Our Father, our God, we ask Thee now that Thou, Who
didst say “Let light be,” will shine into our
hearts at this time “To give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ.” It is that face we together have said we
are seeking now. We seek Thy Face. We thank Thee that the
veil is taken away. We thank Thee that the heaven is
open. We thank Thee that the Holy Spirit has come. What
we pray for is our need—so deeply conscious we are
of it—our own impotence and helplessness, our
inability to do anything, to say anything worthy of
Thyself. O Lord, we confess utter dependence upon Thee,
but we say to Thee, Lord, we trust Thee. Now make this
then a time of entering into the good of that opened
heaven, that anointing Spirit, that revelation in the
Face of Jesus Christ. We ask it in His Name, Amen.
I want to lay the foundation for our meditation in this
morning session, the first session of this week, by
asking you to turn to several passages of Scripture from
the Old Testament and from the New. Beginning in the Book
of Genesis at chapter five, verse two, it states:
“Male and female created He them, and blessed them,
and called their name, man” (A.S.V.). Now come over
to the New Testament in the First Letter to the
Corinthians, chapter fifteen, verses 45–49: “So
also it is written, the first man became a living soul.
The last Adam a life-giving Spirit. Howbeit that is not
first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; then
that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth,
earthy: the second Man is of heaven. As is the earthy,
such are they also that are earthy: and as is the
heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we
have borne the image of the earthy, we shall (or let us)
also bear the image of the heavenly” (A.S.V.).
And then, please, in the Letter to the Colossians,
chapter three at verse nine: “Lie not one to
another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his
doings, 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”
(A.S.V.).And
finally, in the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter two at
verse five, it says: “For not unto angels did He
subject the world to come, whereof we speak. But one has
somewhere testified, saying, ‘What is man, that Thou
art mindful of him? Or the Son of Man, that Thou visitest
Him?’ ”
As I have said, in this
morning session we are laying the foundation for our
meditations. We shall be somewhat general and
comprehensive and later work inward to get to the real
heart of things; however, first it is necessary for us to
have a comprehensive view and vision of what is before
us.
I have no doubt that
not a few of you who are here at this time have come with
problems, and I find that Christians everywhere the world
over are full of problems in our time. If it is not
problems about their own spiritual life and themselves
(as it is in many cases), it is problems about other
Christians; or it is problems about the Church generally
and, perhaps, locally. Also, there are problems about the
world. These problems are manifold, and they are apt to
drain our spiritual life and get us very much locked up
and held up in our spiritual progress. It is like that. A
lot of Christians are doing that today. They are missing
the glory because their eyes are either turned inward or
earthward: that is their problem.
You remember when the
people of Israel were going over the Jordan into the
promised land: the Word to them was this, “You shall
set the ark, a space between you and the ark, of two
thousand cubits, because you have not passed this way
heretofore” (Josh. 3:3–4, paraphrased). There
is a wealth, a mine of profound wisdom, in that simple
prescription: “a space of two thousand cubits
between you and the ark, because you have not passed this
way heretofore.” If you get too close to things, you
will lose your perspective and you will lose your way. Do
not get too near. Keep things in proportion, in
perspective.
Now do you not agree with me that we have got too near
things, and we have made things the everything? Is that
true? Yes, even our Christian doctrine—and it is
precious and important and vital and essential—yet,
we have isolated our doctrines and made them the
everything. We can make even the doctrine of the Cross
the everything, and I can mention many other things which
are like a circumscribed circle for many Christians
today. They cannot see beyond that, and they cannot see
anything more than that. If you talk to them, they have
no interest in anything but that. They come back to it
every time and hold you to it. This loss of proportion
and perspective and vision in its entirety is the cause
of many of our problems and much of our arrested
spiritual life.
Now why am I saying
this? For two reasons. You will have to get a larger
vision than your personal problems and see them in a
related way. I do not know very much about the science of
relativity, but I come down very strongly on the
principle of relatedness or relativity. We must see
everything in its relatedness to everything else, and not
just things as an end in themselves. I want to share with
you this morning what is on my heart, and what is so much
alive to me now is this comprehensive setting of the
spiritual life, getting it in its greatness, its
vastness, its immensity.
