"And
God said, Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness..." (Gen.
1:26).
"Christ... who is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of all creation" (Col. 1:15).
"...in
whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the
unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,
who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them." (2 Cor. 4:4).
"For
whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the
image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many
brethren." (Rom.
8:29).
"And
have put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge
after the image of him that created him: where there cannot be
Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian,
Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all."
(Col. 3:10-11).
Reading: Eph.
4:13,15-16; 5:22-32; John 20:21-23; Acts 1:8.
In the first and second
series of passages, there is one word common to them all,
as you will have noticed. It is the word
"image".
"And
God said, Let us make man in our image."
"...who is the image of the invisible God."
"Christ, who is the image of God."
"...conformed to the image of his Son."
"...the new man... renewed... after the image of
him that created him."
Our English word has
behind it in the New Testament two Greek words - idol and
ikon. Heb. 1:3 - "the very image of his person". Rotherham translates, "the exact
representation of his image" or "of his
substance". It is that word
"representation" which has taken hold of me,
and which seems to be the key to our meditation.
Representation
an Eternal Principle
You will at once see
that in the passages which we have read, that is the
governing idea; firstly as to the Lord Jesus,
representation of God. He is said to be the image of God,
the image of the invisible God. Then the thought is
transferred to the elect, the Church, foreordained to be
conformed to the image of His Son, a new man renewed
after the image of Him that created him; and alongside of
that, passages in which the actual word does not occur,
but where the thought is still the dominant thought -
"the measure of the stature of Christ", "a
fullgrown man" (Eph. 4:13). That with reference to
the Church, the Lord's people - representation.
Then those final
passages bring it into a very practical realm - "As
the Father hath sent me, even so send I you" -
placing the emphasis upon the "as". Then, with
the question which must arise, "Who is sufficient
for these things?" the answer is, "Ye shall
receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and
ye shall be my witnesses", the latter word of which
is only another word for representatives.
(a)
Before Creation
This, then, is an
eternal thought, a thought which has come out of
eternity, God purposing to be represented in His
universe, to have representation in man, and that eternal
thought lies behind everything. It is before creation,
before the fall, and therefore before redemption. It is
the pure thought of God unclouded at all by sin and sin's
consequences and sin's necessities. It stands back there
as governing all the thought of God projected into the
future. It is as though God decided He would have
representation of Himself, the invisible God, in visible
form, in man form, that He would be seen, be known, be
understood; and, more than that, He would constitute upon
a basis of fellowship, living relationship, in terms of
representation, that which would represent Him not merely
officially but in nature, after His own heart. By that
means He would make Himself known, would give Himself,
and would bring the creation into something more than
mechanical obedience and response to His sovereign will;
into agreeable, desired, loving fellowship with Himself,
with His own heart, along the line of consent, and not of
compulsion. That is what representation means in brief.
It is exactly what it means in the case of the Lord Jesus
being the image of the invisible God, and exactly what it
means that the Church is conformed to the image of His
Son. The thought, I say again, lies behind everything,
goes before creation, and then governs creation.
(b)
In Creation
The creation is brought
into being by this one governing thought of God, that the
whole creation should, in a variety of ways, express Him,
represent Him, speak of Him, and all the ordinances of
heaven and earth as established by God, and all the
relationships in creation, should in some way represent
God's thoughts. If we had eyes to see, we should see
Divine thoughts in all that God has done. The whole
creation is the embodiment of this desire of God to be
represented.
(c)
In Redemption
But not only so, for
when we come on to the matter of redemption, it is the
same thing. Of God's dealing with the necessity which has
arisen, representation is at the heart of it, and the
representation in redemption is twofold, it has two
sides. By reason of what has happened to the creation,
and of the judgment pronounced upon it even unto death,
there is a nullification of that order of things. If that
sentence is carried out nakedly, barely and utterly,
creation will be dismissed from God's universe, there
will be nothing left. But representation again is the way
of redemption, and in the person of His Son a
representative position is taken under judgment,
condemnation, and death, and in Him representatively the
creation passes out, dies. We today surely do come afresh
upon this aspect of things with new gratitude, that is,
that you and I are saved from the awful fulness of
judgment upon the creation because One has been our
representative in that judgment. He representatively died
as a cursed and judged and doomed creation because of
sin. He died for us and as us, and we died in Him. That
is a simple and very familiar truth.
