Reading:
Num. 24:3-4; Mark 10:46, 51-52; 8:23-25; John 9:1, 7, 25;
Eph. 1:17-19; Rev. 3:17; Acts 26:17-18.
At the
outset of our previous meditation we were speaking of the
root-malady of our time, which is spiritual blindness. We
took those passages which we have read and noted how
they, in a very general way, cover the full ground of
spiritual blindness and spiritual sight. Then we went on
to speak about the common factor in all these cases,
which is that spiritual sight is always a miracle. No one
has real spiritual sight by nature. It is something which
comes out of heaven as a direct act of God, a faculty
which is not there naturally, but has to be created. So
that the very justification for Christ’s coming from
heaven into this world is found in this fact, that man is
born blind and needed a visitant from heaven to give him
sight. Then, finally, to lose spiritual sight is to lose
the miraculous element in the Christian life; which was
the trouble with Laodicea. We went on to see that the
great need of the hour is for those who really can say, I
see! Imagine yourself being born blind and living perhaps
to maturity without having seen anything or anyone, and
suddenly having your eyes opened to see everything and
everyone. The sense of wonder would be there; the world
would be a wonderful world. I suppose when that man in
John 9 went home, he would be constantly saying, It is
wonderful to see people, wonderful to see all these
things! Wonderful! That would be the word most on his
lips. Yes, but there is a spiritual counterpart, and the
great need is of people who have that spiritual wonder in
their hearts all the time; that which has broken upon
them by revelation of the Holy Spirit and is a constant
and ever-growing wonder. It is a new world, a new
universe. That is the need of the time - I see!
Well now,
the final phase of our afternoon meditation was that
which we are going to follow up a little now, that at
every stage of the Christian life from initiation to
consummation, the secret must just be that - I see: I
never saw as I see now! I never saw it like that, I never
saw it on this wise; but now I see! It must be like that
all the way through, from start to finish, if the life is
a true life in the Spirit. So for a little while let us
think on one or two phases of the Christian life which
must be governed by this great reality of seeing by
Divine operation; and you will be recalling a great deal
of the Word as I speak, seeing how much there is in the
Scriptures about this matter.
Seeing
Governs the Beginning of the Christian Life
What is the
beginning of the Christian life? It is a seeing. It must
be a seeing. The very logic of things demands that it
shall be a seeing; for this reason, that the whole of the
Christian life is to be a progressive movement along one
line, to one end. That line and that end is Christ. That
was the issue with the man born blind in John 9. You will
remember how, after they cast him out, Jesus found him,
and said to him, "Dost thou believe on the Son of
God?" and the man "answered and said, And who
is He, Lord, that I may believe on Him? Jesus said
unto him, Thou hast both seen Him and He it is That
speaketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I
believe. And he worshipped him." The issue of
spiritual sight is the recognition of the Lord Jesus, and
it is going to be that all the way through from start to
finish.
We may say
that our salvation was a matter of seeing ourselves as
sinners. But had it been left there, it would have been a
poor lookout for us. Or we may say that it is seeing that Christ died for sinners. That is very good, but not good enough. Unless we see Who Christ is, that subtle and fatal thing may find a lodgment in our hearts that asserts that many a British soldier died just as heroic a death for his fellows as Jesus died; not discerning or discriminating between the one and the other. No, the
whole matter is summed up into seeing Jesus: and when you
really see Jesus, what happens? What happened to Saul of
Tarsus? Well, a whole lot of things happened, and mighty
things which nothing else would have accomplished.
