"God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high..." (Hebrews 1:1-3).
The starting
point, the very first word, in the whole letter to the Hebrews, is “God”.
For the third
time, the whole of the divine unveiling contained in the Bible, from beginning
to end, in relation to the momentous movements therein, is shown to take its
origin and source in God.
The Bible
begins with “In the beginning God...”. That was when the creation of the
world was in view. Then there was that great intervention in the history of the
world, when God’s Son was incarnated for all the immense purposes of redemption
and again, it is the same: “In the beginning was... God...” (John 1:1).
And here, as the revelation unfolds, and we are able to see the nature and
meaning of its unfolding, we read once more; “God, having of old... hath at
the end...” — God. And, of course, that means in the very first place, that
everything must be viewed from God’s side, from God’s standpoint, that is, we
must see what God meant, what God purposed and intended; what was in the mind of
God. We can understand nothing until we get God’s position — get alongside of
Him, and view everything from His side.
The Bible is,
of course, an unveiling and unfolding of what was in God’s mind at the
beginning. In regard to this letter to the Hebrews, we have already pointed out
something of the immensity of that which it comprehends; that it, to begin with,
uncovers the spiritual background of the whole long dispensation up to Christ,
and shows us what lay behind the ways and the means of God through those many
centuries. This letter takes the veil away and shows us the spiritual meaning of
it all; the spiritual interpretation, the spiritual background of all that is in
the Old Testament; and that is no small thing.
But then it
proceeds to show that all that spiritual meaning is the inheritance of a people
in this dispensation.
When we take up
this letter, and begin to read its first sentences through, we find ourselves in
the presence of no lesser thing than this as being the mind of God from the
beginning; the intention of God to express Himself, to give Himself expression.
It is a very profound thought that God, in all His self-sufficiency,
self-existence, complete self-fulness, independence, should decide that He will
put Himself into expression in a created universe; that He will come out from
His hidden and remote place, where He is not known or seen, and not only show
Himself, but show Himself in the works of His hands; enter upon a great creative
activity, and produce a vast system, with a certain order of being called Man at
its centre, in which He should be revealed. There should be an “express image”
of Him.
An ‘image’ is
an expression, a representation, a setting forth of something, in a certain
concrete form. God, in the beginning, decided and purposed that He would so
express Himself, and that that expression, in the first place, should be an
expression of His character — what He is in His essential nature. The
Bible, from beginning to end, contains that progressive and ever-developing
expression of what God is like in His nature, in His character. It moves on,
until, when you come to the Son, the supreme and dominating thing is — “God
is love” (1 John 4:8,16). He is many other things as well; He is
righteousness; He is truth; He is everything that is good. But for the moment we
just confine ourselves to this; in the beginning God intended to express
Himself, and to express Himself as to His essential nature and character. And
finally, when God reaches His end, His created universe will be an expression of
what He is. That is the deep meaning of these first lines in this letter, and we
should read them in that light.
But then, He
intended to express Himself in His divine capacity. I mean by that: His divine
wisdom, His divine understanding, His divine knowledge; and then, His divine
power and energy; and then, His divine endurance, His unfailingness, His
eternity. These are the things which belong to God, which are His capacities.
And these are the attributes which He determined to express; and, for an
expression of these very attributes, He created all things. But, with all — the
character, the nature, the capacity of God, in wisdom, in knowledge, and
understanding; in power and energy; in endurance and unfailingness, and all the
essential essence of God in all these things is spiritual. It is
something other than what we mean by knowledge, what we mean by power, what we
mean by energy, what we mean by wisdom. It is spiritual, because God is Spirit;
that is His essential nature, and everything that belongs to Him and emanates
from Him is spiritual. It is of another order and kind altogether from that with
which we are familiar.
That lies
behind everything, and that is what is here.
2. The Purpose
Taken up in God’s Son
Secondly, we
see that the purpose is all taken up in and by God’s Son. This great purpose for
the expression of God in character and capacity — to fill all things with
Himself, and make His created universe a representation of Himself in those two
comprehensive ways — is all taken up in the Person of His Son, and by His Son.
