"Paul, an apostle (not
from men, neither through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God
the Father, who raised him from the dead)... I make known to you,
brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that
it is not after man. For neither did I receive it from man, nor
was I taught it, but through revelation of Jesus Christ... it was
the good pleasure of God... to reveal his Son in me, that I might
preach him among the Gentiles; straightway I conferred not with
flesh and blood... but they only heard say, He that once
persecuted us now preacheth the faith of which he once made
havoc" (Gal. 1:1,11-12,15,23).
In this time together so far,
the Lord has directed our attention to that little clause -
"the faith." The passages basic to our meditation have
been those in the two letters of Paul to Timothy, first his
exhortation to Timothy to fight the good fight of the faith, and
then his own statement as to himself at the end - "I have
fought the good fight, I have kept the faith," and it is
into something of the meaning and significance of that phrase,
"the faith," that we are being led to inquire at this
time.
Here it is again in Gal. 1:23 -
"He that once persecuted us now preacheth the faith of which
he once made havoc." What was it that Saul of Tarsus sought
to destroy, of which he set himself to make havoc? Well, he was a
Jew, and of the Jewish party in Jerusalem, who summed up their
charge and accusation against the Lord Jesus in those words -
"He made himself the Son of God" (John 19:7). As we
said before, it was not just the coming in of a new and rival
religion, but something very much deeper than that, and all that
is contained in that designation "the Son of God"
(Jesus, the Son of God) is what is meant by "the
faith." In a word, it is sonship, and all that sonship means
as something that is out from God, and which has come into this
world, and which being here, is altogether other than that which
is already here: different in nature and different in position,
and therefore different in destiny; something in this universe
which is unique - sonship.
All the forces of hell, and of
this world which lieth in the wicked one, are set against that
sonship; in Christ primarily, pre-eminently, and then in those
who are begotten of God, sons of God, through faith in Jesus
Christ. It is that spiritual reality, that spiritual thing,
namely, sonship which is the object and occasion of all hostility
that makes it necessary for believers to fight. The contention is
not for a creed, not for a system of truth, not for
fundamentalism, but for a spiritual position and a spiritual
nature, and for all that sonship means from God's standpoint; and
for all that that sonship means from Satan's standpoint. As we
said before, wherever we come on this matter of "the
faith," we find ourselves at once in very close proximity to
the element of conflict. Wherever it is mentioned, nearby there
is warfare.
May I just repeat one word said
in our previous meditation when we were thinking about our Lord's
words recorded by Luke - "When the Son of man cometh, shall
he find the faith on the earth?" (Luke 28:8). The question
does not relate to what is called in general "the Christian
faith." There will be plenty of the Christian faith on the
earth. The Lord Jesus would have been a bad prophet, and have had
very little foresight, had His question meant that in the day of
His appearing there would be very little Christianity on the
earth, in that general sense. No, His question went much deeper
than that, and it is a very real question, if we recognise that
sonship is something which has to be brought to fulness in
believers, something which relates to Christ coming to fulness in
His own and of His members coming into His fulness, unto that
ultimate manifestation of the sons in full growth. If that is the
meaning of sonship, then indeed there is room for the question -
"Shall he find the faith on this earth?"
That could be put in other
words. Shall He find on the earth a people who are really going
right on in sonship to the fulness of Christ? And I do not think
there is any doubt about the answer. He will certainly find a
great many Christians who are not going right on, who have
stopped short. It will not be so easy to find these who will go
right on.
My trouble this morning is lack
of time, and I really do not know where to begin and what to say,
because the whole New Testament gathers around this very thing.
The New Testament as a whole -
of course, I am referring to the Epistles - the New Testament as
a whole just comes right down on this question of who is going
on, or who is going to come under this terrible arresting effort
of the enemy, in the matter of spiritual growth.
A Legal
System Works Against the Faith
When you come to the letter to
the Galatians alone - and I am led there very definitely at this
time - you know Paul has hardly got through his introductory word
before he says, 'I marvel that you are so soon brought to a
standstill, that your going on has so quickly been arrested.' The
whole letter is on that matter, namely, their arrest, and Paul's
urge that they should throw off the thing which has come upon
them to arrest them, and go on.