Now immensity can, of
course, be awe-inspiring to the point of making you stand
still and hold your breath. But immensity can also be an
emancipating thing. You see the greatness of that into
which we have been called in Christ! The Greatness of
Christ! Oh, if we could this week get a new apprehension,
grasp, of the infinitudes of our Christian calling, we
would go away an emancipated people. And in that setting
then, let us begin.
Humanity
Is God’s End
This morning we have
read many passages in the Bible, and I would have liked
to have added many more of the same kind, but these are
enough as a starting point. Do you recognize what they
are all about? From Genesis, the beginning, right through
the Scriptures, it is one thing: man. No, it is two men,
and what we are going to be occupied with is this double
humanity, or two humanities, for they are the subject
matter of the whole Bible. The Bible is the story of God
and man, and everything is gathered into that; nothing is
in the Bible but what relates to that.
Of course, the Bible
begins with God: “In the beginning God....”
First we have the fact of God. This is where you start,
and you are not far along before you come upon man. Human
history begins with God, God as a fact—God
initiating everything, taking the initiative; God at
work—God’s mind working out in action, in what
He does. Remember that is a Bible principle. If you want
to know the mind of God, you will come to know it by what
God does and not always by what He says to do. More
often, God’s mind is revealed by how He deals with
you than by what He says in words in your ear.
God is speaking in His
actions, speaking very loudly in His works. God’s
mind is being revealed in His actions; God is at work, at
work preparing everything for man. When He has made that
preparation and brought man in, God says: “There is
nothing more to do; at this stage, We can rest.” And
God is at rest when He has man introduced into his
prepared place and scene.
That man Adam, the New
Testament tells us, is a figure of Him that was to come,
in Whom God will ultimately find His full rest. Man
constituted; the man conditioned; the man environed; the
man probationed. All God’s interests are centered in
humanity; not in things, as such. No thing is an end with
God. Man is God’s end. Humanity is God’s end.
With this thought, we
are right back there in the very center of the interests
of God, humanity. But that man Adam disappointed God,
failed Him, and was rejected by God. And at that point,
God re-acted, re-acted with the intimation of
Another One, Another Man. A Representative Man, Whom God
had foreordained before the foundation of the world. This
Man is foreordained and then forecast,
foreshadowed; and that line of the reaction of God toward
the Man, against this other man, runs all the
way through like a red line through the Old Testament. In
figure, in type, in prophecy, in the spiritual history of
an elect line, all moving on toward that Other Man, that
Other Humanity, the different Humanity, until we reach
the New Testament.
The New Testament is the crisis of humanity. Have you
thought of Christianity like that? Or have you thought of
Christianity only in its parts, its fragments, such as
the Atonement for a man’s sin, man’s personal
salvation, man’s securing of eternal hope and glory.
These are all the parts of salvation, and we have made so
much of them. Well, you cannot make too much of the
parts, of course, until you reach the point where the
parts become less than the whole; and, dear friends, we
have got to readjust our conception and idea of
Christianity at this point to see that with the coming of
the Lord Jesus, a crisis in the whole history of humanity
is reached. It is the crisis of the final word of
rejection of a humanity, a kind of man, and the
introduction of an entirely different kind of Humanity
with the Person of Jesus Christ. When you grasp that,
your whole Bible is going to come alive; it will come
alive.
What have we come into?
What is regeneration? You call it conversion, being
“born again,” or you call it regeneration. What
is it that we have come into?—It is generation into
Another Humanity altogether different as a member of a
different race of creatures, a different species of
Humanity. With the New Testament, this immense crisis in
human history is introduced, a crisis of humanity.
Another Humanity is introduced with our New Testament,
the full and final type of Humanity that God is going to
have; and, the tremendous thing is, all that belongs to
the perfection of man is found in this Representative
One. That is introduced with our New Testament.
Jesus stands in a
unique relation to the human race, and do you not see how
rays of light focus upon this great fact? What is it that
God is doing?—with you, with me, as a bit of this
humanity. What is He doing? What is He after? What is the
explanation of our experience under the hand of God?