But there is the other
side in redemption. In resurrection, exaltation in glory,
He is our representative. The Divine thought of
representation is taken up again, not now in despair but
in hope. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy hath
begotten us again to a living hope by the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Pet. 1:3). In
resurrection He is our representative, in glory He is our
representative, and just as truly as in His death we died
in Him, we were included in death, so now we are included
in Him in glory, in exaltation. As the "Captain of
our salvation" He is bringing "many sons to
glory", where He is as their representative.
Bearing upon that, the
leaving out of two words which have been introduced into
our translation, but which do not occur in the original,
give added emphasis. I mean in Rom. 8:29. "Whom he
foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the
image of his Son." They have introduced the two
little words - "to be". Those words do not
occur at all, they ought not to be there. They were put
in because it sounds blunt and awkward to leave them out,
and just say, foreordained conformed to his Son. Before
the world was we were so, in the thought and purpose and
power of God Who is not of time. There is no past,
present and future with Him. All future is with Him in
one moment. When He determined it, it was then done in
Him. You and I may be undergoing a process of conforming
to the image, but that is only on our side. From God's
side it is all finished, it is eternally accomplished
before ever we started, These are mighty foundations for
faith that, so far as God is concerned, there is no hap
or chance about this. It is all an accomplished fact.
"Foreordained conformed to the image..." So you
see this Divine thought, this eternal thought of
representation, does lie behind everything; creation,
redemption, death, resurrection, glory.
(d)
In the Church
But it comes right into
the very centre of our lives as the Lord's people who
have believed. The Divine thought concerning us is just
this, that we are here for one purpose in the thought of
God - to represent Him. The Church is constituted for
that one purpose - to represent Him. All the dealings of
God with us have that one thing in view, the perfection
of representation. That is but to say in another way that
the discipline, the chastening, the dealings of God with
us are to perfect our representation of Him; that is, to
make us more like Him, not just as a thing in itself, but
because He has ordained this to be the agency of His
self-revelation, His self-manifestation. "The image
of the invisible God". That with reference to
Christ. The image, we might say, of the invisible Christ
is the Divine thought for the Church and all its members.
It seems to me that is
the very essence of this idea - "the church which is
his body". Well, there is such a thing, of course,
as reading one another's spirit, but even that is
exceedingly difficult without their bodies! What we know
of one another inwardly, we so largely know through our
bodies. Even our personalities are expressed very largely
through our bodies. If we are familiar with a person,
more or less it is by some physical expression that we
know who they are. A little child indoors knows daddy is
coming down the road. Why? Because he or she knows
daddy's step. You may be in one room and certain people
in another, and you hear them speaking and you are able
to say, There is so-and-so, I know their voice! There are
doubles, perhaps, in that, but you are not often
mistaken. You know they are there because that voice is
their's. We are known by some physical expression. We
watch one another, we touch one another, and we read and
register one another's inner life by a look in the eye, a
look on the face, a tone of voice, a mere gesture, a mere
grunt! Yes, and a history lies in the slightest physical
indication if we are alive to one another.
The Church which is His
Body stands in relation to Him in that sense, and He, by
His Spirit being present, indwelling, is indicated by
means of His members. The purpose of the Church as His
Body is to represent Him, and this is the very essence,
of all - shall we say - missionary work, all ministry,
all service. The dominating idea of all service or
ministry is representation; not first of all things said,
preached, proclaimed, but what we are, what is conveyed
of Christ by our being. In the case of the Lord Jesus
that was predominant. It was His presence which
registered the Divine impact upon this earth; sometimes
His silence was more terrible than His words. When He, on
that Good Friday, that first Good Friday, was silent,
that was an awful silence which men could not bear, under
which they writhed and would by any means make Him speak
and break that silence. He came into the country of the
Gerasenes and, without a word from Him, those possessed
with demons cried out. His presence! It is
representation.
