Reading: John 1; 4; 5:26;
6:57; 17:2; 1 John 5:11-13; Rev. 1:17-18.
These passages from the Gospel
by John state explicitly that the Lord Jesus was by the will and
gift of the Father in possession of a life, a secret life.
"In him was life..." "As the Father hath life in
himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in
himself" "As the living Father sent me, and I live
because of the Father..."
Two statements are there made.
One is the declared fact that He possessed this life: "In
him was life" the Father gave to Him to have life in
Himself; the other that that life was the basis of a
relationship: "I live because of the Father..." the
relationship was the relationship of life.
It is our need to understand
more fully the meaning and value of this life as bound up for us
with a relationship with Christ risen. With a view to such
understanding we go back to these passages and allow ourselves to
be led by them into a fuller unveiling of what this life is.
As to the Lord Jesus, then,
this life, this specific, peculiar life to which He referred, was
one of the distinguishing factors. It gave a peculiar meaning to
His presence here on this earth, that is, it marked a difference
between Him and the rest of men. It made Him unique as a Man on
this earth. There was not another like Him, and the thing which
constituted the difference between Christ and every other was, in
the main at least, the possession of this life. It represented a
very great difference, a difference which was recognized, felt,
registered by all others, but never explained, never defined,
never understood. Men made attempts at explaining this
difference, but they went very wide of the mark, and very often
their attempt became an utter failure.
They looked in various
directions for the explanation. The realm of nature was examined,
but they found no explanation there of the problem which
confronted them. Sometimes they would launch out into the realm
of supernatural things, and try to account for it on the ground
of the Devil: "He hath a devil..." "He casteth out
demons by BeeIzebub, the prince of the demons." But whatever
their attempt was, they were never able to get to the root of the
matter. When we say that they looked in the direction of nature
and were completely foiled, we have in mind the bewilderment
betrayed by their own reasonings: "Whence hath this man
these words, never having learned?" That makes it clear that
they had considered the question of education, and saw full well
that education could not account for the difference. They looked
to His upbringing, His training at home, His environment, His
domestic life, and exclaimed: "Whence hath this man this
wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's
son?" His family is well known to us, and the kind of
upbringing He has had, the home He was born into, and has lived
in, and there is nothing there to account for this! And the
difference was clear to all. Everywhere it was seen that there
was that about Him which in its quality was altogether superior
even to the scribes: "He spake as one having authority, and
not as the scribes." The difference was marked, but never
understood. It was not natural: it could not be accounted for on
any natural grounds of birth, upbringing, home training,
education, or any of these things; it was spiritual. But when we
say that, it is necessary to define what is meant, and as we look
for the explanation of this spiritual superiority which gave Him
this distinctiveness, we find we have no alternative but to
attribute it to the life which was in Him by the Spirit of God.
Now I want you to follow very,
very closely the implications of such a fact. The life that was
in Him by the Spirit of God - that Divine life which is never
separate nor divorced from the Divine Person, and of which we do
not speak as something in itself, recognizing the link, the bond,
the oneness between the life and the Person - this life by the
Spirit energized every part of His being.
The Mind,
Heart, and Will Energized by Divine Life
It energized His mind. Do you
wonder at the mind of Christ? It is something to be wondered at.
Well might they say, "Whence hath this man these
words?" See His ability to go further than the wisest, and
the most witty of His opponents! When having had their
conferences, and arranged their plan of attack, these muster
their resources, and wit, and cunning, and ingenuity to lead Him
into a trap, knowing it all, He can calmly look on without so
much as a moment's concern. Are you going to put that down to
Deity? Christ is very God, it is true, but in the days of His
flesh He is seen living as a dependent Man, and not acting
directly as God. All this superior wisdom, this ascendency of
mind in the realm of knowledge and of understanding, of
interpretation, of insight, of discernment, of perception, of
answer is the fruit of a mind energized by Divine life, by the
Spirit of life. And the same Spirit of life, that same life by
the Spirit, can take the most ignorant, illiterate man and cause
wisdom to be found in him such as all the wise men cannot gainsay
or resist. Men beheld the Apostles that they were ignorant and
unlearned, or artless, men, but they could not question the
reality of the wisdom by which they spake. And what are we to say
of this? It is the Spirit of life, life by the Spirit, energizing
the mind beyond the natural ability. This, then, was a secret
resource of the Lord Jesus as Man. He possessed a life which
others did not possess.