When we get under the hand of God, we are going through
it. What are you expecting this week? When you go away
from here, you will meet friends and they will say,
“Have you had a happy time?” I think I told you
before of a conference I was at once. At the end,
testimonies were asked for from the ministers as to what
the conference had meant to them; one and another got up
and said, “Oh, I have had a wonderful time; I have
had a glorious time; this has been the best time of my
life...,” and so on. And then one man got up, his
eyes were red, his face was strained; he said, “I do
not understand this; I have had an awful time. This week
has meant devastation to me. Everything that I held as
important is gone. I am left with a necessity for a new
Christ, a bigger Christ than ever I have known.”
What are you expecting this week? Well, I hope you have a
good time! But your “good time,” dear friends,
in the light of eternity may be a very bad time. When it
comes to seeing the real fruit, it may come out of a
devastation.
What is God
doing?—He is devastating one kind of humanity. We
are going to see that as we go on from day to day. He is
doing it. I do not know what your experience is, but I
know it is mine. I know it is the experience of many of
the most used and blessed servants of God—that they
are going through a terrible time. Spiritually they have
come to the place, where if the Lord, the Lord does not
really stand by and take over and see them through, it is
an end even of their long spiritual experience. All the
past will not stand unless the Lord comes in in a new
way. Is not that true with many? Yes, that is what He is
doing. He is working on this very ground of the two
humanities—one being that which we are by
nature; and the Other, that which we are in Christ.
So, what we are to be
occupied with at this time is first of all, to behold the
Man, to behold The Man. And I would pray, and do
pray, that when this week is finished, we shall be able
to truly express our hearts in those wonderful words of a
poet known to many of you. These are some lines from that
wonderful poem,
“Christ”
I am
Christ’s, and let that Name suffice me.
Aye, and for me He greatly hath sufficed.
Yea, through life, through death, through sorrow,
and through sinning,
He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed.
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning.
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.
Those
words express what we would all like to be the issue of
this time—Christ.
A New Captivation Of Christ.
A New, Wonderful Appreciation Of Christ.
A New Seeing Of The Significance Of Christ In God’s
Universe.
Now for these remaining few minutes of the introduction,
I want to just pinpoint this one thing. Have you
recognized, (perhaps you have without putting it in these
words) have you recognized that the very heart and pivot
of our Bible is an immense transition? The heart of the
Bible is where the Old Testament ends and the New
Testament begins, for here are two halves of human
history, of humanity. Right there, at that point we come
on this great immense transition. The New Testament is
wholly taken up with the meaning and the nature, the fact
of this transition, this movement from one thing to
Another in humanity.
You will
recall so much in your New Testament when I just mention
these things. First of all it is a transition from one
man to Another, from Adam to Christ. We read that in 1
Corinthians 15: “the first man,” He called
“him”...? No, He called “them”
man (Gen. 5:2). That is racial; that is humanity. He
called them. That is very simple—the first man,
Adam. It is the same thing, “Adam” and
“man,” as you noticed in the margin of Genesis
5. “He called them ‘man’.” And the
New Testament wholly bears upon this transition from one
humanity to Another, from one racial head and inclusive
person to Another. It is a New Humanity, going beyond
transition then, which is a racial one, from Adam to
Christ, from the first man to the last Man.
Secondly, there is a transition from one nation to
Another. I know there is room for a lot of controversy
there about Israel; nevertheless, the New Testament and
Christ Himself came down on this quite emphatically:
“The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you
(that is, Israel), and shall be given to a nation
bringing forth the fruits thereof.” Heavenly Fruit,
not earthly. Transition from one nation to Another.