What a mighty thing
this is if it is there in the power of the Holy Spirit.
You do not always have to begin to preach. If you are a
Spirit-filled man or woman, your presence will make
sinners uncomfortable and saints happy. What I am trying
for the moment to emphasise is the truth, the principle,
the law, that of representation.
With regard to this
matter of representation, I would have you pre-eminently
occupied with it in relation to the Lord Jesus Himself.
He is the sum of all Divine thoughts, and the Incarnation
is the supreme expression of this one thought of God to
be truly, adequately, fully, perfectly represented; so
that it was possible for the Lord Jesus to say, "He
that hath seen Me hath seen the Father"(John 14:9).
There is the mystery of Christ.
What is the mystery of
Christ? The mystery of Christ is God veiled in this
Representative. You say, A representative of God, and yet
God veiled? - a contradiction! No, no contradiction; not
necessarily veiled, for a New Testament or a Scriptural
mystery is not something which cannot be known, but
something which, for certain reasons, has not been known
but can be known. When those reasons are set aside, this
which has been a mystery, a hidden thing, is a mystery no
longer, but it remains a mystery while those things
obtain.
You can see it in the
days of His flesh. Here is God in representation, but how
many saw Him? "He that hath seen me hath seen the
Father". But I think that word "seen"
means something very much more than just looking upon Him
as a man. "He that hath seen me..." "Whom
do men say that I am?" Some said this and some said
that. Peter said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of
the living God." And He said, "Blessed art
thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in
heaven" (Matt. 16:13-17). That is what it means to
see; it is by revelation. It is that which is the
mystery. The fact is there, the true representation or
representative of God in person, yet unrecognised,
unseen. "The God of this world hath blinded the
minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the
gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,
should shine unto them" (2 Cor. 4:4). The mystery is
men's inability to see a great fact, or a great fact
present still undisclosed.
Now, the Resurrection
and Pentecost seem to me to have meant just this one
thing - the seeing of Christ. You remember when He was
considered dead and buried, even disciples were in black
despair and eclipse of faith and hope, and some went on
the way to Emmaus very sad indeed, and their words were,
"We hoped that it was he who should redeem
Israel" (Luke 24:21). But before the end of that
episode was reached, we are told that He opened their
understanding that they might know the Scriptures. Having
taken up the Scriptures right from the beginning and
spoken to them things concerning Himself, He opened their
understanding, and it was just that that was marking His
appearances during the forty days after His resurrection.
They were in some altogether new way coming to see Him.
Oh no, not now physically merely, that He was alive, that
He had a body; it was not merely this that was being
borne in upon them very powerfully. They were seeing Him,
Who He was; the mystery of His Person was breaking down.
They were seeing Him, and the day of Pentecost
seemed to bring that through to full birth. The forty
days were moving up to that day, and then on that day by
the coming of the Holy Spirit the thing was consummated,
and in the full blaze of Who He was the Church was born.
It seems to me that the Church was born - yes, by the
Holy Spirit, but by the Holy Spirit's breaking open to
men Who Jesus was after all. It seems to me that is how
every one came into the Church. They saw by an operation
of the Holy Spirit Who Jesus was. That is how Paul came
in on the Damascus road; he saw who Jesus of Nazareth
was. On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up with the
eleven, as under the power of the Holy Spirit they opened
their mouths, and the spontaneous declaration was all
about Who Jesus was, and they are men in a new
revelation.
Oh, I know from our
fundamentalist standpoint, this is nothing very much. I
do not suppose there is one here who does not believe
that Jesus was the Son of God, God manifest in the flesh.
You all believe that, as a bit of your faith; but what is
the effect of it? What was the effect of that at the
beginning? The witnessing, the representation, is not
just attesting historical facts, nor doctrinal facts.