And what is it that has come in
to arrest? Well, it is the same thing you find in so many other
directions in the Church of the New Testament times. It is those
Judaizers from Jerusalem who were following Paul wherever he
went, coming after him and in amongst the fruits of his ministry,
his converts, and saying, "Except ye be circumcised, ye
cannot be saved," bringing in the old traditional system of
religion, a fixed thing, in all its legality, and seeking to
impose it upon them. And the tragedy, the shame, the grief of it
is this, that it is so infectious that even a Peter can become
contaminated; even a Peter, a pillar in the Church, a foremost
apostle, a good and godly man, devoted to and serving the Lord.
Here in this letter to the Galatians, Paul says, 'Certain came
down from James, and Peter was infected, and he compromised, and
I withstood him to the face.' That is a terrible passage, a
terrible situation. But do you see what it implies? There are few
people so good, so high up spiritually, so distinguished for
their service to the Lord, and their relationship with the Lord,
so few who cannot be infected with this something which works so
insidiously against the faith in its essence: good men, godly
men, devout men, Peters, men of the first three, touched by this
thing that is at work. What is it? A legal system set and fixed,
be it Jewish or Christian, which straddles the path of going
right on with the Lord to His full thought, which just comes
right in the way of all that sonship means.
For you see how the Apostle
leads right off on this matter of sonship in the letter to the
Galatians. He is dealing with this spiritual, heavenly seed. His
introduction is all concerning that. 'Paul, an apostle, not of
men but of God, Who raised Jesus from the dead... to deliver us
from this present evil world.' How significant is every word.
There is something here that is not of this earth, not from down
here at all, something not of men - "I received it not of
man, I was not taught it of man." There is something here
that is from heaven. This thing from heaven was on the basis of
resurrection; and that is of God, and God only, something above
all that is here. We are delivered from this present evil world
or age, and Paul in his mind was not only thinking of the vast,
sinful world of paganism and heathenism; he was thinking also of
the religious world. "It pleased God to reveal his Son in
me." We mark, then, all the spiritual elements about his
very introductory words.
Where the
Fight of the Faith Arises
And then, when he has struck
tremendous blows at this system of things, this religious system,
and has challenged Peter over it, in respect of his
dissimulation, he goes on about this heavenly and spiritual seed.
"We are sons of God by faith in Jesus Christ" (3:26).
Then he moves to Ishmael and Isaac, the seed after the flesh and
the seed after the Spirit, and brings in this whole matter of
what sonship really is, as being something after the Spirit. What
he is saying in this whole letter is just this in a word:
Sonship, with all that God means by sonship, is what is in view,
and over against it there is this breaking in continually of
things religious, subtle, beautiful, with all the argument that
God is in them; but, nevertheless, breaking in with one object,
all hidden from sight, namely, to cut right across the path of
the believer in his going right on to God's fullest thought in
sonship; and it sets up a warfare.
Let us be perfectly frank and
plain. Beloved, it is true that there are many good people, many
leading Evangelical people, many Peters if you like, touching
whose devotion to the Lord we can have no question: their zeal,
their consecration, is not open to discussion; and yet they are
so tied by a fixed system that they become points of conflict
where the matter of going right on with the Lord is concerned.
They oppose, they make the difficulty and the trouble: and it is
not themselves personally but the thing which binds them. In
principle it is this Judaism cropping up again, a fixed system
which has held for generations and centuries, a tradition which
is established, and anything that seems to require a superseding
of that tradition - I choose the word carefully - at once
provokes antagonism and conflict. Is it not strange? Why do I use
the word supersede? Because of what Paul says here. He says there
are those who have come in with another Gospel, which is not
another. He means this, that all that came in with Israel was
intended to lead right on to Christ, but now it is being used to
hold back from Christ. The effect of it is to obstruct the way of
realising the end for which it exists. It is not really two
things that are here. Christ is the complement and the fulfilment
of all that came in through Moses, and if only you understand and
interpret Moses aright, you will go right on with Christ. But now
this thing is brought in as though it were another thing. Really,
in essence the two things are one, intended to be one, in the
thought of God, but it is being made two things now. But the
intention of God is that there should be this glorious issue -
Christ in fulness: so that, what can lead to Christ is to be
superseded by Christ. You are not going to say that Judaism is
all wrong, you are not going to say, all the Old Testament is
wrong, is false, you are not going to say that what came in
through Moses is all error. Not at all! But you are going to say
that it was intended to come to a place where all that to which
it was pointing would supersede it.
