Twenty-Ninth Meeting
(February 27, 1964 A.M.)
Read: Galatians
We continue with our
consideration of this great fundamental question as to
the true nature of this dispensation. The question being:
Is Christianity a legal system or a spiritual movement
from heaven? We have seen that this question became a
very serious battleground right at the beginning. It was
on this question that Stephen was martyred; and his great
successor, the Apostle Paul, became the focal point of
this battle. So with the Letter to the Galatians before
us, we are seeking to see what the apostle had to say
about this. In as much as he was made the very center of
the controversy, we have to consider the apostle himself.
So far, we have looked at the source of his apostleship.
He said that it was not from men, nor from a man, but by
revelation of Jesus Christ - an apostle of Jesus Christ
and God the Father. Then we went on yesterday to consider
the great crisis behind his apostleship.
This morning we are
going to consider the constituting of his apostleship. We
turn then to the Letter to the Galatians. Chapter one,
and verse fifteen: "When it was the good
pleasure of God, Who separated me, even from my mother's
womb, and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son
in me, that I might preach Him among the nations" (ASV).
It was the good pleasure of God to reveal His Son in me. And
then the well known words in chapter two, and verse
twenty: "I have been crucified with
Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ
liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh
I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of
God."
Now may
I remind you that the thing of importance for us is that
this spiritual experience of the Apostle Paul contains
all the principles of this new dispensation. If we ask
the question, "What is true Christianity?" Then
the answer is found in the spiritual history of this man,
the dispensation in which we live is founded upon these
principles. So that which constitutes this dispensation
is that which constituted the apostleship of Paul. After
emphatically stating that he did not receive it from men,
not even from those who were apostles before him, he goes
right to the heart of this matter, and he says, "It
pleased God to reveal His Son in me." So this
dispensation is founded upon an inward revelation of
Jesus Christ. If you and I want to know what it is that
we are supposed to be in, it is that.
Our true
Christian life rests upon an inward revelation of God's
Son. The Apostle Paul had come to see the immense
significance of the Son of God. Here is a man who was
absolutely intoxicated with Jesus Christ. In everything
he saw Christ. And as we said yesterday, in this very
short letter of Galatians, the name "Jesus
Christ" occurs no fewer than forty-three times.
First,
"IT PLEASED GOD TO REVEAL HIS SON IN ME." And
then, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no
longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me." In
that Cross of Christ, one man, Saul of Tarsus, has gone
out. The Cross has dismissed one kind of man. And the
resurrection has brought in another kind of man; and that
other kind of man is Christ. So Christ takes the place of
Saul of Tarsus. This is foundational, the basis of this
whole dispensation. What an immense difference it would
make if we saw Christ as Paul saw Him; it is hard work
for our imagination to do that.
Paul had
come to see Who Jesus of Nazareth was. You remember that
on the Damascus road, when he said, "Who art
Thou, Lord?" Jesus answered, "I am Jesus
of Nazareth." He did not say,
"I am the eternal Son of God." He did not say,
"I am God Who became incarnate." He said,
"I AM JESUS OF NAZARETH." And Paul was on the
ground, he was helpless and blind. The brightness of THAT
GLORY had laid him to the earth, and the very first
sensation that this man had was, "This glory, this
power, Jesus of Nazareth? Jesus of Nazareth, all
this?" I say it is very difficult for us to
understand. You remember some of the things that Paul
wrote later about Christ? When he wrote his letter to the
Philippians, he spoke of Jesus as, "before times
eternal, existing as equal with God." He said,
"He was on equality with God." And then, when
he wrote his letter to the Colossians, he gave a
matchless picture of Christ. He says that, "He was
before all things, and all things were created through
Him, whether things in heaven, or things in earth,
whether principality, or power: all things had been
created by Him, and through Him, and in Him all things
consist. It was the pleasure of the Father that in Him
should all the fullness dwell." And that is Jesus of
Nazareth. You see, Paul had come to see the significance
of God's Son.