For His heart the same thing
held good. What accounts for His infinite long-suffering, His
amazing tenderness, His unspeakable compassion? How is His
sympathy to be explained? Surely if ever human patience could be
exhausted those disciples were capable of exhausting it. Surely
had all been merely on a natural level of things, at the end of
more than three years of patient effort, patient forbearance,
instruction, helpfulness, application and devotion to them, when
every one of them broke down so ignominiously, and denied Him,
belying all that He had said, there would have been a
repudiation of them with strong feeling: You are hopeless men! I
give you up! But not so with Christ: "Having loved His own
which were in the world he loved them unto the end," or unto
the uttermost. In every realm, save the realm of positive,
deliberate, prejudiced resistance of Himself in what he
represented, He showed the most infinite kindness and patience,
but where that resistance was met with there was revealed in Him
the wrath of God, the wrath of the Lamb.
What, then, was it that enabled
His heart thus to go out to others, and that unceasingly? For
look again, and watch Him in the midst of long and exacting
labours, so exacting that there is not even time for Him and His
disciples to take their necessary food. He bids them come aside
with Himself for rest, and they depart for a quiet place by ship
privately, only to find when they have crossed the lake that
their intention has been anticipated and the multitudes have
gathered there beforehand. Do we hear an impatient outburst from
him? What a nuisance these crowds are! I did so want a time of
quiet, and a little rest and renewal. Not so! Seeing the
multitude He was moved with compassion, and at once commenced to
work again. What is it that maintains His heart in such
compassion and sympathy? It is this life, life by the Spirit
energizing the heart unto compassion and sympathy in the midst of
such trial, testing, sorrow, and pressure as no other ever had to
endure.
You see the same characteristic
manifested in Apostles afterward, do you not? We leave that with
but a glance however. You have only to read the second letter to
the Corinthians in the light of what the first letter reveals to
see the same grace at work in Paul.
Then we come to the will, and
here we see the energizing of His will to do, and to keep on
doing, all that the Father willed - "My Father worketh even
until now, and I work" (John 5:17). What a Worker! What a
going on! Days of toil followed by nights of prayer. We are going
to be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves before we get much further.
We shall feel ourselves less than the dust as we look at this.
Remember that the same resource is available to us. See the
abandon of Christ! Never is there a thought of trying to spare
Himself. Is He wearied? Yes, but a woman needs saving, and so,
forgetting Himself, He gathers up all His energies to concentrate
upon that woman's salvation, and not much of a woman at that. But
see the patience, the care, the application, the persistence that
you find in chapter 4 of John's Gospel. He is going to win. It is
always like that with Him: willing, working, doing in fellowship
with the Father; never going beyond the Father, even in doing. He
was just as capable of ceasing from work as of working. His was a
marvellously energized will to act or not to act, to speak or not
to speak. It may take just as much Divine grace and strength
sometimes to refrain from doing a thing as to do it. But
constraint and restraint alike have their explanation in the
dictates of this life that is in Him.
Mind, heart, will; spirit,
soul and body, all were energized by this life. "In him was
life..." the Father gave to the Son to have life in Himself.
It was on the basis of this life within that the Apostles were to
be witnesses unto Him. Luke tells us at the commencement of his
narrative, in what is known to us as the Acts of the Apostles,
that by the space of forty days He showed Himself alive by many
proofs. The word "proofs" there is a strong word, which
has led to the addition in the Authorised Version of the word
"infallible," though, being an addition, it is omitted
from the Revised Version. Put all the emphasis and stress upon
the word that is its due. You will not be guilty of exaggeration
if you put all the emphasis that is possible upon it, and then
you will be on the way to the meaning of the forty days. What is
the explanation of His tarrying forty days after His
resurrection? One reason surely is that He would have them
without the shadow of a doubt that He was alive, that He was
risen. He was giving them overwhelming proof that He was alive.