Oh, the conflict is there, and
the fight of the faith comes right in amongst Paul and Peter in
principle. That is a terrible thing. The fight of the faith! Oh,
you would never find Paul and Peter fighting one another over the
deity of Christ. You would never find them in conflict over any
of these fundamentals of Christianity; the inspiration of the
Scriptures, the Person of the Lord Jesus, the coming again. Oh
no. You would find them absolutely one on all those matters,
however many they were. But here, strangely, we find Peter and
Paul in conflict, one having to withstand the other to the face,
and it is the faith which is involved.
What the
Faith Is
What is the faith? The faith is
this, that Jesus is the Son of God. But that is something more
than a personal, objective relationship. That is a spiritual
reality which has to come into expression through Him in the
Church, in His members as representing the heavenly seed, coming
to the fulness of Christ; which being accomplished, is to
supplant and oust all this other seed which Satan has introduced
into God's universe. That is the faith. The faith comes down to
this, namely, what we are spiritually in God's universe. That is
the faith.
What are we intended to be? We
are intended to be in our experience, in our spiritual life, in
our presence here, a living proof that Jesus is the Son of God;
not just to declare this as a tenet of our faith and creed, but
to be here as children of God growing up into sonship, by which
sonship His sonship is put into expression. Do you follow what I
mean?
Oh, it is over this that there
is all the conflict, and I say again, the conflict gets right in
inside, amongst godly people, godly men, devout men. Why? Because
some are so held by their traditions, by their fixed system, by
the thing established here in Christianity. Somehow or other that
very thing gets in the way of what Paul calls here in the
Galatian letter "the liberty of sons."
The Liberty
of Sons
I wonder what that phrase means
to you, what it is becoming to mean to you - the liberty of sons.
Oh, if you have known bondage to legal Christianity and the Lord
has led you in any measure into spiritual liberty, that is a very
cherished phrase - the liberty of sons. It is a great, great
position to be in. You are not being brow-beaten in your
conscience for a moment about what you must do or must not do,
this whole tremendous, colossal system of Shalts and Shalt nots
that has come into the midst of Christianity, making Christianity
into something that is put on you. They bind heavy burdens and
grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders (Matt.
23:4). That is what the Lord said about the Jews, but that is
what many Christians are doing, and it is very easy for us
to slip into the position where our Christianity and the
Christian life becomes a burden almost grievous to be borne.
To be emancipated from that
into the liberty of sons; what does this mean, and how is it
brought about? You go after the Lord, that is all. It is not a
thing, a system, it is Himself, Christ. Skim through this Galatian
letter and put your pencil mark under every mention of the name
of Christ, and you will get a surprise; and you have got the
message of the letter, for it all resolves itself into this - it
is the Lord, not Judaism, not Christianity, not a system at all;
it is the Lord. And if it is the Lord, you are emancipated; you
need not worry about anything else. You will not go wrong on any
of those thousand points, if it is the Lord upon Whom you are
set. You are bound to go right, if you are after the Lord. That
is liberty, and that is deliverance.
You see the nature of the
conflict. The fight of the faith is not fighting with modernism
in the first instance, nor standing for the virtues of the
Christian faith. It may work out that way, it may at times have
to do with that, and doubtless it does include that, but there is
something very much deeper than that. Right in the innermost part
of our being we know there is a spiritual conflict going on, and
that spiritual conflict has to do with whether we are going on
with the Lord, and that going on with the Lord is the development
or outworking of sonship, it is coming to the consummation of
sonship. That is where the challenge is, and anything the enemy
can bring in to stop that, he will.
The Lord give us light on all
this.