It is most important that we should be
alive to the fact that the Christian life is governed by
purpose. The thought of 'purpose', indeed that very word
itself, is much in view in the New Testament. Most of us
are familiar with one statement relating thereto:
"To them that love God all things work together for
good, even to them that are called according to his
purpose" (Rom. 8:28). Unfortunately it is usually
cut in half and only part of the first half taken:
"all things work together for good". We might
go on: "to them that love God"; but that is not
the whole statement, which adds: "to them that are
the called according to his purpose". Then we have
another word, not so generally known: "Foreordained
according to the purpose of him who worketh all things
after the counsel of his will" (Eph. 1:11). Again:
"according to the eternal purpose which he purposed
in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Eph. 3:11). Yet once
more: "according to his own purpose and grace"
(2 Tim. 1:9). These are sufficient at least to indicate
that 'purpose' is a governing idea in the Christian life:
that we are not saved just to be saved, we do not become
Christians just to be Christians. That is only the
beginning of something; it is with a view to something
very much more in the thought and intention of God.
WHAT THE PURPOSE IS
You are
asking, 'Well, what is the purpose?' There are many
things said about it in the Scriptures, which we cannot
stay to cite just now. Without going into great detail,
when all things said about it are gathered together,
there is one thing which includes and covers them all, of
which they are all just parts. The Divine purpose is
all-inclusively set forth in a clause in one of Paul's
letters: "till we all attain... unto the... fullness
of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). We are going to spend a
little time in looking into that, but you will instantly
recognise that that makes Christ very great. Surely, if
all the Christians that ever have been and are and will
yet be are called with the purpose of attaining unto the
fullness of Christ - and the number is just countless in
all the centuries, in all the generations since the first
Christian - if all this vast, uncountable number are
called with that same calling, the fullness of Christ,
then Christ must be very great indeed.
Yes, and
the Christian life must therefore be something very
great. If it takes its character, its meaning, and its
dimensions from Christ, then the Christian life
corresponding to Christ must be a very great thing. It
must necessarily be something progressive. No Christian
at any time in their experience or history here on this
earth can ever say that they have reached that end. It
means that the Christian life is one of progress and
development. It is all moving toward that ultimate
fullness. So we find in the New Testament that the
Christian life is set forth in three distinct phases: we ARE
Christians, we are BECOMING Christians, and we
are GOING TO BE Christians. These three phases are
indicated in the original language of the New Testament
by three different tenses of the verb.
I
believe it was Bishop Handley Moule who was travelling on
one occasion, and a Salvation Army lassie entered the
same compartment as he. When they had got settled and on
the way - he was, I believe, actually a Dean at the time,
but of course wearing his canonicals - she interrogated
him: 'Sir, are you saved?' Whereupon the kindly old
scholar looked at her and said, 'Do you mean...' - and
then he quoted the three Greek words. He quoted the word
meaning 'I was saved', and then the word meaning 'I am
being saved', and then the third word which means 'I
shall be saved'. Of course, she was completely bowled
over! It was perhaps a bit hard on her, poor lass: of
course she did not know what to say; but it led to a very
profitable talk about the beginning, the growth and the
end of the Christian life.
Well,
there it is in the New Testament. We were saved, we are
being saved, and we are going to be saved. We were
accepted in Christ, we are growing in Christ, we are to
be perfected in Christ. Christ, then, is spread over the
whole life of the Christian, from its beginning, through
its continuation, to its consummation. That is a
statement which needs no labouring.
THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST
But what
does that mean? What is the "fullness of
Christ"? Well, what is the beginning - the simple,
elementary nature of Christ, into which we come at the
beginning? When we come into Christ, we say we have come
into LIFE, we have found LIFE in Christ.
The great secret of the first experience is that we have
received "the gift of God", which is
"eternal life". And, what is more, we know it.
There is no doubt about it - we KNOW that life has
been given to us.
Then at
the beginning we speak of having received our sight, or
of having come into the LIGHT. Although we may not
be able to define or explain it, everything has become
illumined to us, has become altogether new as another
world. We know our eyes have been opened. We have come to
see; light has broken upon us. We are able to say:
"Whereas I was blind, now I see." 'I was in the
dark - now it is all light.' Put it how you will, the
beginning of the Christian life is just that.
