Reading: Revelation 1:1-18.
“…He
hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the
world in righteousness in THE MAN WHOM HE HATH ORDAINED;
whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he
hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:31, marg.).
It will be with that
little phrase, “he will judge the world… in the
man whom he hath ordained”, as our key, that we
shall consider this wonderful revelation of the Lord
Jesus which forms our preliminary reading. “The man
whom he hath ordained.” Let us look for a few
minutes at one or two of those words.
Firstly, “He
hath appointed a day”: that is, He has fixed, or
established, a day. Into that statement the whole book of
the Revelation is gathered. When John said: “I was
in the Spirit on the Lord’s day”, he said more
explicitly: “I became in the Spirit”, or,
“I found myself in spirit, in the day of the Lord”.
God “hath set forth, or fixed, a day, in which he
will judge the world in righteousness”.
And then, “in
the man whom he hath ordained”. That word “ordained”
is a very interesting word. It is the Greek word from
which we get our English word “horizon”: it
means, basically, to set bounds or limits, to mark out a
defined or determined realm. In this passage, the Man is
the realm, the marked out limit, the defined sphere in
which God will judge the world. It is suggestive that the
phrase in the original Greek is, literally, “IN
the man”. (Compare 1 Cor. 6:2: “if the world
shall be judged IN you”.) Everything is to be
brought for its judgment into the realm of what this Man
is. Everything and everyone will be judged according to
the significance of the Man whom He has ordained.
We shall come back to
that presently, but it may be helpful just to have said
that much as to these two words. There is a day, and a
very crowded day, coming, as this book of the Revelation
shows, and it is the day of a Man: that is, in which
everything is to be tested by that Man, according to that
Man — the Man whom He hath ordained.
Now we come to this
book of the Revelation, and to this first chapter in
particular. I say no new thing when I say that the books
of Genesis and Revelation bound the history of this
present world. One is the book of the beginnings; the
other is the book of the endings. The one is the first,
the other is the last, and it is there that the Lord
Jesus, the Man whom God has ordained, embraces that whole
history, and says: “I am the first and the last”,
“the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end”.
“I am the Genesis and I am the Revelation. I am the
beginning, the Alpha, and I am the end, the Omega”.
This whole history moves by phases, shorter and longer,
and the first phase, which, so far as its record is
concerned, is gathered into a very short portion of
Scripture, the first two chapters of the book of Genesis,
ends with a man and the tree, the tree of life. From that
point another phase commences. At that point what is
called “the fall” takes place, and an entirely
new phase begins. The first phase brings us to the man
and the tree; the last phase, in the book of the
Revelation, brings us — in the first chapter to the
Man, in the end of the book to the tree. These two things
are governing all history. What they signify embodies and
embraces the whole of the history of this world. We shall
confine our attention, at this time, to the man.
The
Conception of Man
There are several
things that we have to note about the man. First of all,
there is God’s CONCEPTION of man. What is
that conception? In the words so familiar to us, it is:
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after
our likeness”. So the conception of man is
God-likeness. That is all-governing with God; that is
all-governing in all God’s dealings with man. It is
that which comes out pre-eminently in the book of the
Revelation as the consummation of God’s dealings
with man. That is the thing which lies behind all these
movements of God in relation to man — God-likeness.
If we miss everything else, let us hold on to this:
because in this is found, and out of this proceeds,
everything else. God’s concern with man is HIS
LIKENESS.
God is not concerned
in the first place, or in any very important way, with
doctrine, with teaching, with Christian work, with our
many-sided activities. These all may follow and have a
place, but they are all very subordinate. They have a far
smaller place with God than they have with us. With God
they are only related things, they are side-issues. With
Him, the one all-important and all-inclusive thing is His
own likeness. What matters to Him about all our teaching,
about all our gatherings, about all our works and
activities, is the measure in which His likeness appears
as the result. Nothing else counts. We do not gather
together for teaching, doctrine, “conference
meetings”. Let this be established at the outset. We
gather together, if we are in line with the divine
desire, in order that there may be in us more likeness to
God, as He judges everything in the Man whom He has
ordained — IN the Man, not by the Man; in the
Man, in what that Man is.
