"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: The eyes of
your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his
calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and
what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according
to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised
him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places."
(Eph. 1:17-20).
From time to time, right through the ages,
those who have stood in quite a definite relationship to the things of God have
either been seduced, or have drifted, or have for some reason come to fixed and
systematized positions as to the ways, works, and purposes of God, which fixed
ideas have come to limit Him, bind them, and result in going round in a circle
instead of on a direct course of ever-enlarging and clarifying spiritual fulness
and newness.
This propensity for fixedness and finality in
conceptions has threatened the people of God many times with a fatal impasse.
Indeed, Israel's captivity and eventual disintegration among the nations, with
all the agony of centuries, very largely rests upon their fixed idea of being so
right as God's elect. This same peril threatened to frustrate the real spiritual
way and purpose of God with Christ's own disciples. Because of Jewish ideas
interpreted by their natural minds, they had prejudices and preconceptions which
menaced their spiritual lives and constantly came into conflict with Christ's
mind and way. Paul's life and ministry was continually opposed by this element,
and he himself in his pre-conversion days, is a supreme example of its danger.
So it has been through the ages since, and is
one of the greatest hindrances to the quicker realisation of the thought and
purpose of the Lord in our own times. The fact is that God must not move or do
anything which does not conform to the accepted and recognised order of
traditional evangelical Christianity. Anything that is outside of a prescribed
circle of what has been done and how it has been done for generations is suspect
and boycotted. The official bodies of organised evangelical Christianity are the
final court of appeal. One of the strong factors in the ministry that this paper
has sought to fulfil through these many years has been that, while there are
those foundational facts which are in their essence unalterable and unchanging,
there is always, in everything that comes from God, a wealth and fulness of
meaning and value which is commensurate with its infinite Source and
Fountainhead, and that the Spirit of Truth can continually make us know that
God's meaning infinitely transcends our apprehension. We must therefore never
box the compass of truth or interpretation, and fix our methods and framework of
doctrine or work in a way that makes it impossible for the Lord to show us
that, although a certain way of outworking was all right for the time being, it
was only relatively so, and fuller light means further adjustments. All this,
not because the Lord is developing or changing, but because we can only
move and change by life, organically, as we grow in understanding. That this is
so is proved by much Scripture, and Ephesians 1:17-20 is the great stand-by in
this matter; a word written to believers of no immature degree.
We venture to say that a time has begun when
the old and fixed positions of traditional Christianity are losing their hold
on—not only the Christian public in general—but many sincere seekers for
reality, and that great numbers of young people are looking for something not to
be found in many of the churches, and what they are looking for is the real and
true life of God.
The question which confronts us all is this;
can the Lord lead us on into His fulness in Christ without continually bumping
up against something in our own carry-over of—not fixed truth, but—our fixed
limit of its meaning; or something in our fixedness of position in any direction
or connection? Steadfastness, unmovableness, faithfulness, etc. are to be to the
Lord, and to the foundation realities of the faith, and also in the purpose for
which and to which He has called us in life and service; but adjustableness is
an essential to growth and increase in light and fulness. At the same time, we
cannot change and move on only as there is a basic work of the Cross by which
the strength of nature—even as it impinges upon Divine things—is set aside. The
Lord find us such as have only one object, and that truly at any cost, "That I
may know Him".
First published in an Editor's Letter in "A Witness and A Testimony"
magazine, Nov-Dec 1945 Vol. 23-6