Life,
light - and then LIBERTY. One of the great things
of the beginning of the Christian life is a wonderful
sense of release, of emancipation, of having been set
free. It would need a chapter all to itself, this liberty
into which Christ brings us, this wonderful setting free.
It is a very great reality.
Lastly,
when we come into Christ, we come into LOVE, Divine
love, and Divine love comes into our hearts.
These
are four of the things into which, in an elementary form,
we come, and which come into us, right at the beginning.
Of course, there is much more that could be said, and
there are many other things, but that is enough to
provide for the answer to our enquiry. Let us run over
them once again.
First of
all, LIFE - a new life and a different
life. I do not mean now the way we live - that follows,
of course - but a new dynamic power in us, which is
Divine life. It is a new life, another one altogether,
and that life has in it another nature. It belongs to
another realm, and has the nature of that other realm. It
is the realm of God Himself. I do not mean, of course,
that we are now at this point altogether other creatures;
but this is the beginning. We are conscious that there is
a new nature at work within us, working for certain
things and against certain other things - which is
something that was never true of us before.
Yes, we
have a new and different life - an ENERGY. Life is
an energy, is it not? See what life will do. Life really
demands difficulty to prove its energy. I remember, some
years ago, going down into Cornwall and staying on a
farm. This farm had fields on a slope, and one of the
fields was just strewn all over with large, white stones.
It was the time of the year when seed was in, and nothing
was appearing. I said to the farmer, 'Surely you will
never get a crop of wheat in that field with all those
stones!' 'Don't you make any mistake', he replied. 'I
thought that when I first came to this farm, so I cleared
them off, and got a very poor crop. So I put them back
again, and I got a very much better crop with the stones
- much stronger and healthier than I had before.' Life,
you see, proves itself by difficulties and opposition.
Here is a new life-force, an energy of a different kind,
of another kingdom, that is given to us in our new birth.
It is different.
LIGHT
- a new intelligence, a new understanding, a
new clearness about things. Everybody who has had a
genuine Christian experience knows that. They see what
they could never see before. Up till then, they may have
been striving and struggling to see. But now they see,
and it is another world that is open before them, just as
a new world is given to any person who has been born
blind and at some time receives their sight. They are
given a world. They have heard about it, talked about it,
had it explained to them, but they have never before been
able to say, 'Now I see!'
LIBERTY
- release - and with the release enlargement. What a
large thing the Christian life is! There is something
wrong with a Christian life that is small, mean, limited,
petty and narrow. The Christian life is a large thing; it
is a "land of far distances". With every
enlargement, there comes a new inward sense of prospect.
Things are ever and ever beyond. The further you go in
the Christian life, the more conscious you are of how
much more there is. You never exhaust this wonderful
sense of prospect and future, of a vast, wide-open door.
LOVE
- a new motive power in the life, in the heart. The
hallmark of a true Christian life at its very beginning
is love. It shows itself in an instantaneous desire to
let someone else know all about it, to share the good
things into which we have come. It is a great heart
overflow to all the world. And it is in its character a
selfless love. Self goes out. You do anything, you make
any sacrifice, you never consider yourself; this
"love of Christ constraineth", in a great care
for the things of others, a deep, warm devotion to their
interests. It is a new love. We cannot enlarge upon each
of these - least of all, perhaps, upon this wonderful
love of God which is shed abroad in our hearts - but you
see that these four things alone are there, in an
elementary form, right at the beginning.
CHRIST FILLING ALL THINGS
What,
then, is the fullness of Christ? It is simply the
continuous enlargement and ultimate finality of these
very things. The continuous growth of life - the
freshness, the dynamic force of God within the life -
this motive power - this Divine nature, which is in His
life - should never, never come to a standstill. It is
intended, according to the eternal purpose, to grow and
grow and grow more and more. More life! Let us take this
earnestly to heart. To receive eternal life may be a gift
once and for all, but if you are at the beginning you
have yet to discover how wonderfully full that life is,
and how that life can become more and more abundant as
you go on. The longer we as Christians live, the more
should we be characterized by this mighty life of Christ
- "the power of his resurrection", it is
called. And the fullness of Christ is the progressive
enlargement and development and sum of those very things
which came to us, and into which we came, at the
beginning; and if we attain unto fullness - which we
shall never do here in this life; but we shall ultimately
move right into the fullness - it will be the
universality of all those things.