The forty days, then, were to establish the fact of His
resurrection in their hearts and minds. The fortieth day was to
mark His return to glory to receive the promise of the Father
which was to make this that He had been demonstrating in their
midst an inward reality for themselves. Thus on the fiftieth day
the Spirit came, and the purpose was fulfilled. It was in
relation to the significance of this whole period that the Lord
Jesus uttered the words recorded in the first chapter of Acts:
"Ye shall be witnesses unto me..." Witnesses are not
firstly men who talk. Witness is not in the first place a matter
of words, but of power. "Ye shall receive power, the Holy
Ghost coming upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me"
(Acts 1:8). What was the power? It was the power of the Holy
Ghost. Yes, but what do you mean by that as regards the effect,
the outworking? It is the power of the Spirit of life.
Divine Life
of the Church
On the Day of Pentecost that
life which was in Him was deposited in them by and in the Holy
Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus. And the power of witness is not the
power of word in the first place, it is the power of life. So in
their case the secret of their witness lay in what they now were,
rather than in what they now spake. As a result of their being
energized by the risen Lord words followed, declarations were
made, but it was not in itself a question of words or utterance,
but of the power in and back of all. "With great power gave
the apostles witness..." not with many wonderful words in
the first place, but with great power. What was the registration?
It was the registration of life, life was manifesting itself in
them just as it had manifested itself in Him.
We observe again the feature of
an energized mind. Do you notice that at Pentecost the hearers
were all amazed. What is amazement? It is mental defeat. Your
mind is overpowered when you are amazed, and you say: Well, I
cannot explain that! Explanation is gone; definition is ruled
out; the mind is beaten. Here is an energized mind which defeats
every attempt at explanation.
As with the minds so also is it
with the hearts of these men. Listen to Peter as he speaks to the
multitude, and note the change of tone, the change of accent, the
mingling of warning, pleading, and of entreaty. His heart is
going out to them. You find that was true of the Apostles from
this time onward. One great mark of the Apostle Paul was a heart
energized by Divine life. It is a Divine energy, a Divine power,
a Divine strength that is manifesting itself. Words are the
vessels of something, they are not things in themselves. These
words are the vehicles of Divine energy, Divine life. Is not this
what the Lord Himself had said: "The words that I speak unto
you they are spirit and they are life" (John 6:63). He was
not just giving them words, ideas, metaphysical conceptions.
There was something in what He was saying capable of making a
tremendous change. Spirit and life! Creative, constructive,
corrective, illuminating, empowering! You not only receive a
command, an instruction, but with it an energy to do what you
cannot do otherwise.
When the Word of God comes to
our hearts it is not just a precept to be hung upon the wall and
looked at, and of which we say, That is very beautiful! I believe
that! It is something which has in it the power that will
energise us if we step out upon it. It is the Word of a King, and
with the Word of a King there is power. Thus we are witnesses.
Do you see why we spent so much
time in our opening meditation in pointing out the tremendous
difference between New Testament truth systematized and the Word
in life, and the danger of systematizing truth and thinking that
when you have New Testament truth all beautifully arranged,
organized, pigeon-holed, that you are going to have a New
Testament state of things. It does not necessarily follow. Truth
has to be entered into, and has to enter into us as life, if it
is to produce its own order. It is the life that is the primary
thing, the Word, not the letter.
This and not His superiority as
a Man amongst men was the distinguishing feature in Christ, the
thing which made the difference; or, rather, let us say that it
was one of the distinguishing features. There were others, but we
are not dealing with them, we are dwelling upon this one thing.
