“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom
and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His
judgments, and His ways past tracing out!”
(Rom. 11:33; A.S.V.).
“Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints,
was this grace given, to preach unto the nations the
unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8).
So, with the enablement of the Lord, we are going to move
in these deep waters and seek to discover a little of the
unsearchable riches of Christ, the depth of the riches of
the wisdom, and the knowledge of Christ. The Apostle
Paul, who used these words was striving against the
limitations of language to give expression to something
of what he had come to realize as to the Christ, as to
the salvation in Christ, into which he had been brought.
He does use these many superlatives, straining to find
words to speak of the unsearchable, inexhaustible,
unfathomable, infinite wealth of the riches of Christ.
“O
The Depth Of The Riches”
This man Paul was able
to speak in this way about the riches of Christ just for
one reason: his sufferings in Christ; and you and I will
never be able rightly to use such language unless we go
the way that he went, the way of the Cross. You see, in
order to find things which are deep, you have to go into
the depth. You will never find deep things in the
shallows. You have to go down and down, and get very low.
And that in itself explains the Lord’s dealings with
His people—it is the answer to the cries of the
heart in deep and dark and difficult places and times.
Why? If we could but realize it, we should hear the
answer coming back to us: that you may discover and
appropriate spiritual wealth. These riches do not lie on
the surface at all: they are the hidden treasures of dark
and secret places. And wealthy souls are ever and always
those who have touched something of the depth in their
walk with God.
Now here is a man whom
you know from the many things that he has placed on
record, a man who had many—otherwise—inexplicable
experiences. His catalogue of sufferings and adversities
of every kind is written for us largely in his Second
Letter to the Corinthians. We know that half of chapter
six is taken up with the things which befell him.—
“Giving no offence in anything, that the ministry be
not blamed: but in all things approving ourselves as the
ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in
necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments,
in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; by
pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by
the Holy Spirit, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth,
by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on
the right hand and on the left, by honour and dishonour,
by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet
true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and
behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as
sorrowful, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and
yet possessing all things” (2 Cor. 6:3–10).
And in other places too, he makes reference to his
sufferings in Christ:—
“Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I
am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above
measure, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I
forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods,
once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night
and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often,
in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by
mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils
in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in
the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and
painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in
fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those
things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily,
the care of all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:23–28).
And if ever a man had a reason to ask, “Why?”
it was that man. ‘Why, Lord, are you letting me
spend a night and a day in the deep? Being again and
again and yet again thrashed with rods, imprisoned, dealt
with treacherously by mine own brethren,’ and so on
and so on. ‘Why, Lord? I am devoted to You. I have a
heart for You. I am not seeking mine own ends, but Yours.
I am utterly committed to Your interests. There are many
who are not so committed, and they do not have to go the
way that I am going.’ Why? For such a man
with such a devotion, with such an abandon to the
interests of his Lord, why is this man suffering more
than any other man, perhaps even more than the whole
apostolic company?! Not one of us will ever measure up to
this man’s sufferings, although we may sometimes
think that ours are just about the limit. I imagine that
very few in this little company this afternoon have not
had times when they have asked the big “Why?”
as to the strangeness of the Lord’s dealings and the
Lord’s ways with them.
Now does it not strike you very forcibly, and very
significantly that such a man cries for language to
express what he has seen in the Lord Jesus and says: “O
the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the
knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and
His ways past finding out!” (Rom. 11:33). He
says, “To me, not the greatest of the apostles, to
me, not the greatest saint, to me, not as one more than
any other, but less than all, to me, who am less than the
least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach...
the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8;
A.S.V.). Yes, we know the riches came through this man,
because for two thousand years, the Church has been
drawing upon the riches which he reached and received
through trials and sufferings. Riches are still coming to
us today from that man, perhaps even now. May it be so
Lord, today, for that reason. It may sound discouraging,
but, dear ones, there is no other way to receive the
riches than through suffering.
Some time ago, on one
of my visits to India, we came on the Persian Gulf; and
as I looked on the Gulf of Persia, I saw the pearl
fishers way out there in the depths, spending their long,
patient hours seeking goodly pearls. This is a lonely and
perilous business. For there in the water, I saw sharks
lurking about and looking for prey. And then later that
night, after dark, I went into the Persian market, the
bazaar, and through the narrow aisles between the stalls,
I saw displayed in those stalls glorious pearls and other
priceless gems. There they were, having been brought in
from the depths, now polished and displayed.
