"And Jesus
came to them and spake unto them, saying, All authority
hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye
therefore..." (Matt. 28:18-19).
"...and what
the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who
believe, according to that working of the strength of his
might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from
the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the
heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and
power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not
only in this world, but also in that which is to come:
and he put all things in subjection under his feet and
gave him to be head over all things to the church, which
is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in
all" (Eph. 1:19-23).
This passage from Eph.
1 is a very wonderful enlargement of the brief statement
of the Lord Jesus that all authority in heaven and on
earth had been given to Him. The Apostle makes this
wonderful exposition of the Lord's own fragment, showing
what fulness was included in that "all
authority" - far above all principality, all power,
all dominion, all names, all ages. That is the "all
authority" in its range and compass and content.
Then the Apostle says, in effect, that when the Lord
Jesus said to His disciples "Go ye
therefore...." - 'for this reason, because of this,
go ye' - that self-same fulness was gathered into Himself
as head of the Church; that is, that the Church stands
directly under all that fulness. It is intended to be
mediated from the head to and through the members. We
might well ask, in a sort of paraphrasing of the words of
the Ethiopian addressed to Philip in the chariot -
'Speaketh the Apostle of some other Church or of this
one? To whom does that relate?' - for it is very
difficult to see anything that corresponds to that in the
Church that we know. Does that apply to some other
entity, or does it apply to us? I say, there is a lot of
room for asking that question in the light of how very
far short of that comes the Church known to us. But, dear
friends, the Church, in the mind of the Apostle Paul -
the Church referred to by him there - is the Church into
which you and I have been baptized in one Spirit, and
that exceeding greatness of Divine Power is to usward who
believe.
Well, that is only
another way of bringing us straight up against the
challenge and the need of this hour, the challenge to
measure up, and to find out why the Church is so
otherwise, and how it can be according to that
declaration. We commenced our meditations with presenting
ourselves with this question - What has God revealed as
His supreme objective resultant from the Cross of Christ?
and what we have just read and said is the answer - a
Church corresponding to that description, a people
answering to that presentation of the Divine mind. Such
is what God has revealed to be the supreme outcome of the
Cross - all fulness gathered into His Son as vitally and
organically related to His Church, His Body, and that
fulness in action; the exceeding greatness of His power
in action in and through that Body in the whole cosmic
realm.
At the close of our
previous meditation we saw that God is really dealing
with us with that end in view, and that we are to regard
ourselves as being now in God's training-centre - in the
place where, for the time being, His will has appointed
us. Training-centres, from the Divine standpoint, are not
institutions, nor theological seminaries, but where we
are in the will of God - that is our training-centre; and
we called upon ourselves to adjust to that, with this
mind, that here God has chosen to equip us for the
greatest ministry to which mortals have ever been called
- the expression of the exaltation and sovereign headship
of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
I want to follow that
up for a little, resuming at that point concerning our
equipment for this ministry along the line of personal
spiritual experience, discipline, training - equipment
for this great Divine purpose of expressing in this
universe, and especially in the great realm of spiritual
powers and intelligences, the sovereignty of our Lord
Jesus, firstly in terms of Divine life triumphing in us
over the death that is working in us and over our natural
life; and secondly in terms of Divine knowledge greater
than any other kind of knowledge - the only kind of
knowledge that can undo and set aside the far-reaching
and deep-rooted deception of the false knowledge which
Satan succeeded in getting the race to take hold of at
the beginning; and then thirdly, in terms of spiritual
influence - the registration of something which is not to
be accounted for by any human magnetism or personal
impress or anything at all that belongs to man or woman -
a spiritual, Divine influence.
These are the things
which constitute the curriculum of the spiritual training
which God has undertaken to accomplish in you and in me
with a view to meeting that spiritual realm, and that is the
service, above all other service, to vindicate the
Cross of the Lord Jesus.