Now you
can see how vast Christ is, and how vast the Christian
life must be. The Scripture speaks of Christ 'filling all
things' - "that he might fill all things" (Eph.
4:10). How is Christ going to 'fill all things'? It just
means that, when that comes about, all things - and it is
a vast, an infinite 'all' - will be full of His life,
full of His light, full of His liberty, full of His love,
and there will be nothing else. All that Christ is will
be expressed in the whole creation. That is the purpose
of the Christian life, and we have failed of the purpose
if that is not true, in a progressive way, now. If it is
not true that those things are increasing in us, we have
missed the very object of the Christian life. Yes, if
there is not more love, and still more love, and yet
again more love and life, and light, and liberty - the
very purpose of the Christian life has been missed.
ALL THINGS FILLED INTO CHRIST
Christ
filling all things - and all things filled into Christ.
Perhaps one of the best illustrations of this is provided
by Solomon; indeed, he is in the Old Testament for that
very purpose. Everybody knows about king Solomon and his
great wisdom. 'The wisdom of Solomon' is the very synonym
for wisdom. If anybody shows particular wisdom or acumen,
we often dub them 'a little Solomon'.
I saw
recently in the paper the following story. A class of
boys was being told about the incident of the execution
of John the Baptist. You remember that Salome danced
before Herod, and he was so pleased that he said, 'What
would you like? What is your request? I will give it to
you, even to the half of my kingdom.' She went away, and
consulted her evil mother, who hated John the Baptist
because of what he had said about her evil ways; and the
mother counselled the daughter to ask for the head of
John the Baptist. When she did so, Herod was very, very
distressed, and looked for a way out; but he found none,
and because of the oath that he had made, he commanded
that the head of John the Baptist should be brought. Here
the teacher turned to the class, and said, 'Now, what
would you have done if you had been Herod?' And one
bright boy chirped up, 'I would have said to the woman,
"That belongs to the half of the kingdom that I did
not promise"!' And so in the paper the story was
headed: 'A Young Solomon'.
That is
just by the way. But Solomon is the synonym for vast
wisdom. Also of vast wealth: we know of the riches of
Solomon. Vast power: for his kingdom reached beyond all
the kingdoms that had ever been in Israel. And vast
glory: even the Lord Jesus referred to that - it was
proverbial. He said: "Even Solomon in all his
glory..." And we read that, when the queen of Sheba
came to prove for herself all this, her verdict was: 'The
half was never told me! I had heard fabulous stories, but
the half was never told!' And Solomon's people were in it
- they were in the good of that; and in certain senses it
was in them too. Solomon would not have arrogated all
this to himself, but it would be seen in the lives and
homes of the people. They were in the greatness of
Solomon, but the greatness of Solomon was in them also.
Now
here, in the New Testament, Jesus says: "...a
greater than Solomon is here" (Matt. 12:42). Christ
infinitely transcends Solomon, and therefore the people
of Christ are in the same measure greater than
Solomon's people. His fullness is to be their
inheritance: they are to be in it - it is to be in them.
The purpose of God is that. What God has purposed is to
have a people eventually in great prosperity, great
wealth, great spiritual riches, great spiritual glory. We
are called, says the Word of God, unto His eternal glory
(1 Pet. 5:10). That, briefly and very simply, is the
purpose.
THE PRINCIPLES GOVERNING THE
CHRISTIAN LIFE
Now,
there are principles governing the Christian life. It is
exceedingly important that we should recognise this: for,
apart from the principles, there can be no realising of
the purpose. The principles are basic and governmental to
the purpose. We shall never move on in the purpose,
progressively, or attain to it finally, except by way of
the Divine principles. So, if the purpose lays hold of
our hearts, and we respond and say, 'Yes, it is a
wonderful thing to be called according to that purpose,
and I want to attain to that', then it is necessary to
know some of the principles which govern it - principles
which are indispensable to the development and
realisation of the purpose.