Here it is: we are told that the Son is His “effulgence”, He is His “express
image”. In the Son of God we touch a character which is different; we touch a
spiritual character. (As has so well been said, there is something mysterious
about what God makes of a man. On the outside, you may think you know him; but
when God has got on the inside, you don’t know him; he is a mystery; he is a
problem for this world — as, indeed, a Christian should be; a problem that the
wisdom of this world cannot solve. If you are not a problem to this world, you
should raise serious questions as to whether God is on the inside.) However,
here, in God’s Son incarnate, we find a character that is different, and it is
spiritual in its essence.
Then, you find
a capacity that is different. There is a wisdom that is quite different, that
the world cannot understand, indeed it altogether misunderstands and
misinterprets; there is a wisdom about Jesus Christ which altogether defeats and
defies all human attempts to explain. There is here an energy and a power that
is other. All the time He is going beyond. Yes, men can go so far, and do so
much; but the Son of God has come, first to put things beyond man’s capacity,
and then to intervene. That is Lazarus! And that is many another thing in his
life. You have a man born blind and then given his sight. This is
something beyond. This is not healing; this is not repairing; it is creative. It
is a power and energy that is different. We see it again in His words. “Whence
hath this man this wisdom?”, they were asking (Matt. 13:54,56). Look at all
the questions asked and implied in the Gospels. See how all the time this Man is
beyond. It is God who is here. All this is taken up in Him, in His Person.
Again, we see
it in redemption, for which He was incarnated; to redeem the intention of God
for the creation, not only for man. Paul tells us quite clearly in the Roman
letter that it is the creation itself which shall be delivered from the bondage
of corruption. Redemption for man; redemption for the earth; but more than that
— redemption for the universe. Redemption of what? Of this purpose of God to
express Himself in it all, to make Himself known.
And then He is
taken up to glory. There is much made of the glorification of the Lord Jesus at
the end of His earthly work, showing that in Him God has reached His end; God
has got His purpose fulfilled; man is perfected; God is revealed. I am keeping
closely to the content of this Letter to the Hebrews which shows that that Man
in glory, seen on the Mount of transfiguration, and seen through the cleft
heaven by the martyr Stephen, and seen in the Spirit by many another; this One,
at the right hand of the Majesty in the Heavens, is there as the security, the
title-deeds, of God’s eternal purpose to express Himself — His character and His
capacity. You will recognise what an immense field this is, and how difficult to
comprehend it and state it in a short space.
3. The Purpose
Taken up in Man
But then there
is a third movement. The first movement — “God...”. The second movement — the
Son. In the third movement, we see the purpose taken up in man. “What is man”,
the question is asked, “that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that
thou visitest him?”(2:6). Another translation renders it: "What is man
that thou hast him in mind?” 'What is man that thou shouldest make mention
of him?’ The writer goes on to answer; firstly in the comprehensive and
inclusive terms of man in the plural; and then reducing it to man — the
Man — in the singular, as representative. But the point is that here the whole
purpose of God is taken up in relation to man. And, in order to make sure that
it is not going to fail again, to make certain that there is going to be no
second tragedy such as that of the first movement, to see to it that this time
it is going to be realized, God chooses out a Body (as we know from the letters
of Paul), here, in the midst of mankind. It is an elect Body among men,
chosen, foreordained, predestinated, as God’s human security of His purpose.
You say: Where
do you find that in the Letter to the Hebrews? Well, that very truth and that
thought is embodied in all that is here about the conclusiveness of the work
that the Son has done for man. Here is something that is finished — “one
offering for ever” — no more. There is an end to the journey; the veil has been
entered; the rest has been reached and entered into; in Him it is secured and
settled. But then, as you read on, you find that with Him a Family comes into
view. The writer brings in a group of quotations of Scripture:
“He is not
ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren,
in the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praise.”
“...I and
the children which God hath given me” (2:11-13).
A Family comes
in. This is a chosen family, an elect family; a family secured by God. It may be
a nucleus of a universe. But God has revealed quite clearly, through His servant
Paul (I am not saying that Paul wrote this letter), that he is taking no risks
with the second creation. Oh that we grasped the ground of our security in
Christ! Here it is. The purpose is made sure; made sure in its Representative in
Heaven; and made sure in this which is called the “elect”.