And Peter,
oh, Peter! I am amazed at Peter, are you not?! That
erstwhile Judaistic traditionalist who had a battle with
the Lord over Gentiles in Caesarea, going to the house of
Cornelius and even saying in a contradiction of terms to
the Lord, “Not so, Lord.” You cannot put those
words together —“Lord” and “Not
so.” The other man, Paul, you remember when he met
Christ, said: “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to
do?” But Peter has not got out of his tradition
quite yet; and even at Antioch—dissimulation. When
James and the elders came down from Jerusalem, Peter
withdrew himself from eating with the Gentiles. He has
still got a little bit of grave clothes left on him, but
marvel of marvels, when you come to his letters he is
out. “Ye are an elect race.” Who?—The
saints scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia,
and Bithynia. An elect race. He is out of the one nation,
now into the Other. The transition has been consummated
in this man. But it was a battle. Always a battle over
this old association with the natural man. We are going
to see much more of that.
Then it is
a transition from one economy to the Other. Your letter
to the Hebrews is one solid argument for this transition.
I am so impressed with the constant recurrence in the New
Testament of one phrase which leads out with linking
words: the phrase is “Not, But.” John
began that, did he not? Christ said to the woman of
Samaria: “Not in this mountain, nor at Jerusalem,
but in spirit” (John 4:21, 24 paraphrased).
“Not, nor, but”—and you find that
occurring again and again.
And here you come to this great transition from one
economy to Another, the old economy taking in the great
ministry of angels: that is a subject for a morning in
itself. The ministry of angels in the old economy. The
law was given through angels. Angels came again and again
to Gideon, to Daniel. The archangels, marvelous ministry
of angels—but the Letter to the Hebrews opens up,
“Not unto angels... but”—“Not,
But”—what a change! And the following argument
is that this New Economy infinitely transcends the
ministry of angels.
And as you
get on toward the end of that letter to the Hebrews, you
have another of these transitory phrases: “You are
not come unto a mount, a palpable mount, that burned with
fire... but ye are come...” —how vast is this
movement from that old economy to the bringing in of the
New Economy. There is one thing only in your New
Testament, introduced by Christ in the Gospels and
followed out by the apostles; and in this letter to the
Hebrews, the solid object of the whole letter is the
transition from one economy to Another. Oh, read it again
and glory in it. Read that letter again to the Hebrews.
Glory in this: “My, what a thing we have been
brought into.” Tabernacle? Yes, says the writer,
there was a tabernacle on this earth, and for the time
being... until the time. That is all gone, he says, and
now we have come into the True Tabernacle not made with
hands, which God has made, a Heavenly Tabernacle. See how
wonderful the transition is!—the passing over from
one economy to Another.
I must
pause to ask, is this where Christendom has gone
astray?—
Is it still holding on to the old economy?
Is it still in the grave clothes?
Is it still that old Mosaic economy with its forms and
ways?
Is it not emancipated into the Heavenlies?!
That is what the Lord wants to do with us here.
From one
nation to Another: Abraham to Christ, Moses to Christ.
From one sovereignty to Another: we know how full the New
Testament is of David and His Greater Son—full of
it. But it shows the transition from one earthly
sovereignty to Another Heavenly Sovereignty in Jesus
Christ.
And so we could go on marking these aspects of the
transition. And if you want a key to the Gospel by John,
remember John wrote the whole of that gospel on one
thought only. The key to the whole of that gospel is this
transition from one to Christ. He has taken over. That is
why the many “I Am”s. You notice those
“I Am”s have a reflection upon the old. I am
not the vine, “I Am the True Vine.” Israel was
a vine, but He has taken over as the True Vine. Israel
was a false vine—did not bring forth the fruit.
Now, I am
not going to start with John’s gospel, but I give
you the key. When you move from the introduction of this
Other Humanity in the Person of Christ in Matthew, Mark,
Luke, John, (and this is the key to them all) and come
through the desolation of the Cross, you come into Acts,
and what are you in? Oh, this marvelous
emancipation—transition, transition—in the Book
of the Acts. What desolation was made in that whole
system because through the desolation of the Cross, there
is the emergence into this Other side—this New
Humanity. Watch how the Lord is working on this old
humanity to wind it up, progressively now bringing it to
where He has put it.
The
Climax Of The Full Knowledge Of Christ
You know,
friends, God always works backward towards something.
Well, in the creation, He was working backward. Read it
again. Why have we in the New Testament so many words
which begin with the little prefix “re,”
regeneration, reconciliation; all have that little prefix
“re,” for He is working back.