(a) THE CROSS
The
first basic principle of the purpose is the Cross - the
Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Cross has two sides,
or operates in two ways. First, outwardly, as to what it
means FOR us, and then inwardly, as what it
means IN us. These two sides of the Cross occupy
a vast amount of the teaching of the New Testament.
The
Cross is a work which, on one side, is finished. It is a
work fully and finally done: that is, as to our being
allowed to come to God, having access - that is the New
Testament word - access to God, having union with God and
having fellowship with God. All the work for that has
been fully finished. We are 'made nigh through the Blood
of His Cross'. We have been made one with Him by the
Cross. The Cross on that side, for our approach to God,
our access to God, our union with God, is a fully
accomplished work, and there is nothing more to be done
apart from our accepting of it by faith. But there is
also the other side to the Cross - what it is to mean IN
us. The Cross is to be an abiding power in our
lives. It is a principle to be continuously at work in
us. On the one side, then, there is what the Cross meant
in itself, then and there. On the other side, there is
what the Cross requires of us.
What did
it mean? Well, all-inclusively and comprehensively, the
Cross meant the removal from God's sight of one kind of
man. Jesus Christ at one point assumed the capacity of
representative of all men, as in God's sight: that is, in
sin, under judgment. "Him", says the Scripture,
"who knew no sin he made to be sin on our
behalf" (2 Cor. 5:21). Again, He was made a curse in
our place (Gal. 3:13). That is where we were, where all
men were - SIN. We were not only doing sins - we
were SIN-FULL in God's sight, under judgment,
under condemnation, in rejection. And Jesus at that given
point took that place - your place, my place, the place
of every man as in God's sight under that rejection - and
entered into an experience of all the conscious meaning
of that rejection such as you and I have never known, and
need never know. To have the slightest taste, the
slightest sense, of having been rejected of God is enough
to disintegrate the very soul. If you and I should have
any consciousness of being forsaken by God, it would be
devastating to our moral being, utterly unbearable. Jesus
took the sum of that in full consciousness. It
disintegrated Him - His very heart ruptured under it and
broke - because He knew and endured in that one awful
eternal moment the reality of being forsaken of God, on
our behalf. 'My God, Thou hast forsaken Me!' That was
done for you and for me. We never need awake in eternity
to that, if we will accept what He has done for us.
You see,
what He had voluntarily accepted was the setting aside of
a particular kind of man. In that awful hour He had
voluntarily allowed Himself to take the place of that
kind of man. It was God saying, 'I close the door forever
to that kind of being.' The Cross means that in Christ's
death you and I, as to what we are naturally - men and
women by nature - have been set aside. God has in Christ
disposed of and removed a kind of being, a degenerate
species of creation. He has put it out of the way. In the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus that is all done: THAT man
has gone. It is not THAT man that is raised from
the dead: it is a new man - another. Christ has put off
the 'old' man, and now assumes the place of a 'new
creation' man.
And
there the Heaven is opened. God accepts that Man, and He
is installed and instated forever before God, as the type
of man that God has ever had in mind. The Cross, on the
one side, sets aside a kind of man, and, on the other
side, installs and instates another kind of man.
"Wherefore", says the Apostle, "if any man
is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old things are
passed away; behold, they are become new" (2 Cor.
5:17). The Christian life is just that, in principle. The
Cross has brought about this - that there is a difference
between where we were and how we were and what we were
before, in God's sight, and how it is now. In Christ,
there is a different man; by faith in Christ there has
come about a different creation. In the resurrection of
Christ, the old kind of man has been replaced by an
altogether new one. Now there arises the necessity for
our first of all accepting this position. We shall never
get anywhere in Christ, anywhere on the way to the realm
of fullness, until we have accepted that position into
which God has put us in the death of Christ. In effect He
says to us, 'Look here: so far as I am concerned, in
yourself you are a dead man, a dead woman. I want you to
recognise that, when My Son died, you died in Him, and
when He rose, you rose in Him too, and there is now a new
creation. Until you do that, you will never get anywhere
at all. When you do that, then you are in the position to
take your place in the reality of Christ risen.' Sooner
or later our growth spiritually will come up against that
principle in the form of suffering and discipline.
