We return to
the two passages of Scripture around which our thoughts are circling at this
time:
"Blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to His great mercy
begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead" (1 Peter 1:3).
A living
hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
"...to whom
God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery
among the nations (Gentiles), which is Christ in you, the hope of glory"
(Colossians 1:27).
While a very
great deal of proof and evidence is drawn together to enforce the one
fundamental reality, it is that reality upon which we must keep our eye, and try
not to lose it in the tremendous amount that gathers around it. For I feel quite
sure that that which the Lord is bringing before us at this time, is a, if not
the, most vital thing of the whole of the Christian life. It is the
reality and the meaning of those last words: Christ in you, the hope of
glory.
The
Hopelessness of Human Nature in Itself
Now we look at
the disciples. We do not know very much about them; we know a little about some
of the followers, like Mary Magdalene; we know the Bethany family, and a little
about some others. We know a good deal more about the twelve. And, as we were
saying, Peter always stands as a good representative of the others, for what was
true of him was so true of them in many ways. There are quite a lot of good
things about them. I think, Simon Peter was, in many ways, quite a loveable kind
of man. There is no doubt whatever that, on the credit side, there was a very
warm heart there, and a warm heart for his Master; there was real good
intention. Now, well-intentioned people can, as we say, "put their foot in it"
often, but good intention was there. He meant so well; his motives were all the
best. We could go on and say a lot of good things about him, and about the other
disciples. They are no worse than we are, perhaps in a great many ways, a great
deal better than some of us.
The point is,
human nature, not at its worst, but perhaps at its best, was represented by that
company around the Lord Jesus with all their faults, sometimes their blundering,
and yet, not evil; nothing of vice about them - good, honest, open-hearted men
and women. In their intention, and in a certain realm, they were committed to
Jesus, and very thoroughly committed to Jesus; sometimes breaking out in very
strong affirmations and declarations of devotion and intention to go to death
with Him, should it ever become necessary. Calvary! The Cross! Now what is the
real truth? What is the real eternal value of it all? How much of it will go
through, survive and triumph? Not one whit! We see the desolation of all their
protestations, all their confessions, all their declared good intentions. All
their professions of love, devotion, and faithfulness is lying in ruins; the most
representative is denying repeatedly with oaths and with curses, that he has any
knowledge of this Galilean. This shows the utter hopelessness of human nature in
itself.
Where could
hope be found? Would there ever be hope again? Will hope rise out of those
ashes? Is it gone for ever? Is it finally and eternally hopeless? Yes, if it is
left to them, if they are left to themselves. Where will hope be? Not in
themselves, but in Christ in them; that will be the hope of glory. And let us be
very clear about this, because it is just at this very point that you and I need
to learn all our lessons over again. The hope will never be found in ourselves,
even when we are Christians, even though we go right on as far as any Christians
can go. Should He leave us for five minutes, it is as hopeless as ever it was
before ever we started. It is a mature, experienced apostle that is speaking and
saying: "in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing". There is no
hope there.
2 Corinthians 5
contains the foundation of any hope where a man is concerned: "The love of
Christ constrains us, because we thus judge, one died in the place of all,
therefore all died; that they which live should henceforth live no longer unto
themselves, but unto Him who in their place died and rose again. Henceforth know
we no man after the flesh". "Wherefore if any man be in Christ, there
is a new creation; the old things are passed away, behold they have become new.
But all things are out from God". It is the way of hope. Yes, through the
devastation of the Cross, up into the resurrection, where it is Christ, the
centre and the circumference of a new creation; a new creation - that is it!
So, there is no
hope whatever in man naturally. I say, we have got to learn that lesson all over
anew, because you are always trying to find hope in yourself; that is your
trouble! Shall I put it another way: your trouble is that you cannot find any
hope in yourself, and the fact that you are troubled about that shows that you
want to, that you have not given yourself up. God gave you up in the Cross of
Jesus Christ as a hopeless mess, and showed by that very Cross how hopeless we
are, but in raising Jesus from the dead, taking Him out, and then sending Him,
as in the Holy Spirit, to dwell within, God started a new basis of hope. It is
never in us, it is in Christ; it never will be in us; we will be as hopeless at
the end as we were at the beginning; it will always be in Christ. Friends, we
have got to make everything of Christ, far more than we have. Oh, that we could
free ourselves from that old ground of expectation where we are concerned; that
we could quit it, and get positively on the ground of Christ. Christ, my
Hope! With both hands I lay hold on Christ, and Christ only. But He is the
Hope of glory!
