of His exceeding great power to translate it from death to the
place where it is the fulness of Him that fills all in all.
Perhaps you say, "That is all wonderful, but it is not of very
much practical value!" Well, to contemplate a thought of God
ought to be an inspiration, even if it overawes us, even if it
makes us draw a breath in amazement, even if we are staggered by
it. None the less, these are the great thoughts of God, and you
and I will not make much progress unless we are apprised of the
thoughts of God, because we have got to set our hearts upon God
having His thoughts realised. It is a matter of cooperation with
Him, and so, says the apostle, "give the more diligence to
make your calling and election sure". How can you do that
unless you know what your calling and election is? This is it.
The Fulness of God in Christ as
Man
Now we come back and gather all this up as far as we can. The
great revelation which has come out eventually and called (until
disclosed) "the mystery", and represented in a typical way by
the Levites, the church of the firstborn, is firstly this:
Christ personally, as Man, made the heir of all things, so that
in Him, as Man, all God's fulness dwells.
Now you turn to the letter to the Colossians, and when you do
so, and read the first chapter, and then the second, you will
ask: Now what is the object in view? What is the apostle
intending, or what does the Holy Spirit mean by what is written
there? The first answer would be that it is to set forth, to
declare, the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot get away
from that. You take such words as those in verse 19 of chapter 1
and verse 9 of chapter 2. There, surely, is Deity.
The object of the letter was to present Christ in His right
place, as one with God. Yet when you have acknowledged that, you
have to recognise that there is a second thing which the apostle
is seeking to enforce by that very means, showing that, although
Jesus Christ was one with God, and of the very Godhead, He was
also Man. The very words that it was the good pleasure of the
Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell in bodily form,
imply incarnation; that here was a Man in whom the fulness
dwelt. He was God, but Man too. He became Man. The great
revelation which has now been disclosed concerning Jesus Christ
personally is, on the one hand, just this; not that all fulness
dwells in God - that is no special revelation, there is no
mystery about that. It is not that it pleases God that all the
fulness should dwell in one member of the Godhead - there is
nothing to be surprised at in that. That does not need a
revelation; that can be taken for granted. But the mystery of
Christ is that the fulness dwells in Him as
Man by the good pleasure
of the Father; that it is in Man that God has made the
fulness to dwell, that He is the heir of all things. When we put
that stress and emphasis upon the word "Man", we are touching the
very heart of mystery and divine counsels, and we are led back to
this position, that from eternity in those counsels of the
Godhead, God determined to display Himself universally man-wise,
not in His naked-Deity, not as unembodied Spirit (for God is a
Spirit), not in the abstract movement of the invisible,
intangible, spiritual sense. No! it was man-wise, humanity-wise,
and the all-inclusive representation of that intention is Jesus
Christ. The incarnation is a marvellous, unspeakable, profound
thing going back to the eternal counsels of God. It takes us
beyond our depth altogether when we begin to think of Christ as
the first-begotten, the only begotten Son.
There we step clean out of our understanding, but though we may
not be able to trace it and comprehend it, we are able to
understand it this far, that the purpose of it, however it was
done, whatever its deep mystery, is the purpose of God to
express, to manifest Himself in man-form in this universe. The
heart of everything for God is man. The devil never attacked
God's creation outside of man. He attacked the whole creation
through man, focussed upon man, and man is his object. None of
us will ever know what the Lord Jesus went through at the hands
of the devil during His sojourn here on this earth, and
especially in those hours of His cross. If you and I have ever
known (and we have in a measure, which to us has been often
beyond endurance) what the fury and hatred and the maliciousness
of the devil is, the cruelty, the cunning, the iniquity of
Satan, have not touched one little fragment of what the Son of
Man had to encounter at the hands of Satan, especially in His
Cross. Why? Because it is man that is God's thought, and Christ
is the Man; the inclusive Man, and the representative Man.
The fact that God has a Man at last in glory, represents such
power, such wisdom, and such triumph on the part of God as to
have altogether outwitted, out-manoeuvred, and out-powered all
the dominion of Satan. Stephen said: "I see the heavens open,
and the Son of Man...". Saul of Tarsus hears the words, "I
am Jesus".
The mystery hid from all ages and generations is just that,
that God's eternal purpose is bound up with Man, and that Jesus
Christ is the chosen, inclusive Man, the Firstborn. When we have
said all that, we have not said anything, we have not seen
anything. To know Him, to see who and what Jesus is, is the
greatest revelation that can ever come to us, and so the apostle
says that he prays that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of glory, would grant a spirit of wisdom and revelation
in the full knowledge of Him. There is no greater thing that can
ever come than the full knowledge of Him.
This is not the full knowledge of God as God, in His Deity;
this is the full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ in the
appointment, the thought and intention of God as Man. But that
is only one side. You may call it the bigger side if you like,
but it is only one side of that revelation which has eventually
come out.