We ought, of
course, to turn to other Scriptures where that word occurs. Speaking, for
instance, of the great illusions and deceptions that will come on to the earth
in the last days the Lord Jesus said that, “if it were possible, the
very elect would be deceived” (Matt. 24:24) “If it were possible”! Why put
that in? Well, I do not know who the “elect” are, but evidently there is an
“elect” who cannot be deceived. In the end, there will be a body of people who
pass through all the deceptions, all the illusions, unscathed, undeceived. In
that multitude of people at the end, there will be that people who pass through
Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah, spiritually, and their garments are not defiled.
They have come through undeceived; they are the “elect”.
This third
movement is a marvellous movement, as the great purpose of God to express
Himself is transferred to man, and then within man, to this “elect”. This is one
of God’s methods of making sure.
This is a part
of this Letter which is of tremendous value to you and to me. We have said that
God in His character, and God in His capacity of spiritual wisdom, spiritual
knowledge, spiritual understanding, spiritual power and spiritual energy,
determined to express Himself. Now, in this Letter, you will find that the bulk
of it is taken up with God’s activity towards doing that in believers. What is
God trying to do with you and with me and with His people? What does it all
mean? What is it all about? Let us be quite clear and settled on this matter.
What are your ideas as to what God is doing, or wants to do, in this world? Do
you think God is wanting to set up Christian Fellowship Centres? Do you think
that God wants to make churches? Do you think God wants Missionary Societies? Do
you think God wants any of these things that so largely constitute Christianity
as we know it? What does God want? What is He after?
Well, whether
it be through fellowships or through churches, or through any agency which He
may adopt, if not create, God is after one thing: an expression of Himself in
Jesus Christ in this universe. Your church counts for nothing if it is not that!
Your fellowship counts for nothing if it is not that! Your institutions and
organizations have no divine meaning at all unless that is their effect — an
expression of Christ in this universe.
Let us put
first things first. God is not out to set up any thing such as an
organization, or fraternity, or movement. God is interested in only one thing.
It is not this ‘thing’; not what is seen at all in the material and in the
temporal; that comes afterwards. We cannot make anything spiritual by having the
most ornate, the most artistic, the most beautiful, the most aesthetic, the most
wonderful that we can create. We can make nothing spiritual by that. If a thing
is spiritual, it will have a beauty of its own; it will not be shoddy,
disreputable, slovenly or careless. Spirituality makes for order, it makes for
beauty, it makes for punctuality, it makes for everything outside.
But mark you,
God begins on the inside. All these things are simply, shall I say, by-products.
The explanation of all fellowships and churches, and everything else, is that
they express God Himself in Christ. And God is so concerned about that, that if
anything which has existed in relation to Himself, at any time ceases to fulfil
that vocation, He says: “I will remove it out of its place.” As with the
tabernacle in the old dispensation, God just dispensed with it, and left it,
vacated it, and it became an empty, hollow tent; so now, in the new
dispensation, He says: “Repent, or I will remove thy lampstand out of its
place” (Rev. 2:5). “I can do without the thing if it ceases to fulfil the
function.” That governs everything. We have got to ask ourselves: Is this
expressing the Lord? Is there here some seeing or meeting with the character of
God? Are we really expressing God’s character? — the grace of God; the love of
God; and all those virtues of the divine nature? That is the fruit of the
Spirit, we are told. It is very searching.
Then, what is
He doing? He is seeking, first of all, to get the character. That explains
everything. In Hebrews 12 we have again a quotation taken out of the Old
Testament: “My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord... for whom
the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth”
(verses 5,6). You know that that word ‘chastening’ is not what we mean by
‘chastening’ today. The original word really means ‘child training’, or
‘education’. Go back to the beginning of the letter, and bring the end into
that; “God... hath spoken, or revealed Himself, in a Son...” — the
expression of Himself, His character, His capacities. And now we have God making
sons; not Deity; the sons, like the Son whom, it is stated, “in bringing many
sons unto glory, as the pioneer of their salvation, He made perfect through
sufferings” (2:10).
What is it all
about? Son-making, for the expression of Himself in terms of sonship. Contrast
Moses as a “servant in all God’s house” (3:5): a faithful servant, a
devoted servant, but a servant. Here is “a Son over His house, whose
house are we” (3:6); this is a house of sonship: a house of the Son, and a
house of sons. But note that the whole idea of sons is an expression of the
father’s character.