You
would never have argued Saul of Tarsus into Christianity;
you would never have frightened him into Christianity;
you would never have either reasoned or emotionalised him
into being a Christian. To get that man out of Judaism
needed something more than could have been found on this
earth. But he saw Jesus of Nazareth, and that did it. He
is out, he is an emancipated man, he has seen. Later,
when he is right up against the great difficulty of the
Judaisers, tracking and following him everywhere to
disturb the faith of his converts, to wreck their
position in Christ, and they are inclined to fall away,
if they have not already done so (I speak of those
converts and churches in Galatia), he once again raises
the whole question as to what a Christian is, and focuses
it upon this very point of what happened on the Damascus
road. The Letter to the Galatians really can be summed up
in this way: a Christian is not one who does this and
that and another thing which is prescribed to be done; a
Christian is not one who refrains from doing this and
that and another thing because they are forbidden; a
Christian is not one at all who is governed by the
externalities of a way of life, an order, a legalistic
system which says, You must, and You must not: a
Christian is comprehended in this saying, "It
pleased God to reveal His Son in me: (Gal. 1:15-16). That
is only another way of saying, He opened my eyes to see
Jesus, for the two things are the same. The Damascus road
is the place. "Who art Thou, Lord? I am Jesus of
Nazareth". "It pleased God to reveal His Son in
me." That is one and the same thing. Seeing in an
inward way: that makes a Christian. "God... hath
shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2
Cor. 4:6). "In our hearts": Christ, so imparted
and revealed within, is what makes a Christian, and a
Christian will do or not do certain things, not at the
dictates of any Christian law, any more than Jewish, but
as led by the Spirit inwardly, by Christ in the heart. It
is that that makes a Christian, and in that the
foundation is laid for all the rest, right on to the
consummation, because it is just going to be that
growingly. So the foundation must be according to the
superstructure; they are all of a piece. It is seeing,
and it is seeing Christ.
That is a
bald statement upon which a very great deal more might be
said. But it is a challenge. We have to ask ourselves
now, On what foundation does our Christian life rest? Is
it upon something outward; something we have read,
something we have been told, something we have been
commanded, something we have been frightened into, or
emotionalised into; or is it based upon this foundation,
"it pleased God to reveal His Son in me"? When
I saw Him, I saw what a sinner I am, and I saw too what a
Saviour He is: but it was seeing Him that did it! I know
how elementary that is for a conference of Christians,
but it is good sometimes to examine our foundations. We
never get away from those foundations. We are not going
to grow up and be wonderful folk who have left all that
behind. It is all of a piece. I do not mean that we stay
at elementary things all our lives, but we take the
character of our foundations through to the end. The grace
which laid the foundation will bring forth the topstone
with shoutings of Grace, grace! It will all be that; the
grace of God in opening our eyes. I will not stay longer
with that.
Seeing
Governs Spiritual Growth
Let us pass
on to growth. Just as the beginning is by seeing, so is
growth. Spiritual growth is all a matter of seeing. I
want you to think about that. We have to see if we would
grow. What is spiritual growth? Well now, answer that
carefully, in your heart. I think some people imagine
that spiritual growth is getting to know a great deal
more truth. No, not necessarily. You may increase in such
knowledge as you grow it is true, but it is not just
that. What is growth? Well, it is conformity to the image
of God’s Son. That is the end, and it is toward that
that we are progressively and steadily and consistently
to move. Full growth, spiritual maturity, will be our
having been conformed to the image of God’s Son.
That is growth. Then if that be so, Paul will say to us,
"We all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror
the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same
image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the
Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18). Conformity by seeing, growth
by seeing.
The
Ministry of the Holy Spirit
Now that
contains a very precious and deep principle. How can we
illustrate? That very passage which we have just cited
helps us, I think. The last clause will give us our clue
- "as from the Lord the Spirit". I trust I do
not use too hackneyed an illustration in trying to help
this out when I go back to Eliezer, Abraham’s
servant, and Isaac and Rebekah, that classic romance of
the Old Testament. You remember the day came when
Abraham, getting old, called his faithful household
steward, Eliezer, and said, ‘Put now your hand under
my thigh, and swear that you will not take of the women
of this country for a bride for my son, but that you will
go to my own kith and kin’. And he sware. And then
Eliezer set out, as you know, with the camels for the
distant Country across the desert, praying as he went
that the Lord would prosper him and give him a sign. The
sign was given at the well. Rebekah responded to the man,
and when, after tarrying a bit and being confronted with
the challenge quite definitely, she decided to go with
the man, on the way he brought out from his treasures
things of his master’s house, things of his
master’s son, and showed them to her, and occupied
her all the time with his master’s son and the
things which indicated what a son he was, and what
possessions he had and what she was coming into; and this
went on right across the desert until they reached the
other side and came into the district of the
father’s home. Isaac was out in the field
meditating: and they lifted up their eyes and saw; and
the servant said, There he is! The one of whom I have
been speaking to you all the time, the one whose things I
have been showing you; there he is! And she lighted down
from the camel. Do you think she felt strange, as though
she had come from a far country? I think the effect of
Eliezer’s ministry was to make her feel quite at
home, to make her feel that she knew the man she was
going to marry. She felt no strangeness or distress or
foreign element about this thing. They just merged, shall
we say? It was the consummation of a process.