The
Ministration of Life
We pass to the second point,
namely, the ministry of life. In the fourth verse of the first
chapter of John's Gospel we read: "In him was life, and the
life was the light of men." Mark the words of the second
half of the verse: "the life was the light of men." The
life was the light! That is the ministry of life. We might very
well in this connection re-read that difficult passage from Acts
26:22-23.
"Having therefore obtained
the help that is from God, I stand unto this day testifying both
to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and
Moses did say should come; how that the Christ must suffer, and
how that he first by the resurrection of the dead should proclaim
light both to the people and to the Gentiles."
It is the closing statement
that is so significant - "that he first by the resurrection
of the dead should proclaim light..." The first proclaimer
of light was Christ, and the ground upon which He proclaimed
light was resurrection. That is but a different way of expressing
the second half of John 1:4 "the life was the light."
The resurrection is the basis of light.
The point to be noted is that
the life expresses itself in a certain way. It is seen to do so
as light. If you follow through John's Gospel you will note other
things: for instance, the life expresses itself in liberty:
"If the son shall make you free, ye shall be free
indeed" (John 8:36). But here the inclusive thought is that
life has its own ministry, and that ministry is a matter of life.
As we have said, ministry is not first in word, but is firstly a
question of life through the word: it is not doctrine. Ministry
is not merely the imparting of truth, but the imparting of Christ
through the truth. If the truth does not minister Christ then it
is dead, it is valueless. All truth, all doctrine, teaching, must
be a ministration of the living Christ, and not a ministration of
information about Him. The test of everything is as to how far it
ministers Christ in a living way. When any given bit of ministry
has been concluded, the question is not as to whether it was
interesting, edifying or instructive, not whether it was
beautiful to contemplate, not whether it was orthodox - those may
be important factors, but they are altogether apart from the
issue - when all is finished the vital question is, Am I standing
possessed of a further measure of Christ? Has Christ in a fuller
measure livingly become available to me through that ministry? Am
I confronted with the question of Christ as my life in a way that
has not been so before? That is the test of ministry. Christ may
come to us through explanations, through definitions, through
truth, but when these things remain something in themselves then
that is not true ministry. All must minister Christ, and that
ministry is not just the ministry of certain individuals called
ministers. The whole Church is called into the ministry or
ministration of Christ. All the members are to minister Christ to
one another, and when believers are gathered together it ought to
mean life to all who are present. That place ought to be a place
of life. Going to that gathering of the Lord's people such as are
feeling spiritually, mentally, or even physically spent ought to
go away saying, I feel wonderfully better! That has been life to
me! This life we have in His Son.
You see what the ministry is.
Is it not a very blessed thing that when the Lord has a company
of His Own children gathered together in Himself and many of them
come in tired, discouraged, disheartened, worn out physically,
spiritually baffled, mentally bruised, and feeling they have no
more resource to go on, He is able in the fellowship to minister
life, which is a ministration of Christ, so that such go away
lifted up and refreshed. It is wonderful to come together for
that alone, apart altogether from expositions and addresses. And
that is ministry. When the Lord's people are really together in
living relationship with Him as the risen One they do fulfil
ministry though perhaps in large measure unconsciously. Others
coming in go away saying: Well, it was not what was said, but
there was life! I do not understand the teaching, but I am better
for being there! That is the ministry, and we are all in that
together. Do not think of the ministry as something that is
carried out from the platform all the time. You are all in the
ministry, and it depends entirely upon whether the Lord's people
are living upon the basis of this life as to how far they will
fulfil ministry. The life was the light!
The Conflict
of Life
We are very well aware that
there is a conflict, and that the conflict relates to life. We
judge of that by the evident fact that the enemy's aim in the
conflict is to bring us down, to rob us of our life, despoil us.
