"God... hath at
the end of these days spoken unto us in His son, Whom He
appointed Heir of all things" (Heb. 1:1-2).
"...the kingdom
of His Son... Who is the image of the invisible God,
the Firstborn of all creation; for in Him were all things
created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things
visible and things invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or principalities or powers; all things have
been created through Him, and unto Him; and He is before
all things, and in Him all things consist" (Col. 1:13-17).
"...the glory of
Christ... we preach... Christ Jesus as Lord" (2 Cor.
4:4-5).
"In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God... All things were made through Him; and without
Him was not anything made that hath been made. In Him was
life; and the life was the light of men" (John 1:1, 3-4).
"For the Father
loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things that Himself
doeth: and greater works than these will He show Him,
that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth the dead
and giveth them life, even so the Son also giveth life to
whom He will... For as the Father hath life in
Himself, even so gave He to the Son also to have life in
Himself: and He gave Him authority to execute judgment,
because He is a Son of man" (John 5:20-21, 26-27).
"...the glory
which I had with Thee before the world was" (John 17:5).
There are three main
directions in which spiritual sight is necessary;
firstly, with regard to the place and significance of
Christ in the Divine scheme of things; then, with regard
to the place and significance of man in that scheme; and
thirdly, concerning the reality, ways, and objective of
the evil spiritual powers in this universe. These three
things very largely comprehend the Scriptures. Here, we
shall be mainly occupied with the first of these.
The
Place and Significance of Christ
There are two sides to
Christ’s person and work. (1) Christ as the Son of
God. (2) Christ as the Son of Man. When we have gathered
up all that is said and intimated in the Scriptures about
Jesus as the Son of God we are led to one comprehensive
conclusion. It is this, that God’s sole rights and
prerogatives have been vested by Him in His Son, and God
has bound Himself to be personally and definitely known
only Son-wise. There is neither access nor knowledge of a
personal nature, nor fellowship, apart from the Son.
"No man cometh to the Father, but by Me" (John
14:6). "No one knoweth the Father save the Son, and
he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him"
(Matt. 11:27). That revelation is in the Son alone.
"He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father"
(John 14:9). Then we have to ask, What are those unique
and sole rights of God which are vested in the Son?
The first is:
The
Prerogative of Life
When we really come to
deal with life, we come to deal with God. While there is
something of life present man may have a place. He may
help, stimulate, feed, and co-operate with it; but when
life has departed, man has no more place and it is
God’s matter alone. Only God can deal with that
situation. The question of life from the dead is
God’s matter alone. For a whole generation this
question raged as a battle, and very largely it raged
around one man - Louis Pasteur. During the whole of his
life-time the question of spontaneous generation flamed
and fumed and divided men into schools of fierce
antagonism. But before he died the question was settled
and today no knowledgeable person believes otherwise
than that life only comes from life, and never from death
- that is, in the realm of nature. Thus the field is left
clear for the supernatural, and life out of death is
God’s unique sphere. What is true in the natural is
also true in the spiritual. The life which we all have in
common as the life of soul and body is one thing, and the
above law holds good with regard to it. But there is
another life; it is uncreated life, Divine life, what we
call spiritual life. That is another thing altogether. A
hundred or more people may be here together, all of them
alive in the first sense, but only a few may be alive in
the second sense. The majority, while very active in the
life of soul and body, may be quite dead with regard to
uncreated, Divine, life. Thus are people divided, and in
this way they are two entirely different orders of
creation, species of beings.
Much has been said and
written about the IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. The
Bible does not teach this. Continuity and immortality are
two distinct things. Immortality is a Divine prerogative
and feature. "Who only hath immortality" (1
Tim. 6:16). Immortality is that Divine nature which is
characteristic of Divine life. It is something altogether
higher than just survival of physical disintegration and
the grave. This latter without immortality or immortal
life must be a very horrible thing. It is what the Bible
means - metaphorically - by being "naked" and
"ashamed". So the apostle speaks of immortality
as being "clothed upon", that "mortality
may be swallowed up of life."
Thus the giving of that
life is with God alone, and those who have it are thereby
different in an inward reality from all others. They
possess the basis of a complete transformation, which is
the meaning of being "glorified".
But our particular
message is that God has vested this life in His Son Jesus
Christ, and that it cannot be had apart from Him.
"As the Father hath life in Himself, even so gave He
to the Son also to have life in Himself" (John
5:26). "As the Father raiseth the dead and giveth
them life, even so the Son giveth life to whom He
will" (John 5:21). The gospel of the glory of Christ
is that God has given Him the glory of being able to give
eternal life, incorruptible, immortal life to those who
believe on Him. "This life is in His Son. He that
hath the Son hath the life" (1 John 5:11-12). Once
have that life imparted and all the glorious thoughts and
purposes of God for men have been started on their way to
realisation. So that what comes in with Christ is the life of
a new creation, a new universe. Everything is to be
realised on the biological principle, but it is a life
which is different in nature, capacity, and consciousness
from all other life. Being peculiarly God’s own
Divine life it is the basis and link of true inward
fellowship with Him. In this way we are able to see
something of the immense and vital significance of
Christ.