"As from the Lord the Spirit." The Lord
Jesus said, "When He is come... He shall take of
Mine, and show it unto you". "He shall not
speak of Himself; but what things soever He shall hear,
these shall He speak... He shall take of Mine, and
shall show it unto you" (John 16:13-14). The Spirit,
the faithful servant of the Father’s house, has come
right across the wilderness to find the bride for the
Son, of His own kith and kin. Yes, there is room for
wonder here. "Since the children are sharers in
flesh and blood, He also Himself in like manner partook
of the same" (Heb. 2:14). "Both He that
sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of
one" (Heb. 2:11). The Spirit has come to secure that
bride now, one with Him, His flesh and His bone. But the
Spirit desires to be occupying us with the Lord Jesus all
the time, showing us His things. To what effect? That we
shall not be strangers when we see Him, that we shall not
feel that we are of one kind and He another, but that it
may just be, ‘This is the last step of many which
have been leading to this, and every step has been making
this oneness more perfect, this harmony more
complete’. At the end, without any very great
crisis, we just go in. We have been going in all the
time, and this is the last step. That is conformity to
His image, that is spiritual growth; getting to know the
Lord, and to become like Him, getting to be perfectly at
home with Him, so that there is no clash, no strangeness,
no discord, no distance. Oneness with our Lord Jesus
deepening all the time unto the consummation: that is
spiritual growth. You see, it is something inward again,
and it is but the development of that initiation, that
beginning. We have seen and are seeing, and seeing and
seeing, and as we see we are changed.
Is that
true of everything you think you see? We have to test
everything we think we see and know by its effect in our
lives. You and I may have an enormous amount of what we
think to be spiritual knowledge; we have all the
doctrines, all the truths, we can box the compass of
evangelical doctrine; and what is the effect? It is not
seeing, beloved, in a true spiritual sense, if we are not
changed. Oh, that is the tragedy of so many who have got it all, but who are so small, so puny, so unkind, so cruel, so legalistic. Yes, seeing is to be changed, and it is not
seeing if it does not bring that about. It would be far
better for us to be stripped of all that and to be
brought right down to the point where we really do see
just a little that makes a difference. We must be very
honest with God about this. Oh, would we not sooner have
just a very little indeed that was a hundred percent
effective, than a whole mountain of knowledge, ninety percent of which counted for nothing? We must ask the Lord
to save us from advancing beyond spiritual life,
advancing, I mean, with knowledge, a kind of knowledge,
presuming to know. You know what I mean. Real seeing,
Paul says, is being changed, and being changed is a
matter of seeing as by the Lord the Spirit. So we will
pray to see.
Some of us
knew our Bible, knew our New Testament, knew Romans, knew
Ephesians, thought we saw. We could even lecture on the
Bible and these books, and on the truths in them, and did
so for years. Then one day we saw; and people saw that we
saw, and said, What has happened to the minister? He is
not saying anything different from what he has always
said, but there is a difference; he has seen something!
That is it.
Seeing
Governs Ministry
And of
course that must lead us to the next thing, though in a
very brief word. What is true of the beginning of the
Christian life, and what is true of growth, is true in
the matter of ministry. Now, do not think I am speaking
to any particular class of people called
"ministers". Ministry, as we have said here
before, is a matter of spiritual helpfulness. Any
ministry which is not a matter of spiritual helpfulness
is not true ministry, and anybody who is spiritually
helpful is a minister of Christ. So we are all in the
ministry, in God’s plan. Now, since that is so, we
are all affected, we are all governed by this same law.
To be spiritually helpful is a matter of seeing. You know
that 2 Corinthians is the letter in the New Testament
which has most to do with ministry. "Seeing we have
this ministry" (4:1) - and what is this ministry?