The heart of all spiritual conflict and challenge is Christ
risen. The historical fact was challenged. No sooner was Christ
in the tomb than with an unusual spurt of memory as to things
that He said, as though by the uncanny reminder of the Devil, His
enemies said: "We remember that that deceiver said, while he
was yet alive, After three days I rise again" (Matthew
27:63). And they took precautions, asked for a guard, and to have
the tomb sealed. The Devil has started his campaign of seeking to
counter the resurrection, and he has never given it up. It was
the one thing which disturbed and upset him whenever it was
mentioned.
But not only was the historic
fact challenged, the spiritual issue of that fact even more has
been withstood all the way through. The means and methods of the
enemy are innumerable, and of an endless variety. It would be
quite impossible to attempt to catalogue Satan's means and
methods of trying to counter the truth of Christ risen as a
spiritual fact in the lives of His people. We may, however, note
the bounds of it.
On the one extremity there is
the naked assault of spiritual death; not through means or
instrumentalities but nakedly as in the atmosphere. You come up
against the spirit of death. It cannot be explained on any
natural ground, though you look everywhere for an explanation.
You look to your own physical condition, you look to the physical
condition of other people, and you begin to look around
everywhere to find where it is that this thing has its occasion,
but you can never find it. Yet there it is, as real and devilish
as anything can be, a power of spiritual death, the naked
invasion of forces of death in the very atmosphere, suffocating,
pressing upon mind, and body and seeming to get right into your
very being, so that you cannot draw a line between yourself and
this thing; you think it is yourself, and yet you can find no
real cause when you seek for it.
At the other extreme there is
beautifully dressed up truth. The truth of God's Word
marvellously arranged and ordered and presented with the most
perfect diction, and yet as dead as ever Lazarus was before he
was raised. Truth beautifully ordered and arranged and presented
can be a deadly thing. It can accomplish the Devil's work, and
delude people into thinking that it is living truth because it is
beautiful, because it is true, because it is orthodox and
presented in such a masterly way. No! The test is whether Christ
risen is ministered to an increase of Himself in us; not
beautiful presentation of truth, but the measure of Christ in us
in a living way.
Between these two extremes
there are innumerable and endless varieties of death's challenges
to the Testimony of Christ risen, even to that of false life,
that which people call life because there is a great deal of
action, a great deal of what is sensational, emotional, of high
feeling, high tension, stimulus, all couched in evangelical
terms, and yet all the while is false life. The enemy is capable
of that. He will contrive anything to lead away or keep away
from, or to destroy the truth of Christ risen. These are our
perils. These are the perils of a teaching ministry. Such a
ministry has ever its perils of becoming a teaching, of resolving
itself into a work of accumulating matter. Every bit has to be
kept abreast of life.
That is why it is necessary, in
order to maintain everything in life, that the Lord should keep
experience abreast of teaching. To this end He takes us
constantly into depths, and does not allow us to go long without
something in our experience which brings us, in a new way, up
against living issues. The challenge, the conflict of life, is a
tremendous thing. We find it in the realm of spirit, in the realm
of soul, and in the realm of body. Very often in the experience
of the Lord's children a physical condition is due to a direct
assault upon the body, and is not to be accounted for on the mere
ground that the believer in question is not well today. If the
Lord's children were clearly to recognize that, they would not in
the conflict so often fall into the trap of always accepting a
natural explanation, and leaving the matter there. I am not
saying that we shall never in a natural way be unwell if we are
energised by Divine life, but I do know in my own experience that
assaults upon the body are very often directly devilish, and that
you can feel downright ill without nature really being
accountable. The proof that this is so is that when you rise up
in the Name of the Lord and take Him as Your life you are better,
and the issue has become a spiritual one, and not merely a
natural, physical one. There is a wonderful redemption in Christ
Jesus from those physical effects of the assault of spiritual
death, and we must prove all things. In such circumstances, let
us ask: What is the nature of this? Does the Lord want me to
accept this? Am I to be always like this? There must be no
sitting down and taking it for granted that it is so, and is
always so; we are in a battle. If the enemy can trap us along any
of these lines he will, and the Lord is losing in ministry when
the enemy succeeds in this way. We must remember that the
resurrection of Christ completed the great victory over the
spirits of death. There is for us, therefore, a heritage in
resurrection, and we have to take it. Our inheritance in the
resurrection of Christ is victory over the spirits of death.