That is the
conception of God. Let us ask the Lord very much that He
will lay strongly upon our hearts, and keep it ever
before us, that the thing that matters, from A to Z, from
Alpha to Omega, from beginning to end, is that God’s
conception and purpose, in giving us a being at all, is HIS
LIKENESS — an expression of Himself. This must
be an adjusting factor in our mentality, in our
conversation, in our teaching. We must not be taken up
with efforts to get the church according to a certain
technique and order and conception. Our message must not
be the message of the Body of Christ as a truth, as a
doctrine, as a procedure. All these things come within
this encircling conception. What is the Body of Christ
for, if it is not to express what Christ is like? What is
the church for, if it is not to manifest the presence of
Christ? This must adjust our thoughts, our ideas, our
teaching and our talk. The thing about which we have to
be concerned is — not this and that aspect of truth
— but: How much is the Lord seen, recognised,
understood, as to what He is like?
You know that that is
the key to the Word of God. The whole Word of God is
occupied with this: What is God like? On one side there
is the constant implication, or at least inference:
“God is NOT like that, God is NOT like
that, God is NOT like that — but God IS
like this”. In the days of the Lord Jesus, the whole
idea of the most religious people — the Jews
themselves, and all the Jewish rulers — was a false
conception of God; and the Lord Jesus in their midst was,
by His very presence, His very nature, as well as by His
teaching and His activity, saying, “No, God is not
like that; God is like this”. “He that hath
seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). And see
how He clashed with popular religious ideas as to what
God was like. Yes: “Not technique, not truth,
doctrine, but ‘our likeness’”, says the
Lord.
The Principle of Man
The next thing is
what I am going to call the PRINCIPLE of man. What
is the principle we find when God has made man and set
him forth? The principle is that the man is a standard
man: he represents or sets forth a standard. He is not
just a being, but he is a KIND of being. He is not
just holding an office; he is a PERSON. God did
not make a drawing of His thoughts or paint a picture of
His conceptions; He made a man. He did not make a working
machine to set forth the operation of certain laws; He
made a man. And that is a standard to which God would
work, which God would impress upon His creation, His
universe: that what that man is should be found, as it
were, emanating or issuing forth and pressing upon
everything, and that everything should be conformed to
that man. As you see the works of that man and the
expressions of that man’s being, you should know
what kind of a man he is: just as, in every sphere of
life, in a home, in a garden, in a business, if there is
a man about — not a feeble caricature, but a MAN!
— you find that that particular sphere, in which the
man exercises his influence, bears the impress of that
man. You can trace the man here — see what kind of a
man lives here, works here, moves here. You know the man
by the impress of his hand. He is, in his sphere, the
standard of things.
And that is a
principle in man. There is a principle about man that he
is a standard set forth by God: everything is to take the
impress of that man, as a standard; is to come up to a
certain level. That man must not let things down. That
man must not allow things to lose character, to lose
form, to become a shapeless mass. He must see to it that
everything comes up to that express full thought that is
found in the man God has made.
The
Vocation of Man
“Let us make man…
and let them have dominion” over this and that
— over all things. The VOCATION of man,
according to God’s intention, is dominion,
government. And when you come, in the light of the whole
history of man, to look into this vocation, this
governmental idea of God as to man, you find that it has
three aspects.
It begins with
himself. That is quite clear, as to Adam. It is quite
clear all the way along that God holds man, in the first
place, responsible for the government of himself.
Everything else proceeds from that. All that the New
Testament has to say about self-control — a poor
translation of the word — is just that. It all
begins with government of himself.
Then, in the second
place, it extends to the world — and, mark you, man’s
government of the world depends upon his government of
himself. It extends to the government of the world. But
do not get false mentalities about that. Government of
the world is not temporal government, to begin with. It
was with Adam, and it will be eventually, but this is a
spiritual thought. We remember all that is said by John
about “he that overcometh the world” (1 John
5:4,5). This Man whom God has ordained said: “I have
overcome the world” (John 16:33). We will not take
time just now to define and explain what is meant by
“the world” in this connection, but perhaps it
is not necessary. Do you find the world something to be
overcome? Is there not a spirit — is there not an
order, a nature of things, a way, a mentality, a
disposition — that we speak of as “the world”,
“the way of the world”? Yes, and you know what
a great force that is to be overcome. It is a spiritual
thing, dominion over the world; and there will be no
government of the world in any more literal sense, later,
if there is no government of the world in a spiritual
sense now.