When they went out as witnesses unto Him, it was not just
to say things which, while they were true, were only
truths. They went out in the power of having seen, having
had their eyes opened to the Lord Jesus. It was as though
they had been men moving in the shadows during those
years, groping, sometimes feeling an assurance, a certain
amount of certainty, but then questionings, uncertainties
coming in, shadows all the time. But at last the heavens
were rent, the blaze broke through, and they saw. It was
in the light of that they were constituted witnesses,
representatives. It was in the light of that the Church
was born. It was in the light of that the Church went on
its way so effectively. The fact was that, wherever they
came, it was the impact of God in Christ by their
presence. Their presence stirred hell, because hell felt
anew - God is here! It touched men who were in the grip
and under the control and influence of higher
intelligences, spiritual intelligences.
We know how true that
is now in measure, that the presence of a true child of
God, without words, provokes men, annoys men, irritates
men, disturbs men. They want you out of the way, they
don't like you. They don't know why, but they want to get
rid of you. You could almost feel they have a
supernatural intelligence about you, though they have
not. If you ask them why, they do not know. There is the
other deeper thing, they sense something that makes them
uncomfortable. It is the presence of God in the child of
God, and God is represented by their being there. That is
how it was with Christ. "As the Father hath sent me,
even so send I you." It is in this way, on this
line, on this basis - representation.
Representation
Based Upon Identification
But we must realise
that representation stands upon the basis of
identification. It was the identity of Christ with God
the Father that meant everything. They were identical. It
was not that He would say or could say, He that hath seen
me hath seen God's representative. That can mean
anything. You can send anything and anybody as your
representative. But He could say, "He that hath seen
Me hath seen the Father", seen God; not a
representative of God, not someone sent as a kind of
ambassador, altogether different, two personalities, two
natures in a different category, but identical. The
presence of Christ is the presence of God and God is
present in Christ.
Now, you say, how are
you going to work that out in extension to the Church and
to the member of the Body? In principle it holds good,
and therein is found the whole requirement that you and I
should lose our own independent, separate life of
self-interest, self-motive, and growingly come to the
place where it is "no longer I, but Christ". Oh
yes, there will always be those things about us which
remain our human features and marks, but the real and
essential implication of our presence will not be
ourselves, it will be the Lord; that there has come about
within us, at the very centre of our being, by the
residence of the Spirit of Christ, an identification with
Him so that He and we are one; one in life, in motive, in
thought, in desire, and whatever people have to say about
our frailties, our weaknesses, our imperfections, if they
will be honest they will have to say, But despite that,
when you meet so-and-so, you do meet the Lord! It is a
terrible thing if people are unable to say that, and have
to say the contrary: When you meet so-and-so as a
professed child of God, there is nothing of the Lord that
you touch in him, and you come away grieved at so much
that is otherwise. That is a terrible thing.
Does it not occur to us
very strongly that it is a denial of our very existence
as members of Christ's Body if we can tolerate things
which are a contradiction of Christ; such a matter as
unforgiveness, harbouring in our hearts an unforgiving
attitude or spirit, nursing a grievance, wounded pride,
divisions. Oh, dear friends, where are we as Christians,
what is the Christian life, what are we for as
Christians, what have we taken up, what have we assumed?
Have we assumed certain things in the way of doctrines as
a kind of professional matter, a business kind of thing
altogether out of relation to our own personality, our
own nature? Well, that is not the New Testament
Christianity, that is not the real Christian life. The
fact is if you and I are true Christians (and "if
any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of
his" - Romans 8:9), if we are true Christians and
have the Holy Spirit, this ought to be the truest thing
about us, that we can never be unforgiving without having
a most miserable time about it, never suffer from wounded
pride without being altogether thrown out of gear in our
spiritual lives, never be un-Christlike without having a
crisis over it. It is a living thing inside. Why? Because
of identification in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is
the Spirit of Christ and He has come into us to make us
one with Christ, so that we cannot live a detached life
from Christ and just go on anyhow indefinitely without
being met by the Lord. That is quite impossible on the
basis of a life in the Holy Spirit, and there is no other
basis for a Christian. Many of us thank the Lord with all
our hearts that this is the kind of experience we have,
that we have a miserable time because of some
un-Christlike thought or attitude. We thank God for that;
it shows that things are alive. If you or I could
possibly harbour anything un-Christlike in our hearts and
not have a bad time, we have reason to question whether
we are born again. Every bad time is an evidence that we
are alive, for dead people do not suffer.