To accept Christ in a
living and positive way is to receive a life which means
an inward and secret difference in our very constitution,
and to be in the way of possibilities which are denied
all others.
To reject or neglect
Christ is to lose or miss all that God ever intended when
He created man and put him on a probation of faith.
Herein lies the immense peril of prevarication or
procrastination. It is not in man’s power to say
when that life shall be offered to him. When Christ is
presented, that is the time when life and death are in
the balances of our acceptance or rejection, and the very
greatest eternal values and issues are bound up with that
decision.
To all this the great enemy of
men’s eternal glory would blind them and keep them
blind. One of the blinding lies of the Devil is the lie
of evolution. While we all believe in a certain
development and progress, the doctrine which declares
that man started with the amoeba and in the course of
many thousands - perhaps millions - of years passes
through numerous stages - e.g. of ape, primitive man,
civilised man, angelic being, and so on - and finally
becomes a god, having attained deity! - this is a lie and
a deception, and is intended by its Satanic inventor to
keep men from accepting Christ. For all this progress (?)
is said to be made altogether without any outside
intervention. Someone writing on this matter has put it
in this way: We have heard of a wonderful machine which,
with claws, takes hold of so much leather at one end and
draws it in and, without any outside intervention, takes
it through stage after stage, and pours it forth as shoes
at the other end: without any outside intervention! And,
says the writer, that is evolution; the claws take hold
on the amoeba and draw it in, and then evolution is
supposed to take it through various stages and at last
turn it out as angels and gods. But, says he,
unfortunately the amoeba at a certain point gets caught
in the mesh and in the end beasts come out, tearing one
another to pieces! Are men really nearer angels and gods
today after these thousands of years? Is the moral life
of the race so much higher after all? Only the very blind
will say it is.
Ah, it is just in that
little clause "outside intervention" that
everything is found. There will never really be any true
conformity to God’s likeness without outside
intervention. It will not work like a machine. This
outside intervention is set forth in the words of Christ:
"I am come that they might have life"
(John 10:10). There is no hope of man reaching God by
himself, but God has intervened in the person of His Son
and with Him offered the life which has in it the power
to bring us into oneness with Him in likeness and
fellowship.
God’s
Prerogative of Light Vested in the Son
The second prerogative
of God is light. It was God Who said, Let there be light,
light shall be! Light is with God. Of course, there are
many intimations in the Scriptures of that in the natural
realm. God makes darkness and light, and God, when He
chooses, can break into the ordinary course of things in
that matter and turn light to darkness or darkness to
light. He can divide in the same territory between light
and darkness; when all Egypt is in darkness, gross
darkness, with the plague resting upon it, the children
of Israel have light in their dwellings. Right within the
same land, light and darkness simultaneously existed by a
Divine intervention from the outside. Yes, light can be
preserved and maintained by God beyond the due course,
and darkness can be brought in prematurely when it ought
to be light.
There is much in the Old
Testament about that, and it is carried over into the New
Testament. When the Son of God was crucified, darkness
was over the face of the land until the ninth hour. Put
out God’s Son and you put out God’s light. That
is the point. Light is God’s prerogative.
What is illustrated by
God’s dealings in nature is the great truth of
spiritual light; that spiritual light is God’s
prerogative, that He can bring light into darkness at any
given moment, He does not have to wait for a course of
things: and He can shut out the light at any given
moment. It is in His power to do that. To turn from darkness to light is a miracle in the spiritual world and an intervention from the outside, and it is equally a Divine intervention of judgment when the light that is in us becomes darkness. That is with God.
Thus this second
prerogative of God, namely, that of light, is also vested
in Jesus Christ, His Son, and bound up with Him. "I
am the light of the world" (John 9:5). "In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God... In Him was life; and the life was
the light of men". "No man hath seen God at any
time; the only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the
Father, He hath declared Him", "He hath
revealed Him" (John 1:18). It is the glory of Christ
to be able, at any given moment, to break in upon our
darkness, and has it not just been that which has brought
His glory into our hearts and brought glory out from our
hearts to Him, when by that blessed touch of His finger
(the Spirit of God) we have been able to say suddenly, I
see! I never saw it like that! What is then the
spontaneous desire of our hearts? It is to worship Him.
