Reading: 2 Timothy 1:8-10
The incorruptible characteristic of the
life of the Lord Jesus upon which we shall dwell just now
- all too insufficiently, I am afraid - is what I will
call the 'plus' and 'other' of heaven. That is rather an
awkward phrase, I know, but you will understand it better
as I go on: the 'plus', or extra, and 'other', of heaven.
You have no doubt been impressed, as you
have read the Gospels, with the frequency with which the
word 'heaven' was on the lips of the Lord Jesus. It
occurred, so far as I can see, nearly one hundred times,
and when one word is so frequently on anyone's lips you
are not left in very much doubt as to their main
preoccupation. When we go abroad, and meet people there
who are from our own land, we find that they are always
eager and anxious to talk about 'the Old Country', and
either that phrase, or else the name of the country, is
continually on their lips as they meet us and we are in
conversation. So it was with the Lord Jesus here. He was
always talking about what to Him was the 'Old Country':
He was always referring to heaven. You look it up again,
and get a fresh impression, from His constant reference
to heaven and His relationship thereto.
This, in Christ's case, indicated three
things, or three aspects of one thing.
The Background
Firstly, there was His own personal
background. The background against which He lived and
moved was heaven. That was always in His consciousness.
Secondly, there was His 'extra' to this life and this
world. It was something which to Him was a great 'plus'
to life, a great extra to everything here. Thirdly, to
Him it was a great and wonderful difference. There were
these things, then, about Jesus as Son of Man, so that
when you met Him, met Him, so to speak, on the surface,
face to face, as a man, it was just impossible to feel
that you had met everything, that that was all. There are
some people whom you meet - and that is all. You meet
them, you perhaps have an interchange with them, pass the
time of day or have a few words with them, and then you
part, and that is all. They came and they went, and there
was no more to it than that. It was never so with the
Lord Jesus. If you had met Him, you would have
immediately met something more than the ordinary, but you
would also be left with the consciousness - 'That is not
all; there is something very much more there than I have
touched or seen. He implies a vast amount more than I
have been able to recognise or grasp. The impression that
is left with me is that that is not all, there is
something more than that. That man has a lot more behind
Him than is on the face of things.'
That is
very simple, but that helps us toward this whole matter
of the incorruptible. Suppose, instead of waiting till
later on, we begin to make our application at once -
because that was the thing, that was the incorruptible
thing about Him, the undying thing, the thing that would
abide - the fact that He did not put all His goods in the
shop window, so to speak; it was not all there so that
you could comprehend it all at once, and that was all
there was to it. You were conscious of something there of
a vast and profound fullness and depth, and that left a
mighty impress. And let me say at once - If that is not
true of you and me and of the Church of God, then we are
sadly lacking in the material of the incorruptible.
Let me
apply that here. Suppose we are a company of Christians
and we are moving about the same world as the Lord Jesus
- with, of course, many changes; but it is the same
world, and people are more or less the same in all
generations. When people meet you and meet me, when
people come into the midst of us as companies of the
Lord's people, what is left afterward? Can we move
amongst them, can they come into touch with us, can we
touch them in this world, and then part, and that is all
there is to it - that is the beginning, and that is the
end? 'He has gone - well, a nice fellow, a nice woman, a
nice girl' - superficial impressions, judgments formed,
and then fading and passing away - nothing more than
that? Oh, no; that is not the incorruptible, the eternal,
the abiding, the thing that will appear again in glory
for ever. Not at all. That was not so with the Lord
Jesus, and it must not be so with us. It must really be
that when we have gone this way and touched lives, moved
through this earth and gone our way, there is something
left which is the plus of our lives which will abide for
ever. People have to say, 'There is something more in
them than was just on the face of them'.
Do you
feel that is too simple? But oh, how it applies to
everything! How concerned about this matter we must be,
as to what we leave when we have made a contact, what the
impression is. It may not be that they can define it, it
may not be that they even sit down to think about it, but
somehow or other they are aware, whether they take
thoughtful account of it or not, that 'having met him and
having met her, I have not met everything, there is
something more there'. And it is just that something more
that is the ground of the Lord's activity in lives. He
knows where there are people who are looking for
something more than this world can give, something more
than they have. They are disappointed, they are hungry;
or they may have been peculiarly in the Lord's thought to
be brought into something more for a specific purpose, a
chosen vessel unto Him to bear His Name. The Lord knows
where that Saul of Tarsus is, where that Ethiopian eunuch
is, where that Cornelius is, marked out and recognised,
and hungry deep down for something more. And where is
something more to be found? The Lord must have it
available - He must have it in a Philip. He must have it
in a Peter, in an Ananias; He must have it in you and in
me: that is, the incorruptible, the immortal, the eternal
factor: so that there is a point of contact made between
heaven and lives by means of this heavenly background and
heavenly place in you and in me.