What is it all
about? Why this son-training, this discipline, this way that seems so hard, that
sometimes makes us almost cry out to the Lord as to why He so deals with us, as
His own dear children, for whom He has declared His love? Why the end of all our
wits and wisdom, our knowledge and our understanding? It is to bring us into
spiritual knowledge, divine knowledge; another kind of knowledge, another kind
of wisdom. If we were able to see the transition that was taking place in us
through all our baffling and confounding experiences, we should find that we
were moving into another kind of understanding, another kind of wisdom.
Sometimes
things seem to go wrong; altogether different from and contrary to what we had
prayed for and even trusted for and expected. They go the other way; the thing
is upset; and we are baffled, perplexed, bewildered, defeated. But wait! There
is an ‘afterwards’ here. And is it not true, that, again and again, afterwards
we say: “Was not the Lord wise in that?” We thought He had abandoned the whole
thing, that He had no interest in it at all; but it has turned out very much
better than it would have been, to far greater gain.
It does work
like that. In little things, so often, that have gone wrong, as we thought; but
afterwards it was the very best thing that could have happened! We had to
worship because we would not have done that. Our wisdom was quite another kind
of wisdom. But, there was a wisdom into which we were being brought. Alas, we
are so slow in this business; but we do come nearer to the point when, the next
time it happens, we say: The Lord knows; it will be all right afterwards, we
know it will be. And that is the highest wisdom.
What about the
power and the energy side? Why is all our power and energy sapped and drained,
and brought to weakness? What a discipline it is, especially if you are of the
energetic kind, the active temperament, one who is forceful and strong, and it
is all undercut and broken down, and you are brought to the place where, with
all your masculine disposition, you can do nothing, you are helpless; your
strength has gone — perhaps even spiritually. Paul has a lot to say about that,
about ‘His strength being perfected in weakness’ — “when I am weak,
then I am strong”(2 Cor. 12:9,10). There is another kind; it is a spiritual
kind; it is different.
That is
son-training; that is spirituality. It is the expression of God — so other, so
different, so remote.
4. The Process
Now we come to
the fourth movement, the process. It has two sides. The process begins firstly
with the evangel. Our evangelism at the present day lacks something; our
evangelism is too small. We should have a far different calibre of convert if we
had a greater evangel. The evangel in the New Testament is in the light of this
immense purpose of God. It is not just to hook men out of hell and get them to
heaven, and make them happy on the way; they are “called according to His
purpose”. That is the heart of the evangel; the great call, the call in
the nations; the call according to purpose. It is not just what we can have
by salvation, but what God has purposed for Himself in salvation.
Perhaps for
some that is almost a platitude. The evangel is this: God’s purpose, relating to
mankind, realized in fulfilment in His Son, and secured in an elect. God will
never tell any man or woman whether he is ‘elect’ or not. Hear the evangel; feel
the touch of the Spirit; find yourself reaching God-ward — you are of the elect.
That is how it works; it is the call. But mark you, “called according to
purpose”; not just to get saved, not just to escape the misery of your sin,
and the complications of your life; but into this vast, immense purpose of God
from eternity. That is the evangel; that is not something extra to the Gospel.
The process begins with the evangel in the nations.
Secondly, it
begins in every one who responds to the call. The experience of every true
believer, every one who truly answers to this call, gives God a Yes from the
heart, and really means business with God, will be that he finds himself in this
school of son-training. And although the great Teacher is very understanding and
sympathetic with the little kindergarten, and allows us time and much room; if
we are going on in this school, it will not be long (and I hope I do not cast
any heart down) before we find ourselves at wits’ end, up against something for
which we have no resource in ourselves. We have got to learn a new language, a
new wisdom, a new ability.
Are you there
today? That is quite all right; that is how it should be; that is the normal
Christian life! It is God’s school. It is the way of the eternal purpose to get
us delivered out of what we are by nature, into what Christ is, as God’s Son —
the effulgence of His glory, the express image of His person, the embodiment of
His character, the manifestation of His power. It is conformity to the image of
God’s Son. It is an immense thing that the Lord has brought us into. But it is
all of God; “In the beginning God...”. God... God... God has
brought this about; things have not gone wrong when it is like this. Oh, for
grace to believe it, when we feel the screw is being turned too much, and the
strain is becoming more than we can bear. Oh, to believe that, by the breaking
down of our own nature, to make a way for Him, we are going to make some new
discovery, we are coming into some new measure of God’s character, God’s
likeness.