As
to our self-ward attitude, we have got to take God's position about ourselves;
and God's position about ourselves is that He will have nothing to do with us;
He has only to do with His Son. Now, here opens a very large field of perplexing
experience, and it is interpreted by this one truth, and this one key opens the
door to so much. Why does the Lord ignore so much of our prayer? And why does
the Lord not come on to the ground that we try to get Him to come on to? Why do
we do not find the Lord with us in much crying, beseeching, entreating - and He
does not move, He does not answer? The explanation is usually that we are on the
wrong ground, that we are taking account of things that God has finished
with long ago. We are wanting to get God onto ground that He has abandoned
forever. You will only have the Lord, or we shall only have the Lord with us at
all, while we keep on the ground of Christ. Make no mistake about it, you have
got to find out whether that is Christ-ground, or your ground, or other people
ground - the ground of human judgments, human interpretations, human feelings,
human desires, that which is natural; if that ground is the ground on which we
are trying to get the Lord to encamp and do something, He will be silent, and
silent forever; we will not move Him.
The Ground of
Christ
One thing about
God is that He is a Realist, and if He says in the Cross, "I close the door
forever to the natural man," you will never get Him opening that door again. Not
a bit! Break your heart in prayer to get Him to move and to act, and He will not
do it; only on one ground, and that is the ground of His Son. Can you provide
the ground of Christ? Then you will find the door open with God, and He is
coming through. That is His only ground. It will be despair and hopelessness
until we can get clean through on to pure Christ ground - and then it is an open
heaven! It is release! I said that opens a very big field; you see, it opens the
field of the whole of the Bible. And I would ask you to take this as the key to
your New Testament. It is of the Old, of course; but in spiritual reality, every
book of the New Testament must be read in the light of this - Christ as God's
ground, and God's ground of hope alone!
That passes
from the individual to the collective. Oh, we have not yet learned much of this!
I am aware, that this is perhaps the most difficult thing in the whole Christian
life for every one of us, and in this I am the most backward of all the pupils.
We will not get anywhere with one another in our relationship as the Lord's
people, if we are going to keep on the natural ground of one another. If you are
judging me according to what I am naturally, taking account of me because of
what you see I am as just a man in myself, you will have all the ground for
despair that ever you can want! And I will do the same where you are concerned;
I will have to give you up; there is no hope! Some of us, of course, are able to
see all the frailties and faults of others, and where does it lead? Despair,
does it not? Deadlock, no way through, no future, no promise. The Lord is not
with us in that. "Henceforth know we no man after the flesh", said Paul.
What is the 'henceforth'? "Since all died"! The hardest lesson of us all
is just this: to take account of the minutest bit of Christ that there is in
another, and focus upon that; the work of grace. Go as far as you can, even if
it is only in a sort of negative way, and say, 'What would they be but for the
grace of God?' But go further, and say, 'See what the grace of God has done!'
Now, that is the only way of hope - Christ in you.
But you see
what that leads to. It means what this New Testament is all about; that we have
got to provide one another with a great deal more of Christ in ourselves, for
hope; there has got to be a continual increase of Christ, a continual increase
of the work of grace in us, the grace of the Lord Jesus. It is the only way. The
whole of the New Testament is about this first: Christ must get inside, and then
Christ must grow inside, until, by God's grace, there is more of Christ than
there is of ourselves.
The apostles,
who were so meticulous and particular about this matter of converts "receiving
the Holy Spirit" as a definite, positive, concrete experience, act or
crisis, were just as particular in all their teaching that not only should the
Holy Spirit have been received, but that they should be "filled with the
Spirit". 'Be filled with the Spirit' is the word, and it is only the other
way of saying, "Christ is in, but Christ has got to be fully formed within, more
and more." This is a very practical school, is it not; very hard lessons, but
does it not explain much? It is the heart and the core of true, spiritual
Christianity: Christ, only Christ, the Alpha, the Omega; the Beginning, the End,
and all between.
A few words
before we go on to just another point: the hopelessness of the kingdom, until
the King is within.
The King Within
How much we
could say about the hopes and expectations concerning the Kingdom, that filled
the hearts of every true Israelite. And, as we know, these disciples and
apostles were very true representatives of Israel's hopes for the kingdom: they
cherished that hope; they built everything upon that hope; all their thoughts,
their mentality, is concerning the kingdom. Indeed, their very committal to
Christ, in leaving all things to follow Him, had the kingdom in view as its
motive. Right up to the last minutes, we might say, before He went to glory,
they are almost obsessed with this kingdom matter. "Do You at this time
restore the kingdom to Israel?" They are their last words on record to Him
before He went.
But what about
the effect of the Cross upon all that? Yes, the Cross, the crucifixion,
shattered all their hopes of the kingdom: "We had trusted that it had been
He...". We had trusted that it had been He that would restore the
Kingdom. But here, their kingdom lies waste and all their hopes so far as He and
the kingdom were concerned, were shattered, just scattered like dust to the
wind. Where is the kingdom now? What is the hope of the kingdom now? It came
back when He came in! That is what Peter is talking about: "Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath begotten us again by a living
hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance
incorruptible, undefiled, that doesn't fade away, reserved in heaven".