Then, in the third
place, this government reaches to the heavens. It is
found to affect, to be related to, spiritual forces
beyond man — outside of man and outside of the
world. It is in that realm that this government finds its
ultimate and supreme expression.
There is no need for
me at this point to take you into the New Testament with
those three connections: government as to our own souls,
as to the spirit of the world around us, and as to the
forces of evil, of darkness, working through both. That
will probably come out more fully as we go on.
The
Testing of Man
The fourth thing is
the TESTING of man. Here we have to repeat that
man was not just an official, but a morally responsible
person, and the whole issue of his moral responsibility
was the question of FAITHFULNESS: faithfulness to
God, faithfulness to the divine conception, faithfulness
to the standard God had set up as to Himself. There are
many aspects of self which are forbidden, but there are
some aspects of self which are right, and self-respect is
one of them — that right kind of self-respect which
marked Nehemiah: “Should such a man as I flee?”
(Nehemiah 6:11). That is moral dignity, and man was
tested as to his faithfulness to God — faithfulness
to himself in the highest sense, to the dignity of his
own being in God’s thought, from heaven’s
standpoint. It was not self-importance — you know
what I mean — but faithfulness to his vocation to
govern for God. Faithfulness was the ground of testing.
And with a view to
that testing, you can see the play of spiritual forces:
the permission of those forces of evil, of Satan, the
tempter, the adversary, the deceiver, to come and play
upon this man to test him as to his faithfulness. Note
that it is the play of SPIRITUAL forces, through
the WORLD, upon the SOUL, regarding the VOCATION,
involving the destiny. I want you to get those phases. The
play of spiritual forces: in the testing of man unto
his approving, unto his establishing. The play of
spiritual forces through the world: it is through
the world, in the first place, that you and I will find
our testing. That world is a very comprehensive world. Upon
our souls: our reasoning, our desiring and our
deciding. Through the world, upon our souls, regarding
our vocation: to rob us of our divinely-appointed
governmental function, to rob God of His intention to
make man His ruler in the creation and in the spiritual
world.
Yes, it is that
vocation that God has in view. Do not forget it. Do not
let the point be missed through my imperfect way of
expressing it. I have to put it in this way, but do not
look at that — do not just hear it as words, as
things said. Do you not see what the enemy is after, as
he plays with his evil forces upon your souls through
this world? If God did not have this meaning always in
view, He would shut you up in convents and monasteries,
He would keep you in conferences all the days of your
life; He would set up hostels and say, “Live there!
Never go out of doors; look at the world from behind a
grill!” — but He does not. He puts you in the
world, and you are all the time wanting to get out of it
into “spiritual work”, into “spiritual
service”, to have a Bible everlastingly under your
arm or on your desk. But He drives you into the world,
and there you are, under testing by the forces of evil
— by His permission — in relation to spiritual
government: of yourself first, then of the world
spiritually, and then of the spiritual forces behind the
world. That is what God is doing.
The
Destiny of Man
The fifth and last
thing here is the DESTINY of man. Our destiny is
all involved — and what a destiny it is! What is it?
The destiny is GLORY. Perhaps that does not help
you very much. It sounds abstract. What is glory? First
of all, in its essence, it is the shining forth of the
divine nature: it is what the Bible calls immortality or
incorruption. Christ “brought life and incorruption
to light” (2 Timothy 1:10): that is glory —
where there is nothing left that is corrupt or can be
corrupted. That is the destiny of man.