We revert to that man
born blind, to whom the Lord gave sight and eventually
interrogated him with the inquiry, Dost thou
believe on the Son of God? "He 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". Why did he worship? Because the Son of
God for him was one thing with having his sight. The two
things went together. Having his sight was bound up with
this One Who could be none other than the Son of God to
give sight. That is what the Lord meant by having
that incident included in that gospel, the whole purpose
of which is to give evidence that Jesus is the Son of
God. You know how John concludes his gospel - If
everything was written that could be written, I suppose
that even the world itself would not contain the books
that should be written; but these things are written,
"that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in
His name" (John 20:30). And this is written in the
book which has that as its object. When the disciples
say, Lord, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he
should be born blind?, the Lord Jesus dismissed that
superstition by saying, "Neither did this man sin,
nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made
manifest in him". And the Son is the instrument of
the works of God. The Lord Jesus had already said that
the Father works, and the works that the Father does, the
Son also does, and greater works than these will He show
Him. The works of God - giving sight, through the Son, to
those born blind, leading to worship; and God does not
mind you worshipping His Son, He will not be jealous of
His Son, because He has bound Himself up with His Son and
put His Son on an equality with Himself, and vested His
own rights and prerogatives in His Son. To worship the
Son is to worship the Father, because the Father and the
Son are one.
Well, that Jesus is the
Son of God is evidenced by people getting spiritual
sight, and that is the glory of Christ, to be able to do
that, leading, as we were saying, to worship. It is a
great thing to recognise even a little of this. It is a
great thing to have our eyes opened. It is a great thing
to have our eyes opened initially and foundationally; it
is a great thing as we go along to have our eyes opened
again and again to see what no one has been able to show
us, what we have struggled to see and understand; and
then God sovereignly, by intervention from outside,
touches our spiritual eyes and we see. Is it not a great
day when we see like that?
Some of us know what it
is to have something in the Word of God. We sense there
is something in that passage that we have not got; there
is the Divine meaning, but we cannot get it; and we have
walked round it, we have looked to see if anybody could
help us. We have gone to all the authorities on that
particular passage, but we have not got it. There are a
lot of good things being said, but somehow we are not
getting what we sense is there. We put it back to the
Lord and say, Now, Lord, if You want us to have that, You
show us at the right time when it is necessary, not just
for the sake of information but when it is going to serve
a purpose. And we have gone on and left it with the Lord,
and going on quietly, perhaps occupied with something
else, the whole thing has just come up and been broken
upon us, and we have seen it, and our faces have become
wreathed with smiles. We can put our finger upon many
things like that in the course of our life. They have
just come and we have received them. You cannot take that
away from us.
Now my point here is
simply to illustrate what a tremendous thing this
breaking in of light upon us is, how it lifts us out, how
it fills us with glory, how it changes the outlook when
there breaks in spiritual light, light which never was on
land or sea, light from above. And the Lord Jesus is the
sum of that Divine light. He is the light. If only our
eyes were opened to see the significance of the Lord
Jesus, what a tremendous difference it would make, how we
should be emancipated. The need is that, to see the Son
of God as having vested in Him the prerogative of Divine
light-giving, because He is the light. It is with Him to
come right into our scene of darkness and drive the
darkness out. That is His glory, and you can know the
glory of the Son of God, you can worship Him, because
your eyes are opened.
He is here. Just as He,
being the resurrection and the life, means resurrection
at any moment, and not merely at the last day - you
remember Martha said, "I know that he shall rise
again in the resurrection at the last day", and the
Lord, in effect, said, Stop, I am the resurrection and
the life, and I being here, the last day may be here so
far as the resurrection is concerned; it is no time
matter when I am present, it can be now! - So He, being
here, there may be a new creation now with a new creation
light: not, I shall get light later on, but now; by this
glorious intervention from without.
The glory of Jesus
Christ which He had with the Father before the world was,
the glory of the Son is that; that He has this sole
Divine prerogative, right, power and ability to bring
light. No one else can give it; it is not possible to
attain unto that light. It is His gift, it is His act.
That is His glory.
God’s
Prerogative of Lordship Vested in the Son
One final word with
reference to the glory of Jesus Christ as God’s Son.
The Divine prerogative of government is vested in Him.
The third prerogative of God is government. In the last
issue, the decision is with God in all matters. Over and
above all things, God is; He rules, and He rules in the
kingdoms of men and among the armies of heaven. He
governs, but He has now vested that government in His
Son. "Neither doth the Father judge any man, but
He hath given all judgment unto the Son" (John
5:22). This Divine prerogative of government, therefore,
is vested in Christ.
What does that mean for
us now? "The gospel of the glory of Christ".