That is
the principle of service. You think of the work of the
Lord, the service of the Lord, as giving up business and
coming out and taking a course of Bible study and then
going out preaching. That is not what the Lord thinks
about it at all. What He thinks about is - Where can I
find something which is an extra, a real extra, a mighty
extra, that I can use as the ground of bringing about
contacts, touching lives? That is 'evangelization', that
is 'the extension of the Kingdom', if you like to use
those phrases. It is that something is there to which the
Lord can bring as the point of His contact.
You can test that. So often it is not what
we say at all. We try to persuade, we try to argue, we
try to urge, we try to bring about issues in other lives
- and we are missing the way all the time. The real
upshot rests upon this - Was there something more than
our argument, something more than our effort, something
more than our persuasiveness? - so that if something
happens, those in whom it happens will afterwards say,
'It was not your argument, it was not the way you put
things, and it was not even your earnestness. There was
something about YOU; you have got something, and
that found me out.' Unless that is there, we seek to
persuade and argue in vain. That is the incorruptible
thing. The Lord Jesus had a background, something behind
Him, and men knew when they met Him that that was not
all. Now you and I are moving about and we are contacting
people all the time; and what is the impression? You see
how important it is for us to have this plus of heaven.
The Extra
Then not only was there something more
behind Christ, but it was to Him an extra world - an
extra world of resources that He could draw upon, an
extra world of knowledge that was available to Him, an
extra world of relationships, heavenly relationships:
with the Father, with the Spirit - yes, and with other
intelligences, celestial intelligences; an extra world,
another world of relationships. What a big world He had
behind Him to draw upon in this life down here, in its
vicissitudes, its difficulties, its trials, its
adversities, when He was alone and no one could help Him.
Even those who would want to seek to help Him could not.
He was alone here. Without the resources of this world,
He had another world to draw upon, a wonderful other
world of resource.
And what is the incorruptible world? It is
that which gives the real value to our life here, which
says that this is not all. The knowledge that we possess
and the knowledge that this world possesses which is
available to us comes to a point where it can no longer
help us. Have we something beyond that? Is there a realm
of knowledge which is altogether beyond and above this
world's knowledge at its greatest and our knowledge at
its fullest? When we have exhausted things here, we are
only beginning with the resources of heaven. That is no
exaggeration; for, after all, most of us, as the Lord's
people, know in experience something about this, if it
has not been put that way in our minds: we are after all
living out from and drawing upon another extra, plus
world. When we pray, we do that; whenever we go to the
Lord, we are doing that, we are drawing out from a realm
which is more than this one.
Oh, how much more real that must be to us
and in our consciousness! 'Here I have come to an end of
my resources, here I am right up in a corner, here I am,
not knowing, so far as this world is concerned, which way
to turn: I am at a standstill, a deadlock, an IMPASSE;
but I have another world to draw upon, a very real world,
and that other world can come right into my situation.'
And it is just as we are living out from heaven, out from
our extra, our plus, world, that things will partake of
the character of the eternal, and that into this life
will come the imperishable: so that there is something in
that solved problem, that overcome difficulty, which is
not just the result of human ingenuity, but of Divine
intervention and undertaking. That is the incorruptible,
and God is always seeking to have it like that. Perhaps
that is why He allows the problems and the IMPASSES,
to make us know that this is not all. There is another
world of resource, all so infinitely in advance of what
is here.
The Difference
Once more, not only a background, and an
extra, but a difference. Looking at the Lord Jesus,
speaking as men speak, we could say that that Man was
governed by different standards, by different
conceptions, by different ideas, from anything here. He
did not act just as people usually act here. His conduct
was different from the usual conduct of people, from the
established and accepted order of things, of how it is
done, and how people think it ought to be done and all
that kind of thing. No; He did not belong to that realm
at all, He seemed to have entirely different standards
and different ideas and different conceptions. He could
not be involved in our system of ideas and procedure and
conduct at all. He just would not allow Himself to be
roped into our order. He had another world with an
altogether different set of conceptions, and He acted
according to them and was governed by them, and that made
Him so strange amongst us. We thought the way was THIS
- this is the ordinary way, the usual way, the accepted
way; but He did not do it our way at all. He had a
strange way of doing things.
Now that word 'strange' means 'not just as
we do things'. You can of course use it in another sense.
We sometimes talk about people and say, 'A strange
person', meaning that they are a little mentally out of
order. But the Lord Jesus was strange in the sense that
He was a foreigner to this set-up, to this whole order of
things. He belonged to another world, and He had that
other world's conceptions. There was a great difference
about Him. They just could not keep Him in, they just
could not make Him conform, they just could not
understand Him at all.