The Principle
of Life is Faith
(1) Faith in co-operation with the fact
First of all faith in the fact.
We have anticipated this somewhat. We have seen that in Christ is
life, and that it is a life which has conquered death, and
swallowed it up victoriously. Now the fact with which we have to
do is that that life is in Him for you and for me. There is the
fact. It may be objective to begin with, but it is a fact. In
Christ there is life for me. Do you believe that?
With faith in the fact, our
further issue is of an active attitude toward it, rather than a
passive. This is a question of the state of our spirit in
relation to God's fact in Christ. I do not want to get anybody
into difficulties, or put anybody into a false position, or
mislead any of you. Understand me. I am not saying that your
relationship to Christ risen is going to mean that you will never
know weakness, meet with sickness, or know what it is to be laid
aside. But my point is that when you or I find ourselves laid
aside in weakness or sickness, or in any other way under an
assault of spiritual death that is registering itself in some
part of our being, your spirit and mine must be in an active
state toward the Lord with regard to it. Do not go to bed and
say, Well, I will stay here until I am better! You may find that
the enemy does not let you get better very quickly, with the
result that you stay there a long time. Or you may find that
though you do come round sooner or later and get up and go on,
yet you have gained nothing spiritually, and there has been no
fruit for the Lord. If, therefore, you are forced to go to bed,
go to bed positive in spirit toward God's fact. If you are
obliged to pass through this experience, whether it be of a
physical character or of any other kind, enter it and be found in
it with your spirit toward God's fact in this positive way which
says: Lord, I am only here until Your purpose is fulfilled, and
when that purpose is fulfilled then I expect a quickening, I
stand for a quickening, and I wait for it; my spirit is open and
reaching out to Thee that when the still small voice says it is
time to get up I shall not wait for feelings which will help me,
or for the whole thing to pass away, but I shall say, The Lord's
time has come, I put forth faith in this matter! In so doing you
will find life coming in, and ability to do what you could not do
apart from life.
It is a question of the state,
the attitude of our spirit. It will be found to be true that we
do not get up until our spirit is quickened. If we do so apart
from this it will be a miserable sort of existence, it will not
be life. But do you stand strongly in spirit in a way that allows
for such quickening? You may not be able to pray, and the
question asked is not, Do you continue in prayer? You may not be
able to read the Word, and I am not saying that you should be
able to. There are times when saints get to such a state that
they cannot pray, in that accepted sense of prayer, of pouring
themselves out in prayer. There are times when the reading of the
Word is not possible and definite spiritual exercise is beyond
them. But that does not necessarily mean that in spirit they
cannot be holding on to God; inarticulate may be, yet holding on,
waiting for God, even though the mind is a blank, feelings are
dead, and God has seemingly gone out of His universe, while the
Devil for his part is suggesting you are abandoned, and that
nothing but death awaits you. It is a case of faith being
positively linked with God's fact, and the spirit still Godward;
not turning toward our circumstances nor toward our own state,
but Godward.
If you cannot follow that, if
that is too abstruse for you, take the principle. The principle
is this, that faith in God's fact must be of a co-operating kind
rather than of a passive kind.
(2) Faith in
a Person and not in an abstract element
That is surely the challenge of
John 11. The Bethany sisters went round and round in a circle on
the question of death and resurrection, and were looking at the
whole matter in the abstract. What had now overtaken their
brother was to them the inevitable fact of death, and as to
resurrection that, of course, was a thing of "the last
day." But all was changed when they were confronted with the
statement, "I am the resurrection and the
life." That is not a time matter, not something confined to
the last day. That is universal, that is ever present, that is
timeless. "I Am!" That can mean anything at any
moment.
So we end with Revelation
1:17-18: "I am... the Living One..." May the Lord take
hold of all this, and make it life to us, a real ministration of
Himself.