Well, "God hath shined into our hearts" (4:6).
It is very familiar to us that Paul has at the back of
his mind as he writes this part of the letter, Moses, the
minister of God. That is the designation by which we know
Moses, as the servant of God, and Paul is referring to
Moses fulfilling his ministry, his service, reading the
law and having to put a veil upon his face because of the
glory, the people being unable to look upon him. And that
was a glory that was passing. Now, says Paul, in the
ministry committed to us God hath shined inside and we
have no need of a veil; in Christ the veil is taken away;
and what you are to see is Christ in us, and Christ is to
be ministered through us as He is seen, as we are the
vehicles of bringing Christ into view. That is spiritual
helpfulness, that is ministry, namely, bringing Christ
into view, and "we have this treasure in vessels of
fragile clay, that the exceeding greatness of the power
may be of God, and not from ourselves" (4:7).
"We are...": and then follows a whole list
of things which put us at a discount. But he is saying,
in effect, It is Christ! If we are put at a discount, if
we are persecuted, pursued, cast down, always bearing
about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that is
only God’s way of bringing Christ into view. If we
are pursued and persecuted and cast down and the grace of
the Lord Jesus is sufficient, and you see the grace of
the Lord Jesus being exhibited in that suffering and
trial, then you say, that is a wonderful Christ! You see
Christ, and by our sufferings Christ is ministered. That
is spiritual helpfulness.
Who has
helped you most? I know who has helped me most. It has
not been anyone in the pulpit. It was one who passed
through intense and terrible suffering for many years,
and in whom the grace of God was sufficient. I was able
to say, If I go through suffering like that, then mine
will be a Christianity worth having, mine will be a
Christ worth having. That helped me most, that is what I
want to see. Do not preach to me; live, and you help me
most. It is an inspiration, surely, or should be to us,
to see that it is in our trial and adversity that others
may see the Lord and be most helped. How we go through
trial is the thing that is going to help someone else
better than all that we can say to them. Oh, the Lord
cover us as we say a thing like that, for we know our
frailty, how we fail Him under trial. But that is what
Paul is saying here about ministry. "We have this
treasure in vessels of fragile clay... we are
persecuted, pursued, cast down, always bearing about in
the body the dying of the Lord Jesus." But, with
Paul, the end of all such things was, "they
glorified God in me" (Gal. 1:24). What do you want
more than that? That is ministry. If you and I could say
that at any time, well, we should not have lived in vain.
We should have been of some help if it could be said,
"They glorified God in me."
But it is
seeing; we, to be spiritually helpful, have to see, that
others may have the ground provided for seeing. I put it
that way; because we may see, and we may give out what we
see, we may be living epistles, but others may not be
seeing. But there is the ground for their seeing, and if
they are honest in heart and unprejudiced, really open to
the Lord, He will give them to see what it is the Lord
has revealed to us and in us, and is seeking to reveal of
Himself through us. He must have living epistles, men and
women in whom He can be read. That is ministry.
Well,
ministry to be given and to be received, is all a matter
of this Divine work of grace of opening eyes. I think we
can leave it there, and it all constitutes one great
appeal to our hearts to seek the Lord to have our eyes
opened. It is never too late to get spiritual sight,
however blind we may have been, and for however long, if
we really mean business with the Lord. But do not forget
that this is a matter of being honest with God. The Lord
Jesus said a wonderful thing to Nathanael. Nathanael was
perilously near that double blindness. At the moment when
he allowed himself to give expression to a popular
prejudice, he was very near the danger zone. He said,
"Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" That
is a popular prejudice. A popular prejudice has robbed
many a man and woman of knowing God’s fuller
thoughts. Prejudices may take many forms. Let us be
careful. But Nathanael was saved. The Lord Jesus said,
"Hereafter ye shall see the heaven opened, and the
angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of
man" (John 1:51). "Hereafter..." - He
meant, of course, in the day of the Spirit. "As by
the Lord the Spirit", Nathanael would see. Well, he
was in danger, but he escaped. If you are
in danger through your prejudice, beware; forsake your
prejudice, be open-hearted. Be an Israelite in whom there
is no Jacob, no guile, open-hearted to the Lord, and you
will see.