And then, as I boarded
the boat to go on to India, a pearl merchant came on with
his cabinets of gems and pearls. These were bound in
iron, with strong padlocks on them; and as that sheik sat
in his seat, he kept his eye on those cabinets and would
not take his eye off of them until we landed and he had
delivered them to the merchants in India. These were
valuable things, precious things, from the depths. They
were costly, because they had cost. They were valuable,
because there was painful and lonely vigil behind their
obtaining. You see, perils had been associated with
securing them.
This is a parable, but this is what Paul is really
talking about—the perils, the loneliness, the long
drawn out vigils, the sufferings and the afflictions to
obtain the riches, and that not for himself, but for the
Church. He said, “I now rejoice in my sufferings for
your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking
of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s
sake, which is the Church” (Col. 1:24; A.S.V.). I
say, there is no other way for us to do more than to talk
about and read about and use the language of the riches.
There is no other way for us to possess them than to go
into the depth and find them. The unsearchable riches—does
that sound like a contradiction?—you have them and
they are unsearchable—you have them and yet they are
too deep to lay hold of—I know this sounds like a
contradiction, but Paul simply means: all the meaning,
all the value, all the wealth that is here, only a little
of which we may know in this life, all that wealth is
really beyond us, it is too big; it is past finding out;
“it is past tracing out.” Well, that is where
we begin with the riches, but we do not end there, for we
are going to look, as the Lord will help us, at some of
these riches, these unsearchable riches.
So, if you at any time
would care to look into your New Testament with that word
“riches” in hand, you will see how it is
connected with different things, because the riches are
many-sided, as seen in...
“The riches of His grace” (Eph. 1:7),
“The riches of His Glory” (Eph. 3:16),
“The riches of His Inheritance in the saints”
(Eph.1:18),
“The riches of the full assurance of understanding”
(Col. 2:2).
I do not know how far the Lord will lead us in this, but
we can begin where the riches begin. Therefore we have to
begin with “the riches of His grace.”
There is another word
linked with that phrase, “the riches of His grace.”
It is “the riches of His goodness.” The apostle
asks, “Despisest thou the riches of His goodness...?”
(Rom. 2:4). That word of scripture will always be beyond
us. We may as well settle it now and throw up our hands
in utter despair right at the beginning. You and I are
never going to fathom that depth nor comprehend that
fullness nor understand that grace. I do not hope for a
moment to be able to plumb the depth of that word; that
is why we can only just dip into these depths—“the
riches of His grace” and “the riches of His
goodness.”
We have a very
hackneyed way of defining grace. It has been put into a
phrase, and we do not get very much further than that
phrase. If we ask, “What is the meaning of grace?”
the traditional answer is: “Grace is unmerited
favor.” Yes, it is that, it is unmerited favor. That
very definition does introduce us to the basic character
of grace, but that is a weak definition. Yes, it is
“unmerited favour,” and, yes, thank God for
that. But what do you mean by that? Just this—you
have no merit, and God just comes to you because you have
no merit. Nothing can merit grace.
Now, dear friends, I want to say to you, that grace is
more than unmerited favour. First, on our side, it is
worse than that because grace does not only come to where
there is no merit, but grace also comes where there is a
great deal of demerit, demerit. You can see that
demerit is stronger than no merit. No merit may be
negative, but demerit is positive. It is everything that
is not only without merit but of the nature and character
of that which is perfect demerit. You and I are not only
without worthiness, but also you and I are worse than
that. We are positively everything that we should not be!
If you will turn again
to this man Paul who is speaking this way about himself,
not only does he say, “To me, who am less than the
least of all saints” (Eph. 3:8), he also says:
“I am the chief of sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). Now
that is positive: “not only less than the least,”
but positively, “the chief of sinners.” “I
persecuted the Church of God, and wasted it”
(Gal.1:13), ‘I gave my consent to the murder of His
beloved servant Stephen’ (Acts 8:1). And he will
tell you not only of his lack of merit but a great deal
more about his demerit. Everything that was there in that
man was an offence to God; and if anything could stand in
the way of grace, it was there in that man. But, you see,
grace just means that demerit, not only no merit, but
demerit does not set grace aside. Grace is just grace,
whatever the condition, however great the demerit, that
is grace.