Identification is basic
to representation, and it is a vital, an organic, thing,
not a thing of doctrine merely.
Representation
Based Upon the Spirit's Sovereignty
Well, that is what
Pentecost did. Oh, how we are launched into a realm of
things when we recognise that. Peter, standing up with
the eleven, what is he saying? Peter has heard the Lord
saying, "Ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem,
and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost
part of the earth". Well, both he and the others are
going to come into the good of it. Not so very long
before, some of these disciples were saying of these very
people to whom they were now to be the representatives of
Christ, the messengers of His gospel of grace, "Lord
shall we call down fire from heaven upon them?" You
cannot go on like that when you come under the power of
the Holy Ghost. Burning people up from heaven - that is
not a Holy Ghost governed life. You see what I mean.
As to Peter, this is
going to carry him a long way further yet he is going to
be taken well out of his depth. It is a glorious thing to
see what the Holy Spirit does when He is really
sovereign. He makes you say things altogether beyond your
traditions and your intentions, though you do not
recognise it. The Holy Spirit means a great deal more
than we do when we say things, that is, when we say
things by the Holy Spirit. We say a lot of things by the
Holy Spirit's government which will take us a long way
beyond what we ourselves mean at the moment.
"Unto the
uttermost part of the earth"! Peter will endorse
that. Or again in his address on the day of Pentecost, he
will use words like these: "The promise is to you
and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even
as many as the Lord our God shall call" (Acts 2:39).
He says that under the power of the Holy Ghost, but he
does not mean that. A little while afterwards he will be
asked to go to the house of a Gentile in Caesarea. He
sees a sheet wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts
and creeping things of the earth and birds of the heaven,
and a voice says, Rise, Peter; kill and eat! But Peter
said, Not so, Lord! This thing was done three times and
the sheet was caught up into heaven. Three men stood at
the door (Acts 10). Not so, Lord! - "As many as the
Lord our God shall call." He said it by the Holy
Spirit, but he did not mean it. Now he is up against it.
The Holy Ghost will carry him out of his depth, his
tradition. That is what the Holy Ghost does when He gets
hold of a life. He makes demands far beyond what we at
the moment are ready for.
Thus the crisis will
test you as to whether you are ready to adjust to the
Holy Spirit? If not, your representation of the Lord
breaks down. Are you ready to adjust? Is He going to have
His way completely? I am keeping close to the Word.
"As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you...
Receive ye the Holy Spirit."
My point at the moment
is that the sending as His representatives was on the
basis of the absolute sovereignty of the Holy Spirit, and
you and I will individually fully represent Christ only
by that sovereignty, the Spirit's sovereignty, because
the Spirit alone is big enough to bring Christ in, the
Spirit alone is great enough to represent Christ. Can you
or I represent Christ? Why, we do not know anything about
Christ yet. Our thoughts about Christ would make a very
little Christ. Peter, with all the big things that he is
saying on the day of Pentecost, in his own interpretation
of those things would have narrowed Christ down only to
the Jews, but he came to discover that the Holy Spirit
meant a great deal more than he, Peter, did about Christ,
and what representation of Christ meant. And so it is by
the Holy Spirit alone that an adequate representation of
Christ can be made.
I do hope that we shall
see that for which we are here, what it means. This is a
very real thing, this matter of Christ being represented,
brought into view, our presence meaning that. Oh, I am
sure we all feel that, if things had been kept strictly
there all the way along, the impact upon this world would
be so infinitely greater than it has been. The thing has
become mechanical; we cannot say that the Church in all
its parts has really brought an impact of Christ upon
this earth. We have to get back somewhere perhaps on this
matter. It is not in doctrines, in words, in truths; it
is in a mighty work of the Holy Spirit inwardly, which
results in our being able to say, "It pleased God to
reveal his Son in me that I might preach him among the
nations" (Gal. 1:16); the representation within
first, the preaching afterward; not the signing of a
statement of fundamental doctrines, but a revelation of
Christ in the heart.