There is the Kingdom vision, but it is back on the ground of Christ the King
within. That was Peter's note on the day of Pentecost; that was the preaching of
the first preachers: Jesus Christ is Lord; God has made Him both Lord and
Christ; King of kings and Lord of lords! There is only that hope for the
kingdom. But that is perhaps speaking in large terms. You see, I am talking
about the preaching of the Kingdom, yes.
If
you like you can alter the phraseology and say: "Preaching for man's salvation
is called 'evangelisation'"; but then we have missed the point so much. What is
'evangelisation'? What is 'preaching the kingdom'? What is 'preaching the
gospel'? Is it just and only, announcing certain truths, certain facts, or
certain doctrines? Is it? No! According to the true meaning of the very words
themselves, it is 'bringing Christ', not only speaking about Him, preaching
concerning Him; it is bringing Him! There is no hope unless you bring
Christ; your evangelization has got to bring Christ; it has not to be something
in itself, Christ has got to come in it.
And therefore,
can you not see why it was at the beginning that the demand was that they should
preach with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven? What is that? That is nothing
other than Christ coming in in power, in presence. And if you and I cannot bring
Christ to the unsaved, we can preach until we are blue in the face, and it will
have no effect. We have got to bring Christ to them into their presence; they
have got to meet Christ when we preach, they must sense Christ. The preaching must be by
the Holy Spirit within. That is why so much preaching is ineffective and
not in the power of the indwelling Spirit. That is not just a criticism; it is a
challenge.
Churches are
only born by Christ being introduced. He is the Seed, the living Seed, out of
which the organism grows; you cannot found and form churches from the outside,
collect people, and call the collection a 'church'. Every body of believers in
any place has got to be the embodiment of Christ, and the one reality is not
their teaching, or their manner of procedure, but that Christ is met, is found,
is there. If you meet them, you meet Christ; when you go among them, you find
Christ. Christ is in their life; Christ governs their life; He governs their
business; He governs their home; He governs their relationships with one
another; it is Christ.
And it is the
only ground and way of believers being built up and growing. If we just grow
ourselves, it will be an awful thing that grows. The tragedy is that so often,
the very sphere of the interests of God is made the playground for the flesh to
inflate itself, and display itself, and strut up and down. No, spiritual growth
is not our growth, in the sense that we in what we are, are growing; spiritual
growth is just the increase of Christ in us. But what I am saying in all this is
one thing: the only hope from beginning to end, in any phase or stage or form,
is Christ. Christ risen changed the scene of desolation and devastation, and
gave a new hope when He came back in the Spirit and entered in, and began the
realisation of the hope. That is what we have in the New Testament - the hope
brought in with the resurrection, and then a proceeding to the fulfilment of the
hope, as we read in the book of the Acts. It is the hope working out in
progressive fulfilment.
As we
theologically distinguish the Persons of the Trinity, we do not divide between
Christ and the Holy Spirit in work, in nature; therefore, when we speak about
'Christ in you', we mean the Holy Spirit within. When we speak of the Holy
Spirit dwelling within, we mean Christ within. It is what the Holy Spirit
Himself means; what Jesus Himself meant when He said: "He shall not speak of
Himself; He will take the things that are Mine and show them to you". They
work together in such complete identity that you cannot distinguish between
them. Though Christ remains at the Father's right hand, He is here in you, in
us, by the Holy Spirit.
Now my final
emphasis is upon this: our need to be very sure about this matter of the
indwelling Spirit, which is the indwelling Christ. I know what questions you
could begin at once to fire at me, about the 'baptism of the Holy Spirit', and
so on. I am not surprised that the devil has supremely confused this whole
thing, and brought it under reproach because this is the matter upon which
everything hangs. But leaving all interpretations apart, let us come down to the
fact, that you and I must in our Christian life, know two things: our
death with Christ to the old man; and, through that, Christ within, the Holy
Spirit within, starting on heavenly ground only, and entirely ignoring all
earthly ground, going on on heavenly ground. That is the way of the Spirit.
Oh, let us
learn, or seek to learn, this lesson. I do not want to throw you into the vortex
of great confusion or questions as to whether you have ever received the Holy
Spirit, because of this or that or something else about manifestations; do not
be troubled about that. You can know that Christ is in you; you can
know that the Holy Spirit is in you, by a thousand spiritual evidences,
without any of those manifestations that some people say are the essential proof
of the Holy Spirit. I speak of tongues, and such like. No, they are not
essential to the fact and reality of the Holy Spirit being within, and filling;
they are not! It is the reality that you and I need, not some particular kind of
sensations, and demonstration and noises, and what not; it is the deep reality
that Christ is in us, and there is our Hope, our Hope of glory; our only
Hope of glory, but our true Hope of glory.