As Christians, you and
I have got to learn a great deal more about grace as we
go on. Perhaps all this is something that the Christian
has to reckon with even more so than the unsaved. If you
and I are really moving with God, you and I are coming
more and more to the place where we do say from the depth
of our being, “But for the grace of God.” For
me, even as a Christian, after all these years, I will
not get through except for the grace of God. As I see and
understand it, it takes a great deal more of grace for me
now as a Christian than it did to save me at the
beginning.
Now to some, that may
seem a strange thing to say, but again I am referring to
grace. For are we not discovering all the time what we
did not know even at the beginning, which is, the
presence of the demerit in ourselves?! Oh, yes, but don’t
you see that is just the character of grace, and that is
what grace really means. Grace has no meaning unless that
is true.
So, then, let us note this second thing about grace.
Grace never recognizes any debt. Grace is not a payment
of any debt; grace is not in our debt at all. God is not
dealing with us in grace because He owes us something.
This is only another way of speaking about the absence of
merit and the presence of demerit. You see, no one has a
claim upon the grace of God. God is not our debtor; grace
does not recognize any such thing as being in debt and
having to pay its way with us. Grace is free, grace is
not something for which God is trying to pay us back. It
is all the other way around. We are the debtors, God is
the creditor, and grace is just grace; and there is
perhaps nothing else that we can say about it, because
grace is just His free, spontaneous movement without any
obligation. That is the basic nature, the character of
grace.
When we realize this
true nature of grace and the positive demerit about
ourselves, and that God is under no obligation to us,
then we realize God just makes “grace abound”—“where
sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly”
(Rom. 5:20; A.S.V.). Now is that not true?—“where
sin abounded,” grace does so much more abound?! Then
we begin to understand what the depth of the riches may
be. We are introduced into a realm that is beyond us.
Beyond us, is it not? And any soul that has not come to
the time and state of just wondering in amazement at God’s
voluntary, spontaneous, free, unmerited favor, the soul
that has not come there, has not begun to know the
meaning of such words as “the riches of His grace”;
and that one can never truly be a wealthy soul.
The
Works—The Appreciation Of Grace
So much for the present
about the character of grace, but you know that grace is
always set over against works. Although we are so
familiar with this truth, let us just dwell upon it for a
moment—upon works and grace. You see this represents
a change, a complete change and reversal of position.
Grace changes place with works, or changes the place of
works. Grace does not obliterate works. Grace does not
say there are never to be works. Grace will demand works;
and if it is rightly appreciated, grace will get much
more and much better works than any before. But grace
does just change the place of works, the works of the
Law. What were the works of the law? What are the works
of the Law? They are the works in order to get merit, are
they not? To get merit, that is the idea. To get merit,
to obtain merit, to pay God back with your merit.
Look at the scribes and
the Pharisees. O, how abhorrent, how obnoxious, was their
behavior, their activities and pretenses to the Lord
Jesus Himself. They sought merit by works. Giving God
something for His enrichment?! Yes, works of the Law to
obtain merit were works to give as currency to pay God,
thus putting God into our debt and making Him our
debtor?! And are we doing all these things to get
ourselves out of discredit and give our credit to God?
When grace comes in, you see, grace puts the works in
another place altogether and takes them out of the first
place and puts them into the last. And instead of Law
being first, it is grace first. Instead of works for
merit being first, it is just God’s own grace
without any works whatsoever to obtain any satisfaction
and pleasure of God.
And then what? All
works have not been ruled out of the universe. When grace
has come in, if we have really grasped the meaning of
grace, we will work more than anyone else has ever
worked. But now they are the works of appreciation of
grace, not to obtain it, not to merit it, but the works
of thanks to God for His unspeakable gift of grace. It
changes the place of things, puts things right around the
other way. Someone has put this into a rather cryptic
phrase: Works do not justify, but the justified person
works. Well, that is quite true. “I laboured,”
said the Apostle, “more abundantly than them all”
(1 Cor. 15:10). And that was true, but was he talking
merit?— then he had no right to talk about grace.
But he is the man who does talk about grace, and he
“laboured more abundantly than them all”
because of the overwhelming grace of God to him. The
position was entirely reversed, not law and works to
obtain favour, but works of love and devotion because of
favour obtained. It is a complete reversal.