God's
Quest - Spiritual Personality in Terms of Christ
Well then, that means
one thing. It means that God is after persons. It is
persons that are needed - not first preachers, teachers,
'workers,' ministers, missionaries, in the technical
sense, but persons. Oh, what a false position we may find
ourselves in by these titles! How many a one is called a
missionary who is no missionary at all, or a minister who
is no minister! There is something much deeper than the
title. No title makes us what the title represents, and
we can have the title and the uniform and not be the
person. No, it is neither official people nor things that
God is after - not exponents of some spiritual ideology,
teaching, system of truth, but persons, just persons. We
have to learn anew to draw lines of distinction. There is
all the difference between a church in the New Testament
sense, and a congregation. There is all the difference
between praying and a prayer meeting. You can have a
prayer meeting without praying in the true spiritual
sense. There is all the difference between living
testimonies on the one hand and ordinances and rites on
the other; and there is all the difference between people
who officially represent something, and personal
embodiments of Jesus Christ. Yes, the main feature in our
spiritual training is the person being trained; not the
subjects being studied, but the persons being trained.
You see, there is a
principle in spiritual training, the training which God
is trying to carry out in your life and in mine, and that
principle is spiritual personality. And that personality
is Christ: not your personality or mine, but Christ's.
That principle underlies everything in the Word of God.
It is so clear, right on the face of the Scriptures, that
God's view of the race is that - it is personal. It is a
man; it is Adam.
That is the very
principle of representative people in the Bible. Take the
priest. The priest is the personal embodiment and
representation of the whole nation of Israel. It is a
priestly nation, and the priest is the one upon whom God
looks as upon the nation. When the priest is right, in a
right position and state before God and functioning
according to Divine prescribing, the nation is right, and
God meets the nation on the ground of the priest. When
the priest is wrong, corrupt, polluted, be sure the
nation is that, and that is how God sees the nation. It
is all gathered up into the one man; the priest. So also
with the king: as king, so people. He is the inclusive
representation of the nation. It is as though the nation
were but one man and that man the king; what the king is,
the nation is. You do not need to look very deeply for
proof of that. Look at Saul and see the state of the
nation when Saul was king. Look at David and see the
state of the nation when David was king. And so with
prophet. The prophet was the personal representation of
the people. He was called upon to do all sorts of
extraordinary and strange things, sometimes very
degrading and humiliating things, in order to portray to
the nation God's view of themselves. What about the very
name - Israel? It is the name of a man, of an individual,
but it is again the name of a nation; a man's name for a
nation. That is the principle, you see; God views the
race as a man, as a person.
Now, carry
that over to Christ and the principle holds good. Thank
God, He does not see us in ourselves. It is Christ Whom
He sees when our faith has been reposed in His Son. We
sing a tremendous thing when we sing:
What though the
accuser roar
Of ills that I have done;
I know them well and thousands more;
Jehovah findeth none.
That is tremendous! God
is looking on a Person, and that Person is His Son. That
is why we said that a spiritual personality is what God
is after, and that it is the personality of His Son. It
is, in its effect and outworking, nothing less than - so
to speak - bringing out the Lord Jesus Christ, the
exalted, glorified Son of God, from heaven into this
universe, to register His presence, with all that such a
presence means, amongst the forces of evil. You cannot do
that except by being that. That cannot be done
along any academic lines of preparation and
qualification, or by any official titles and orders; that
cannot be done in any other way than this - that God has
wrought Christ into us individually in measure, and
corporately in the united measures, and that it is Christ
coming out by the presence of His people here; Christ
moving out, not only on the earth to men and to nations,
but primarily, pre-eminently, Christ moving out into the
spiritual kingdom back of the nations, back of peoples,
back of conditions.
The
Impact of Christ upon Spiritual Powers
His presence - what
ought it to mean? You ask the simple question - if Jesus
Christ were here, what would happen? Even in His
humiliation, what would happen? Well, there would be a
disclosing of themselves on the part of those evil
forces; His presence would make it impossible for them to
remain hidden. They would cry, "Art thou come hither
to torment us before the time?" (Matt. 8:29).