And when it is like
that, when there is the shining forth of the divine
nature, it is a most potent thing. You and I have not
grasped the tremendous significance of some of the
statements about the appearing of our Lord. Saul of
Tarsus went down, smitten blind, as one paralysed or
dead, when this “Man whom He had ordained”
appeared before him on the way to Damascus. John “fell
at his feet as one dead” (Rev. 1:17), and the
Scripture declares that by the manifestation of His
coming or presence He will bring to nought the lawless
one (2 Thess. 2:8). This is not just light, a blaze of
light. This is a nature — terrible, unendurable: to
wickedness, to sin, to evil, destructive; but, for the
man after His heart, incorruption, glory. We shall be
glorified together with Him (Romans 8:17). Even our
bodies will be bodies of glory, because no corruption is
found in that resurrection body. “Conformed unto the
body of his glory” (Phil. 3:21).
The destiny is the
thing that is involved in God’s permission to the
enemy to put us through severe testing. It is that that
is bound up with our being put by the Lord where we are
in this world — not only as to location, but as to
atmosphere, in a condition of things so inimical to God,
so unlike God, where Satan has his power.
Everything
Recovered in Christ
Now all this —
the conception, the principle, the vocation, the testing,
and the destiny — is what we have in the first
chapter of the book of the Revelation. You notice the one
designation given to Christ in that chapter is “son
of man”. “I turned to see… I saw seven
golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the candlesticks
one like unto a son of man” (vv. 12,13). Here we
have THE Man, the perfect Man, presented,
embodying all that of which we have just been speaking.
He embodies God’s conception of divine likeness in a
Man. He embodies the principle of man, as a standard
— God will judge the world in that Man. In virtue of
what He is He will bring everything to judgment. It is
all being judged, not only by Him but in Him, by what He
is. Here He is presented as the standard.
Again, here is the
Man in full possession and exercise of His vocation of
government. Further, He has been tested and approved.
Tested in obedience unto death, yea, the death of the
cross — “I became dead”; approved —
“Behold, I am alive for evermore”. Let us
recall Acts 17:31 again: “He will judge the world in
righteousness in the man whom he hath ordained; whereof
he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath
raised him from the dead”. He was subjected to the
test of ultimate faithfulness, an obedience unto death;
He was approved after utter testing — God raised Him
from the dead. Here is “the Man”. And, lastly,
the Man is in the glory. He has reached His destiny
— glory. This is what we have in this chapter: a Man
— THE Man — answering to God’s
thought, of God’s appointment.
In the fall it was
all this that was lost. The conception — divine
likeness — was lost. The principle — the divine
standard — was lost. The vocation — government
— was lost. The approving through trial was lost.
The glory was lost. But in the Man it is all won back, it
is all recovered. And I close here by just putting my
finger upon the glorious significance of some of John’s
words in this chapter. “Jesus Christ... the faithful
witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the
kings of the earth. Unto him that loveth us, and loosed
us from our sins by his blood; and he made us to be a
kingdom, priests unto his God and Father; to him be the
glory and the dominion for ever and ever” (vv. 5,6).
Remember, John wrote that prelude, that introduction to
his wonderful book, after he had received the whole
revelation. He says, in effect: “I am going to write
down all He has shown me: but oh, in the light of all He
has shown me — ‘unto him that loveth us, and
loosed us from our sins by his blood; and… made us
to be a kingdom, priests unto his God and Father...’!”
What is the
significance? All that was lost is recovered for us by
that love and by that blood. He “loveth us”. He
by His blood has “loosed us” from all that came
in by the fall. In Himself He has recovered it all,
secured it all. Now He is the representative One, the Son
of Man, and
“In
Him the tribes of Adam boast
More
blessings than their father lost”
That is why John was
so exultant. He might have put this at the end, but he
puts it at the beginning. Terrible things are going to be
revealed, but he begins with a shout of exultation. It is
a terrible thing that has happened, but it is a glorious
thing that has followed: therefore “unto him that
loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood; and
he made us to be a kingdom,… priests unto his God
and Father; to him be the glory and the dominion for ever
and ever”.
“In the man whom
he hath ordained.” You see how Christ compasses
everything, dominates everything, determines everything,
becomes that realisation of God’s original
conception and purpose in man, and the standard to which
God by His Spirit is working — yes, actually working
in us, and using the very forces of evil through this
world to do it. There is no God-likeness to be attained
unto except in the midst of a hostile world. The greatest
victory of all is to walk in the midst of Sodom and
Gomorrah in white raiment.