God’s
Work Of Grace
Now then, what about
God’s work of grace? What was true in the first
material, natural creation is true spiritually in the new
creation. You know that so well. It only needs to be
mentioned, and at once you will see it. There was chaos,
there was darkness, there was the absence of God. But God
moved in and dispelled the darkness and turned the chaos
into cosmos order and got to work: He got to work, step
by step and stage by stage, upward, upward all the time,
creating, ordering, providing a beautiful earth, a
wonderful place. So is the description of it. Now He
could look upon all His work and pass His verdict, it was
“very good.”
This was the verdict of
an infinitely perfect God Who is so meticulous, Who is so
exacting, Who will never pass anything that is imperfect.
When He has finished it all, He puts man right into the
middle of it, and says: ‘There you are, that is your
inheritance, your inheritance is what I have already
done. What you have come into, is not something that you
have got to make, but what I have already made. Not what
you have to do, but what I have already done. You begin
your vocation in gratitude where I end My work on your
behalf.’
You can clearly see the
corresponding truth in the New Creation where it is not
working unto something, but it is working after
everything has been done. You and I come into God’s
perfect work. Of course, the simple form of preaching the
gospel is to speak about “the finished work of
Christ,” but do we understand these glib phrases?
All that God has done in and through and by His Son Jesus
Christ in the perfecting of salvation, of redemption, of
His work is so that the reception of His Son back into
heaven is complete. And that reception of His Son is
simply because God has nothing more to do so far as
providing the ground of His work is concerned. The Lord
Jesus could never have gone back to heaven unless the
work was full and final and perfect. If there had been
one further touch or stroke, He would not have gone back.
They would not have received Him in heaven. If we may so
speak, they would have said, ‘Look here, You have
left something undone.’ “I have not found Thy
works perfect before My God.” And He would have had
to come back again, but He did not. God had in Him
perfected and finished His New Creation.
And then He began with us, to bring us into it and say,
‘Look here, you have not got to work unto this, you
have got to inherit the New Creation, take possession of
it, and live in the good of it and learn to understand
what you have got and appreciate it.’ These are the
works of God. They are finished so far as the Lord Jesus
is concerned—The works of grace.
If that garden and that
first material creation is something grand, beautiful and
glorious from the hand of God, and wholly satisfies His
heart, then His Son is more than that. More than a
symbolic creation, an earthly thing, His Son is the final
fullness of perfection. He gives us His Son! Perhaps
you and I have not fully grasped that, and this is where
we are in so much trouble, dear friends. There is no
doubt about it. I would go so far as to say that
nine-tenths of our spiritual troubles are here, because
we are listening all the time to the accuser and the
condemner.
When things go hard,
get difficult, and go contrary and against us, then the
devil is saying, ‘It is because of something about
you, your demerit, something is wrong with you.’ And
you go and plead with the Lord, and say, ‘Lord, what
is it that you have got against me?’ You spend your
hours pleading with God to show you what He has got
against you, and why your circumstances are the way they
are, and what the thing is that He has got against you
that is resulting in His dealings with you in this way.
It is just here that
the enemy is turning us aside from this work of grace.
But why was a work of grace going to be done? And we will
come to that presently, but it was done in order to
conform us, to change us. We are not now under judgment
and condemnation. We are under grace! And Satan will
never cease in this life to try and undercut grace and
bring us back under law and to bondage. But you and I
really do need to grasp and believe the unsearchable
riches of His grace.
God’s work is
completed for us to inherit. There will be a battle, a
tremendous battle, as there was with Israel in the land
after they crossed the Jordan and got through the death
of Calvary, the battle in the land is to get the
possession of our inheritance. It is so familiar that
before ever we get a foothold, the Lord has said, ‘I
have given you the inheritance.’ “Every place
that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, to you have
I given it” (Joshua 1:3; A.S.V.). It is secured in
Christ for us.
Now, then, I must leave this for the present. Although
these are truths with which we are so familiar, I think
the great truth remains. You and I as the Lord’s Own
people, beloved of Him, you and I have got to learn more
and more deeply the meaning of this first thing—the
grace of God. We must learn what grace really is and
what grace really means. Withal we must learn how deep,
how vast, how unfathomable and unsearchable are what the
Word calls, “the riches of His grace.”