What a betrayal! Do they know that there is a time for
their destruction? They do! And further, they know that
He is the One Who is to bring it about. Tremendous, isn't
it? Bring Him out, even in His humiliation, and
there is registration enough in every realm. But listen -
"the exceeding greatness of his power.... according
to that working of the strength of his might which he
wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and
made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all rule, and authority, and power, and
dominion, and every name..." Bring that Lord
in! Oh, this, dear friends, may sound to you like a
wonderful idea. You are asking about the practical
possibility of it. I believe that God is wanting to say
to us that it has got to be much more like that where we
are concerned than it has been - we in Christ and Christ
in us; we together in that conscious, spiritual
relatedness of which we have before spoken; that has got
to tell in the spiritual kingdom. The enemy is having far
too much ground and way, and it is not God's will that it
should be so; and it is as though the Lord were saying to
us, 'All authority has been given to me in heaven and on
earth. What are you going to do about it? It is your,
matter! Go ye therefore....'
Spiritual
Personality Secured by the Cross
Now then, - this matter
of spiritual personality - which resolves itself into a
matter of bringing Christ into events, and that primarily
in the spiritual realm - how can it be? And the answer is
- only by the Cross, but surely and truly by the Cross.
It is the Cross which stands between those two men, the
first Adam and the last, representatives of two races. It
is just there that the Cross has its place, between the
two.
Before we can know what
the Cross means, we have to know what those two men
really are, what headship in both cases really does imply
and mean; for there is a headship on either side. On the
one hand is the body of sin; that is racial, the whole
race. There is one head to that body of sin. In its own
sense and meaning, that head is head over all things to
that body of sin. Satan is head over the whole body of
sin, the whole race of the first Adam. Christ, the last
Adam, is head over this other Body, and head over all
things to that Body - "to the church which is his
body." We have to understand what headship really
means in both cases, and in understanding that headship
we shall know what the two men are; and we must
understand in order to know the meaning of the Cross.
The
Root of Sin Dealt with by the Cross
Remember, then, that
the Cross goes right behind all that is secondary to what
is primary. Sins are secondary; sin is
primary. Sins always have been secondary, they are the
result of sin; and, while God has made a provision,
comprehensive and conclusive, for sins, He has gone right
behind and done something very much more in relation to
sin. The point in making that distinction is this - you
and I must be perfectly clear on this point that, until
the primary thing has been dealt with, there is little
hope of the secondary being dealt with. Are you
struggling against sins? Well, you will go on struggling.
The key to the sins is sin. You have to get behind your
sins, to where God has gone. What is sin? Well, sin is
Satan's kingdom in principle. Satan's kingdom is not some
organised, official system, something literal and
temporal, objective. Satan's kingdom is within us, just
as, for us as believers, the kingdom of heaven is within
us.
The
Origin of Sin
How is Satan's kingdom
within us by nature? It is Satan's nature in us that is
his kingdom, and his nature is sin. It is a working
power, like an evil disease - you may call it a toxin, a
poison - permeating the old creation, actively at work in
the system of the race. That is sin, and that is Satan's
kingdom. Now we have got to deal with that side. You will
at once see the other side, but we are not on the other
side of the Cross yet. We can begin now here - the Cross
and sin, the primary thing. We call it 'original sin.'
What do we mean by original sin? Well, we mean something
that goes right back to the beginning and follows through
from the beginning continuously and is with us as from
that far, far distant beginning.
Where was that
beginning? The beginning was not only far, far back in
man's history, but it was far, far back beyond man's
beginnings. Sin commenced with Satan, and there are two
factors in original sin where he is concerned: firstly
its immediate and close up relationship to God, and
secondly its seat in the exercise of the will.
Now let us get hold of
our Bibles. Of course, your acceptance of our
interpretation will depend entirely upon whether you
agree that there is always a double thought and a double
side to what God has said in the Old Testament - that
there is a present and earthly aspect, and also a
permanent and heavenly aspect. If that is accepted, then
we have no difficulty with these passages that we are
going to read.