Now just
think of that again: Existing on equality with God; the
instrument and the heir of all creation by the will of
the Father; all things being put into Him by the
appointment of the Father; He had to have the preeminence
in all things, and on-and-on. This was the One Whom Paul,
or Saul of Tarsus, and his friends and his nation
crucified. Persecuting and crucifying God manifest in the
flesh. Persecuting and crucifying the One Who created all
things. See how vast this One is! Now here is a little
man who is crucifying Him! Can you enter into that? Can
you realize at all WHAT this man felt when he saw
Who Jesus of Nazareth was? No wonder Paul wanted to be
liberated from a system that could do that. Paul's whole
being cried out, 'Let me be emancipated from a thing that
can do that. Let me escape from a system that can do
that.' No wonder this word "liberty" was such a
big word with Paul. And no wonder Paul was so angry about
this system. In this letter he says, "If we, or an
angel from heaven, preach any other Gospel than that
which we preached, let him be anathema." And he said
it again. He said, "I repeat that." How angry
he was! The Gospel was the Gospel of God concerning His
Son. Nowhere in all his writings, with all that he had to
meet, is Paul found to be so angry as in this letter. He
seems to throw all discretion to the winds. He completely
discards all compromise. And he says, 'There can be no
compromise with a system which can have this effect.'
Legalism
always crucifies Christ afresh BECAUSE legalism
cuts out the greatest word in Christianity. The word over
the door into true Christianity is the word:"GRACE."
Legalism always wipes out "Grace," and
puts in its place "LAW."
Grace is
the chief word in the vocabulary of the Christian. Do you
notice that where legalism reaches its fullest
expression, it always puts the crucifix in the place of
the empty tomb? The badge of the Christian is the empty
tomb. That is 'Life from the dead.' The badge of legalism
is a crucifix, 'a dead Christ.' Legalism always brings
death, and the chief thing about Christ is resurrection.
It is Life from the dead. This was something that Paul
came to see when it pleased God to reveal His Son in him.
And he said, let me get out of all this legalistic
system. Jesus of Nazareth Whom we crucified is alive. He
has been revealed alive in my heart.
The only
true emancipation from all forms of legalism is to see
Christ. Not all the forces in this world would have
emancipated Saul of Tarsus from Judaism. The only thing
that did that was seeing Jesus. And so, I repeat, the
only thing that will emancipate us from all forms of dead
legalism is to really see the Lord Jesus. And that
would do it. It does not matter what you are bound by - a
dead traditional Christianity, or any other kind of
bondage. If you truly see the significance of the Lord
Jesus, you will be emancipated. We must not go about
telling people that they must come out of this and that.
Whatever it may be, it is not our business to tell them
they have got to come out of that and come into this. Let
me emphasize that, that is not our business. If you do
that sort of thing, you will only make matters very much
worse. A great deal of mess and confusion always follows
that sort of thing. Anyone who says, Now you must leave
that and you must come into this is going to make trouble
- trouble that will not glorify the Lord Jesus.
The
thing that will do it for anyone is to really see Jesus.
It is not our business to preach the church in the first
place. You hear what I have said? It is not our business
to go about the world preaching the church. Whether it be
the Church universal or the church local. We are NOT
commissioned to go and preach that. We shall never know
what the Church is until we have seen Jesus, because
Jesus is the Church in corporate expression, or to put it
round the other way, the Church is the corporate
expression of Jesus. We can never understand what the
Church is until we understand Who Jesus is. Otherwise,
the Church for us will be something so small, so limited,
so exclusive. Jesus is not like that. How great He is!
How wonderful He is! Paul says: "The Church is
the fullness of Him That filleth all in all."
Now the
Apostle Paul was the greatest teacher of the New
Testament time on the matter of the Church. But his
knowledge of the Church was the result of his seeing
God's Son. You see the simple beginning of it. Jesus
said, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?"
Saul might have said, "I am not persecuting you,
Lord, I am persecuting these Christians." If he had
said that, Jesus would have answered, "It is the
same thing. I and these Christians are one body. You
cannot touch a member of My body without touching
Me." How true that is in the physical body. You take
off your shoes, and you walk across the floor, and you
come across a pin, and it pricks your little toe, the
farthest, smallest extremity of your whole body. And you
quickly lift up your foot. It hurts you. How do you know
it hurts you? Because that farthest extremity of your
body has a relationship with your head. When you say that
has hurt me, you are saying it with your head. You see
the point, you cannot touch the remotest part in the
human body without touching the head. The whole nervous
system of the body is centered in the head. So Jesus
would have said, "It is the same thing. Touch one
simple child of Mine and you touch Me." I think Saul
of Tarsus never got a bigger surprise than he did when
Jesus said that. When it was shown to him that to touch
any of the simple Christians on the earth was to touch
the glorified Son of God, that was the beginning of his
understanding of the Church.