You see,
first of all it is a matter of A POSITION TO BE TAKEN,
deliberately taken by faith. This is something that
needs constantly to be underlined. It is the basic
principle of the Christian life, that we have got to
consent to God's verdict upon us as we are by nature. We
are not to dissect ourselves and say, 'This is good and
this is bad, and this is not so good and this is not so
bad.' God says: 'ALL of you has gone in My Son.
I do not make distinctions between what you call good and
what you call bad. I regard you as altogether under
condemnation.' "There is none righteous, no, not
one" (Rom. 3:10). "In me, that is, in my flesh,
dwelleth no good thing" (Rom. 7:18).
Yes,
that is basic, and it is vital that we should get hold of
this fundamental principle of the Christian life. Many
Christians do not make any progress at all, development
and growth is stayed and arrested, because they have not
got that basic matter settled. They are still trying to
make something of the person, the self, the nature, that
God says He will never entertain at all. They are still
thinking that they can be something in themselves, and
trying to be something in themselves. They have never
accepted this utter, ultimate position. God says, 'I have
put you in a grave with My Son, and that was the end of
that. Now everything has got to be of another kind, from
another source altogether. It must all come from Christ
risen, and not from you at all.'
That is
the key to fullness. It opens up the way, throws wide
open the doors. When you get that really settled and by
faith take that position, there is no limit to what can
be done in the Christian life. But then, when once the
position, the utter position, has been taken and
accepted, acknowledged, received by faith, then the other
side begins - the application of the principle. We accept
that ultimate position as a basis and recognise it as
God's own verdict, and then the principle of the Cross
begins to work in us. Yes, the tenses again, that we had
earlier, are: firstly PAST - we were crucified
with Christ (Rom. 6:6; Gal. 2:20). Then PRESENT -
Paul says: "Always bearing about in the body
the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be
manifested in our body" (2 Cor. 4:10); and again:
"I die daily" (1 Cor. 15:31). And lastly FUTURE
- his aspiration was: "that I may know him, and the
power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his
sufferings, being made conformable to his death"
(Phil. 3:10).
Here is
the principle at work. It was accepted in a definite act,
but now it is being applied as an active thing in the
life, on the one side bringing to an actual reality our
death with Christ, and correspondingly, on the other
side, bringing into our experience our life-union with
Christ. As the death works, so the life works. This is
just the meaning of the Christian life. What is God doing
with us? Why all this trouble, all this difficulty, all
this discipline - this chastening, this hard way, this
difficult school? Why all this? 'I thought the Christian
life was going to be one continuous song and picnic and
joy-ride!' You find that it is not. It does not mean that
joy disappears, but it does mean that we come into a lot
of difficulties and into what, to that 'old man' of ours,
is a very difficult way. What is the meaning?
Ah, God
is applying the principle - getting the old man out of
the way and making way for the new. Is it not true of a
Christian, a true Christian, as differing from any other
person, that suffering produces beauty, suffering
produces the fruit, the nature, of Christ; suffering just
brings out what Christ is? In others, so often, suffering
brings out bitterness, resentment. Some of the most
difficult people that I have ever met and tried to help
have been people who, because of some great adversity in
their lives, have turned against God, become bitter,
sour. Suffering has done that. But that is not what
happens to a Christian. The marvel of the Christian, the
miracle of the Christian life, is just this, that you can
find some dear children of God, in lifelong suffering and
agony, either of body or of circumstances, who are just
wonderfully radiant. You go in where they are, and it is
the peace of God. The hymns they sing are hymns about the
love of God. Such are their favourite hymns, and yet, if
they sang at all, you would think, naturally speaking,
it would not be about that. I have clearly in mind
certain outstanding instances of such people, in my own
experience.
What is
it all for? Why, the principle of the Cross is at work,
clearing the ground for Christ, for this new creation
life, making way for the fullness of Christ. That is the
first principle.
(b) RELATEDNESS
The
second principle can only be mentioned briefly before we
close. This is a very important principle indeed. It is
that of relatedness. You see, no individual Christian,
and no number of Christians just as separate isolated
individuals, can come to the fullness of Christ. Indeed,
if you think about it, it goes without saying. If
Christ is as big as we have said, how can any one
individual come to that? It is nonsense to suggest it. It
would be arrogance to think it. It will require a vast,
vast multitude to come to that; but they will never come
to it as a multitude or congregation of INDIVIDUALS.