"We preach Christ Jesus as Lord". That is in
substance one statement - the glory of Christ, Christ
Jesus as Lord. I think I must leave a great deal of the
detail and leap right to the end of that. The glory of
Christ is only really recognised when He is Lord, but it is
recognised when He is Lord. I mean that God is satisfied
when His Son comes unto the appointed place, and God can
never be satisfied in any one direction without the one
affected being aware of it. There is always an echo here
of something in the heart of God which affects us. I mean
that if heaven rejoices over one sinner that repenteth,
that sinner will never fail to have the echo of
heaven’s joy. The joy which comes to a repentant
sinner is not just his own joy, it is the joy of heaven,
it has come of what is going on above. When the Father is
well-pleased, it will be witnessed in the one in whom He
is well-pleased. "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I
am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17). The Son knows in His
own spirit, His own heart, the delight of the Father.
"The Father loveth the Son": He can say that
without any conceit or presumption; and when the place to
which the Son has been assigned by the Father is given to
the Son in any life, or in any company, or in any place
on this earth, then you may take it that the heaven is
opened there, and the Father’s gratification will be
registered there. You never get through a struggle and
battle on some question of His Lordship without knowing a
new Divine joy and peace and rest in your heart. A
struggle has been going on over a matter of obedience to
something in the will of God, something the Lord has
said; there has been a battle over it for a long time and
at last you get through - "My stubborn will at last
hath yielded" - and you are through. The Lord’s
Lordship is established, and what is the result? Rest,
peace, joy, satisfaction. You say, What a fool I was to
keep that up for so long! What is it? It is not just a
psychological relief, that you have got past a difficult
place; it is the Spirit of God bearing witness within. It
is the Holy Dove lighting upon your spirit. It is the
Father’s good pleasure witnessed to in your heart,
the Lordship of God in Christ established. We can never
in reality believe in the absolute Lordship of God and
not give Christ His place. That is a contradiction. For
the Lordship of God to be a reality, Christ has to be
Lord in our hearts. We need to see that.
The
Practical Issue
What I really want to
leave with you in this last word is this: do pray for the
Lord to open your eyes to the meaning of the Lordship of
Christ. You know, beloved, all our troubles circle round
that issue. Other lords have had dominion over us. What
are those other lords? There are lords many. Our own
souls may be having dominion, our own sentimentalities,
our own likes and preferences and judgments, our own
dislikes and antipathies, our own traditions, our own
teachers: these may be governing us. Oh, the lords are so
many, and they may just be governing. The Lord is
desirous of bringing us into a larger and freer place,
and a place of an opened heaven: something is still
tyrannizing; we are in the centre, the natural self-life
is on the throne, we have a horrible way of drawing
everything to ourselves. Immediately anything is raised,
we step into the centre of the arena, the self-life
ruling on the throne: and what kind of life is it? Well,
it is a life of shadows, to say the least of it; it is a
life of limitation, of variableness, up and down, of
weakness and uncertainty. If we want to come right out
into the light, the full light, to go right on in the
full light, in the glorious liberty of the children of
God, all those other lords have to be deposed, and Christ
has to be Lord.
Now, while I am saying
that, you agree with me absolutely. You say, Yes, of
course we want Christ to be Lord, we want nothing more
than that Christ should be Lord, and we know He has to be
Lord; we know that God has made Him both Lord and Christ!
We assent. Beloved, that is all right, but what about it?
When we have assented, when we have agreed, are we still
going to assert our own judgments, are we still going to
meet others and things in our own strength? Are we still
going to be in the picture, are we still going to allow
those old dominations to influence us? This establishment
of Christ as Lord is a thing which can only really be done, not
by assent, not by agreement, although that may be
required; it can only be done by our being broken down,
and we have to say to the Lord, Lord, You break down
everything that You find in the way; take in hand
whatever there is that obstructs Your absolute Lordship.
"The dearest
idol I Have known,
Whate’er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from Thy Throne
And worship only Thee".
There may be something
very dear, a part of our very being, and it is in the
way; our very life, our very self. There is something to
be done right in us, but oh, that we should see how much
hangs upon the place and significance of Christ in the
Divine economy of things, Christ as Lord. What hangs upon
that? It is the glory of Christ.
Have you ever got
through to a new position with the Lord where His
Lordship has been established in some new way, in some
new matter, in some new sphere? Have you ever got through
and been miserable about it, felt you have lost
everything? You know to the contrary. The experience may
have been a very deep and terrible one, but when you are
through, you glorify God. When the Lord is dealing with
things that are in the way of His Lordship, it is a dark
time, full of suffering, but you are going to come to the
place where you thank God for every bit of it. How can
that be? If the Lord should make windows in heavens,
might this thing be? That is what we feel when we are in
the process, but I am certain, and experience in some
degree bears it out, that when we are on the other side
of that and the Lord has a new place in our lives, we
thank Him for the depths, and we say, You were right,
faithful and true. You can say that as a bit of your
faith, but it is a great thing to say it as a bit of your
experience. Faithful and true!
The glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ, the glory of Christ, the gospel of
the glory of Christ as Son of God is all brought to us in
terms of Life and Light and Lordship - the three L’s of the glory of
God’s Son. The Lord lead us into that.