Well, it was those very heavenly standards
and conceptions and ideas which were the incorruptible
things. This world's ways of going on - what do they lead
to? They lead to corruption. At their fullest, highest,
greatest, they lead to corruption. Never, never was that
more apparent than in our own day. The greatest
development of human ideas and ingenuity is leading to
the greatest development of corruption. In every realm,
corruption. Men are talking very freely now, men who know
best - talking almost with bated breath, yet talking
quite a lot, of the end of the human race now within
sight. Well, that is the end of human ingenuity, of this
world's wisdom - corruption.
HIS ideas did not work out that
way. You and I - we have come to know something of the
Lord, something of the Lord's standards, the Lord's
conception of heavenly things, and we know quite well
that this is not corruption, this is life and
incorruption. We know it, do we not? We are rejoicing in
something because we have come to know the Lord; but what
have we come to know? Something from outside of this
world altogether, something different.
Now let us apply this. Let us be very
careful that we do not just seek to be all of a piece
with men here, all in tune with them, all in step with
this world, just falling into line and being one. If we
do, we forfeit the very essential of our heavenly birth
and our heavenly relationship, which is this something so
other and so different. Paul is saying here to Timothy,
"Be not ashamed therefore of the testimony of our
Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but suffer hardship with
the gospel according to the power of God". Why this
"be not ashamed"? Oh, for shame, we try to be
on good terms with the world, we are ashamed to be
otherwise, we think we will lose prestige, we think we
will lose influence if we do not just come into line and
be hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. What a deception!
We simply throw overboard the very values of our
Christian life when we do anything like that. See how it
worked out in the case of the Lord Jesus. This other -
well, it worked out and resulted in contacts, yes, but
without connections. Can you make that discrimination -
contacts without connections? Oh, He was in contact with
people, He was in contact with things, He was moving
amongst them, meeting them, yes very definitely in
contact, but there was no connection. He was not all of a
piece. Associations - yes, He associated Himself - a
marriage, a funeral, a feast, and the rest, but no
compromise or acquiescence. A gap was always kept between
association and compromise or acquiescence. It was not
kept formally, it was not kept in a kind of strain or
pretension - You belong there and I belong here, you keep
on your ground and I am keeping on mine. That may not be
said in word, but so many people, I am afraid, give the
impression. It was something spiritual. He associated, it
was a charge laid against Him, that He was a friend of
publicans and sinners (Matt. 11:19), but He was not a
publican nor a sinner. Association, but no compromise, no
letting down, no letting go, no acquiescence, no
acceptance of what was there. It was that relationship
with heaven, that extra, and that other which kept Him
incorruptible. He was the incorruptible One in it all. It
was all summed up in one precise phrase of His - "I
am not of this world" (John 8:23).
There never was another who so filled his
time seeing to things, carrying the burden of other
people's lives, no, never anyone else whose life was so
full of things in relation to other people's interests,
but at the same time so marked by a detachment. There was
something there that made Him different, that still made
Him a kind of outsider, and everybody knew it. That is a
very important thing. The Christian life in the New
Testament is clearly shown to be heavenly in every
respect, heavenly in birth, born from above, heavenly in
sustenance, sustenance from above, heavenly in
consummation, in translation or rapture, yes heavenly in
vocation, a heavenly calling, everything heavenly makes
up the Christian life according to the Word of God. The
Holy Spirit coming down from heaven has not come just to
make us successful in this world, not just to prosper our
ventures here, nor to be used by us to realise the thing
in which we are interested and to further those plans of
ours. He has not come down from heaven for anything like
that. He has come down to reconstitute us as heavenly
people, and then translate us to heaven. That is His
whole work, the reconstituting of our whole being
according to heaven's ideas. That is what He is getting
at if we understood the work of the Holy Spirit in our
lives, which is only the work of God in our lives, His
dealings with us, His ways with us, if we understood the
ways and the workings of the Spirit we should see that
what He is after is not to make us something here at all,
not to make a lot of this life, but to get us to turn
everything to heavenly account, to make us according to
heaven's pattern. He is after the incorruptible. All this
other will go.
That is
a very simple word, but let us follow it through again.
We must ask ourselves this question continually - When I
have been met or when I have met others, when I have gone
through this world, in my business, my social, my
domestic contacts, in my religious activities, I have
come and I have gone, is that all, is that all there is
to it? That is that! Is it? In the deepest consciousness
of others, whether they will admit it or not,
whether they try to explain it or not, whether they can
define it or not, deep in their consciousness they know
somewhere remotely at the back of their mind - 'I did not
meet everything when I met them, there is something more
there than I am wholly aware of, there is something more,
and it is that something more that is the thing in their
life, that accounts for them, and that something more is
something not of this world. You do not get that sort of
thing here, you do not get that sort of thing in the
ordinary run of men and women and there is something
different about them'. That is the testimony of the
incorruptible. That is the first challenge to us. Let us
ask the Lord very much about that and about everything.
It must be like that. In our teaching, in our meetings,
our whole Christian procedure, there is something extra
and something different, the incorruptible, that has been
brought to light through the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Who
annulled death, and brought life and incorruption to
light.