You see,
the great conception that is given to us in the New
Testament is of the aggregate of Christians as the Body
of Christ. You have only to think for a moment about your
body, and you know quite well that no one member of your
body will grow if detached from the others. It requires
not only all the other members, but all the members
united, to make one body. There can be no development,
either of any member or members, or of the body as a
whole, without articulation. I believe that one of the
first things that a student of medicine has to face is a
box of bones - a box of bones is handed to him. It is all
the bones of all the members of a human body. 'Now then,
put those bones together and make up a skeleton!' That is
the first lesson. And the very first lesson of spiritual
fullness and growth is the articulation of Christians,
the recognition of the fact that we belong to one
another.
The
second lesson is that we cannot get on without one
another. Our spiritual life depends upon our relatedness
with one another, and the maintenance of that adjustment
one to another is the secret of spiritual growth. You
will find that if Satan can carry out his master-stroke
of separating Christians, he has effected their spiritual
arrest. It is always like that. That is why he is after
it. Divisions are the masterpiece of the Devil, who is
set against God's ultimate purpose - the fullness of
Christ. If we would only look at our divisions - not only
the larger ones, but the little ones, between us and
somebody else - in the light of how it first of all
affects our or their spiritual growth, and then relates
to the larger interests of Christ's increase, we should
have a motive for getting rid of those divisions, healing
those quarrels, and adjusting our relationships.
Relatedness is vital to growth. It is first of all
articulation, member to member, and then it is mutuality
of life, dependence and interdependence, the recognition
of the fact that we must have one another, that our very
spiritual life depends upon it. Fellowship is essential,
is indispensable. It is a principle of growth. You will
be greater or smaller in your measure of Christ according
to your recognition and observance of that principle.
But,
mark you, it is not artificial, it is not institutional,
it is not something that we organize: it is ORGANIC
- it is by life and by love. It is not from the outside,
by our arranging it, deciding to have it and fixing it
up; it comes from the inside - it comes from Christ
within. Paul put his finger upon that very thing in the
church in Corinth, when he found rival circles there. One
circle centred in himself, saying, 'We are of Paul'.
Another circle centred in Apollos - 'We are of Apollos.'
Another circle centred in Peter - 'We are of Peter'; and
so on. His appeal to them was this: "Is Christ
divided?" (1 Cor. 1:13). Of course, the answer is,
'No, you cannot divide Christ.' 'Then if Christ is in you
and governs, this is all a contradiction to Christ, this
is all not Christ!'
No
wonder, then, that we find a poor, mean, miserable
measure of spiritual life at Corinth at that time. Thank
God, we have another side to the story later on. They
evidently got over it, on the basis, the principle, of
the Cross. Paul's second letter to them gives a very
different picture of the Corinthian church. But Christ
cannot be divided, and all divisions, from individual
differences between two or more Christians, right up to
the great divisions between major Christian groups, are a
contradiction of Christ, and no wonder there is spiritual
poverty, weakness, ineffectiveness, and lack of
registration and impact upon this world. The Devil has
triumphed there. We must take note of that. It is a great
battle is this matter of fellowship, for the very reason
that all the evil forces are set against it. Paul says
that this is a matter about which we have to be very
diligent: "giving diligence to keep the unity of the
Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. 4:3).
(c) PURITY OF HEART
I close
by just mentioning a third principle, without enlarging
upon it. It is the principle of purity of heart. You and
I will not grow at all with the increase of Christ,
toward the fullness of Christ, unless we maintain a very
pure spirit. By that I mean an open heart: one that is
free from prejudice, free from suspicion; a readiness to
receive, an ability to adjust; no final closure, even
though we may have been brought up in a certain way. If
the Lord has 'more light and truth to break forth from
His Word', we are open to it; we have not come to a final
position that we know it all, we have got it all, we are
in it all. A pure spirit means an open heart, a ready
spontaneity of response to every bit of light that God
gives; obedience instant, without argument. Upon this
hangs very much more than we may imagine.