The Corporate Expression of Christ
in the
Church
The other side is that this fulness of the Person is to be
manifested corporately in the church of the firstborn ones. He
is the Firstborn, the church is the firstborn ones. He and we
are set forth as one Body. You and I never become incorporated
into Deity, we are not one body with Deity; it is the Man with
whom we are one. We are incorporated into Christ as the Man. As
Paul in this letter to the Ephesians says, making "of the
twain one new man".
We said that the other side is the fulness of the Person of
Christ to be manifested corporately. That leads us to this
second petition in the prayer of the apostle: "...what
the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints".
What is Christ's inheritance in the saints? What are the riches
of the glory of Christ's inheritance in the saints? It is that
the saints are to provide Him with the means of the universal
manifestation of Himself as God has purposed Him to be. It is a
part of the arrangement in those counsels of the Godhead, that
He shall be the central fulness, but that the fulness should not
be manifested, displayed in an isolated way. There would be no
purpose in that, because He could have done that in Deity
without incarnation, He could have possessed the fulness in that
way, and that is what the letter to the Philippians says. He was
equal with God, and had all the fulness, but He emptied Himself.
Why? In order that others might be brought into the fulness,
that He might not hold it all for Himself. That is what Satan
wants to do.
The Lord Jesus let go in order to bring others in. The apostle
says, "Let this mind be in you". If any of you are
inclined to stand for your own rights, on your own ground, to
hold things for yourself, you are violating the very spirit of
Christ who let go His own rights in order that others might come
into them and get the benefit. So the inheritance of Christ is
this: that He is made heir of all things, but He can have all
things only as He has the saints, and He gets those "all things"
through and in the saints. It is a part of the arrangement, the
agreement. It is not as one isolated unit in God's universe,
that He is to have everything, but by appointment man-wise, in a
corporate sense, and not only in a personal sense. So that the
Lord Jesus cannot come into all that God eternally intended for
Him until He has the church, and until the church has come to
the full knowledge of Him.
The church is called His bride, and it is to be the bride who
shows forth His glory. His glories are to be known through the
bride. You remember Abraham's servant, who went to fetch the
bride for Isaac, and the last stroke in winning the consent of
that bride was the displaying of the riches of his master, and
giving of those riches to her. When these things were displayed
she gave her answer: "I will go." She became the means by which
the riches of her bridegroom were displayed. How did the others
in her household know what kind of a man this Isaac was, whether
he was a beggar or a prince? The servant having taken of his,
showed them these riches, these jewels, and they knew what kind
of a man he was.
Typically, the servant represents the Holy Spirit taking of the
things of Christ to show them to the bride, in order that the
bride might become the vehicle of the display of His
princeliness, of His glory, His wealth and His riches; His
inheritance in the saints. When you come to the end of the book
of the Revelation, to the city coming down from God out of
heaven adorned as a bride for her husband having the glory of
God, her light is like unto a stone most precious and you see
that it is the church, with the fulness of Christ, and it is
that church that shows what Christ is universally. That is the
church of the firstborn. You and I are called to that; that is
our calling, our election.
This has some very practical applications. Why is the Lord
today laying such stress and emphasis upon the necessity for His
own people to come into a new position? There is no doubt about
this, that over a very large area the Lord's own people are
growingly conscious of spiritual need, conscious of a lack, and
a weakness and disappointment, a sense of failure, and they are
coming into a new exercise. The Lord is not allowing that to be
countered by great evangelistic movements, but rather it is
found that almost every time such a movement is launched it
resolves itself into getting the Lord's people right. It is
significant.
The Lord is not satisfied with His people just being saved, and
the Lord is not satisfied that people should just remain saved.
The Lord has fixed this as His goal: the full
knowledge of Him.
It is indispensable to the Lord. His inheritance is bound up with
it. The need today is that the Lord's own people should come into
a knowledge of Himself which they do not possess, into a position
in relation to Himself which they do not occupy; in a word: into
the full knowledge of Him. That is the need, and when the church
was in the enjoyment of Christ in His risen, ascended and exalted
glory, then the Lord was free to add unto them daily those that
were being saved. He had a free course to do that, and He did it.
One is bound to ask in these days as to whether it is safe for
the Lord to do that in a wholesale way, to add such as being
saved to what is; whether they do not stand to lose very
largely. Is it not necessary, in order that men should be saved,
that the church should be in life, and that the church should be
enjoying the fulnesses of Christ? Is not that the key to the
situation? Surely it is. A church throbbing with life, enjoying
the Lord, is essential in relation to the unsaved. However that
may be, here is the Lord's thought for the church. It is a great
thought. The Levites were called in to be such, were the
custodians of that divine thought, and held everything in
relation to it. In other words, the church of the firstborn is
to represent God's full thought, and to hold everything unto
God's full thought for all His church.