Things
have gone away, gone wrong, got out of God’s way,
and God is returning to where they went wrong. God
usually does that with us. And so what is God’s
beginning?— It is His Son before the foundation of
the world. Right back in the Eternal counsels His Son was
made the beginning, God’s starting place. Men have
all gone astray, because of history, “all of us like
sheep have gone astray.”
God gets back to His beginning, His Son. Christendom has
gone astray, and the only way of saving Christendom is to
get back to God’s beginning, a true and right
apprehension of His Son.
I do not want to just go on with material. There is an
application of this to us. I am convinced, I know it is
true, that what the Lord is doing with so many of us is
stripping us, stripping us of the things which we have
taken on or we have gotten into; He is stripping them off
and bringing us down to the place where it is the Lord
Jesus or it is nothing! If the Lord Jesus fails, there is
nothing to live for, and some of us have come to the
place where we have said to the Lord, “Lord, if You
are not going to come in and fill this place, please take
us away: there is nothing more to live for.” Is that
exaggeration?
I believe
the Lord is doing that with many of His people today,
taking away their ministry, taking away the fellowships
on which they rested so much, taking away the things,
even the Christian things—their work, their
preaching. When you start preaching there becomes a
fascination about preaching; you get over that as you get
older... you say, “Lord, don’t let me preach
unless You’re going to do the preaching.” The
Lord is doing that sort of thing, just stripping us,
stripping us of things, even Christian things; and He is
going to fill the place Himself.
Now is not
that the real climax revealed?! Put it into these words
of the Apostle Paul, “Till we all attain
unto...” what? Oh, what a pity our translators have
not given us an exact translation! They have said,
“until we all attain to... the knowledge of the Son
of God.” No! it is “to the full knowledge of
the Son of God... to the measure of the stature
of...” what? A Man. The climax of the knowledge of
Christ, the full knowledge of Christ, is our attainment.
And what is it?—a kind of a Man which is the
reproduction of, if I may put it this way, Jesus Christ
the Man. And so we are coming more and more to
this—that it is only the Lord: it is Christ.
I Am
Christ’s, Let the Name Suffice.
Oh, if only we have got
A large enough apprehension of Him!
Well, now
I am going to break off here, and if the Lord wills,
continue from that point getting nearer to this tomorrow
morning. With all this greatness of setting, of
background, in which we are if we are in Christ, does not
that very phrase open up to this conception of God’s
purpose that in Christ there is Another Humanity?!
This is
what the Lord is doing with you, with me, making
something different; oh, it is too slow, I know, for us.
We do not seem to be making much progress that way, but
He is undoing and He is adding.
But, what
do we know? But, what do I know? Oh, I feel worse than
ever I did in my life in myself. If it were not for
Christ, I would not be here today. No, I would have gone
out; I would not be here through all the stresses, all
the strains, all the experiences, all the devastations,
all those times when down in the dust I have simply said,
“Lord, You have made a mistake, You’ve made a
mistake, I am Your great mistake. You ought never to have
brought me into this position.” It always seems like
that in our experiences; but here we are. We have
survived, and more than survived; we are here. And we
believe we are here by the power of God in Jesus Christ.
That we do know, and so we can say, “It is Christ,
it is Christ, and it is a mighty Christ in our
history.”
Well, this
is enough for this morning. See what He is doing?! May He
show us that He has marvelous thoughts for what He has
conceived—Humanity as His crown and His goal. Shall
we pray...
Lord, we do beseech Thee, we entreat Thee, to open the
eyes of our understanding. Do not let this be so much
more talking, teaching—certainly not an end in
itself. But Lord, bow us in Thy presence. We know that
the real discovery of whether we are in with Thee at this
time will not just be in our attending the meetings; it
will be in the prayer that is behind, outside of the
meetings, in our rooms, in our hearts. Lead us, we pray
Thee. Deep exercise about this matter of what Thou art
working toward, and why Thou art dealing with us as Thou
art. So help us, by Thy grace, in the Name of the Lord
Jesus, Amen.