There is
nothing legal about that; that is very spiritual. If we
really see the Lord Jesus, we shall be emancipated. Some
of us have had that experience. We were in legal systems;
our horizon was that system. Then the day came when the
Lord opened our eyes to really see the significance of
Christ. And that whole system fell away as being all
nonsense. No, it is not our business to say, 'Come out of
this and that, and come into this other.' The word
"must" or "thou shall" does not
belong to this realm. That belongs to the old legal
realm. The "must" becomes a spiritual thing,
not a legal thing. We could say of Paul, there was a
mighty "must" in his spirit. I have seen the
Lord, and I am seeing more and more of what the Lord is,
and this is creating in me this great imperative.
"This one thing I do, leaving the things which are
behind, I press on toward the mark of the prize of the
." So we do not say, 'Change your
system.' But we do say, 'Ask the Lord to reveal His Son
in you.' Then the great work of emancipation will begin.
I wonder
if you have noted that whenever God made a new move, He
always did it on the basis of His Son. Whether that move
was a new phase entirely, or the recovering of something
that was lost, He always put His Son in the front. The
beginning of the Bible is God creating a new world. And
He does it all in and through and by His Son. His Son is
the Agent, the Instrument and the Pattern of the
creation. Later on, when God was making another new move
with Abraham, He constituted the life of Abraham upon the
basis of His Son. Step by step He brought Abraham right
up to the climax. And what was the climax? It was this,
"Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest,
and offer him a sacrifice." That was the climax of
Abraham's life. All his life was gathered into that. In
that step, Abraham entered right into the heart of God. "For
God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten
Son." The new move of God with Abraham was on
the basis of God's Son.
The next
great move of God was with Israel, the nation. The nation
Israel is in bondage in Egypt. The emancipation of that
nation from that bondage was on the basis of that
Passover, the blood and the flesh of the Passover Lamb.
God had put His Son right at the beginning of the
national life. Having gotten them out of bondage on the
basis of His Son, He constituted them in the wilderness
on the basis of His Son. The tabernacle in the wilderness
was a comprehensive and detailed representation of God's
Son. Many years later, when that nation had departed from
the Lord, and when every appeal to them had failed, God
raised up the prophets. Now some prophets prophesied
toward the captivity; and some prophesied as to that
which looked beyond the captivity. But both of these sets
of prophets always kept the Lord Jesus in view. Isaiah
fifty-three is the great picture of the suffering Son and
Servant of the Lord; and that looked beyond the
captivity. You see, the history of these people was based
upon the presentation of God's Son.
The next
great movement of God in this world is the New Testament.
It begins with the incarnation of the Son of God. It goes
on to the resurrection of the Son of God. And it goes on
to show that the full meaning of the Son of God is to be
manifested through the Church. It is always God's Son in
view. Every new movement of God is taken by a fresh
presentation of Christ. In the first three chapters of
the Book of the Revelation, Christ is seeking to bring
back the churches to their former spiritual position.
This is a move to try and recover what has been lost. And
therefore you have in the first chapter that matchless
presentation of Christ. What a wonderful description of
Christ that is! Just read it again, every detail in that
description is of some aspect to Christ. It is a
symbolic, comprehensive presentation of the meaning of
Christ. I think it is perfectly evident to us all, that
from the Book of Genesis in the creation, to the Book of
the Revelation at the end, God always moves on the ground
of His Son.
So we
come back to Paul, this is a new and mighty movement of
God. It is the emancipation of a people from all the
death of legalism. The people of Christ's day were as
much in bondage to legalism as Israel was in bondage in
Egypt. And the same God Who said to Moses, "I have
seen the affliction of My people, and have heard their
cry by reason of their taskmasters; and I am come down to
deliver them. Come now therefore, and I will send
you." The same God saw the bondage of the people to
that legalistic system, laboring and heavy laden under
the yoke of legalism. The same God said, "I am come
down to deliver them." And as it were, He turned to
Paul and said, "Come, and I will send you." A
chosen vessel for the liberation of His people.
So great
is this matter with God. Well, all these are gathered
into these words, "It pleased God to reveal His Son
in me." "I have been crucified with
Christ" to the whole system of legalism. 'It is true
that I am alive, and yet it is not I, but Christ Who
liveth in me.' This is one more chapter on this very
great question, 'What is Christianity?' Is it a legal
system imposed upon God's people? Or is it a great
liberating spiritual movement from heaven? The answer is
found in this: "Have we really seen the Lord? Have
we really seen the significance of Christ?" Only if
we have, shall we be a free people. We will leave it
there for this morning. If the Lord wills, tomorrow
morning we shall deal with what I feel to be one of the
most important aspects of this whole matter. It will be
the real fundamental difference between the old and the
new dispensation. So I suggest that you try to make time
to read this letter again before tomorrow.