"How art thou
fallen from heaven, O daystar, son of the morning! how
art thou cut down to the ground, that didst lay low the
nations! And thou saidst in thy heart, I will ascend into
heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
and I will sit upon the mount of congregation, in the
uttermost parts of the the north; I will ascend above the
heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most
High" (Isa. 14:12-14).
"Moreover the
word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, take
up a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say unto him,
Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Thou sealest up the sum,
full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou wast in Eden,
the garden of God; every precious stone was thy
covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the diamond, the
beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the
emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of
thy tabrets and of thy pipes was in thee; in the day that
thou wast created they were prepared. Thou wast the
anointed cherub that covereth: and I set thee, so that
thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked
up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast
perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created,
till unrighteousness was found in thee. By the abundance
of thy traffic they filled the midst of thee with
violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore have I cast
thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I have
destroyed thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the
stones of fire" (Eze. 28:11-16).
You see the two things
that I indicated as factors in original sin. Firstly, its
immediate and close-up relationship to God. It is right
in the very presence of God; it is something against God;
it is a violation of the uniqueness, the solitariness, of
God. There can be no two supreme beings in this universe,
there can be only one, and anything which challenges that
solitary, unique supremacy is a violation of it, is
treachery; and that is where original sin began.
The second thing is
that its seat is in the exercise of the will. You notice
in Isaiah 14 the five-fold 'I will.' It is the heart of
sin, the essence of sin; and the prophet, by inspiration,
is caused to disclose something which was probably never
uttered in words at all by the one to whom the words are
attributed. It is probable, indeed I think it is certain,
that Lucifer never expressed himself at all in words.
"Thou saidst in thy heart" - so that it
was a heart matter, an attitude, a state before God. The
inspiration of the prophet amounts to this, that he was
made to disclose something that had never come out in
verbal and audible pronouncement, something that had been
deep down in the heart of this one. You remember the
familiar words of Heb. 4:12 - "The word of God is
living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword,
and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of
both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the
thoughts and intents of the heart." That is
where God goes. It is deep down there in the inner life
that this resolve was made, with this five-fold "I
will." It is the inner working of the will, and God
knows the secret of all hearts. We do not need to utter
it. It may just be there; God knows; and that is original
sin. It is deep down in the life.
We may as well face
this. It is an ugly thing. We cannot understand the Cross
until we know this. This only enhances the glory of the
Cross, and brings out its matchless splendour, when we
see its immense range - how far back it reaches, how far
up and how far down. The Cross is a tremendous thing.
Well, you see, that is the origin of sin - what we call
original sin - and that is the toxin, that is the poison.
The
Nature of Sin
Let us look at its
nature. "Thy heart was lifted up because of thy
beauty" (Eze. 28:17). Oh, then pride is the essence
of sin. It is out of pride that sin springs. No wonder
the language about pride is so strong! "Every one
that is proud in heart is an abomination to the
Lord" (Prov. 16:5). "Because of thy
beauty"; then self-esteem was the cause; and the
accompaniment of pride is always rebellion. Did you ever
know a proud person satisfied? Bring along somebody else
who looks equally well-dressed, well-supplied; see the
reaction of the proud person - 'I will go one better!'
Pride, you see, gives birth to rivalries at once, and
produces this spirit of rebellion, of discontent with
even the best position. Pride is never satisfied; it must
always get higher, have more, go better than another. It
is rebellion; and rebellion in act led to perversity in
nature.
In the Old Testament
there are two words which mainly cover the ground of sin
- transgression and iniquity. They are the two English
words for two Hebrew words which mean respectively
rebellion (transgression) and perversity (iniquity).
Rebellion in an act produced perversity in a nature. We,
in Adam, were caught in the act of his rebellion. Adam
rebelled, prompted by a spirit of pride - pride provoked
by this suggestion: "Hath God said...? ...God doth
know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall
be opened, and ye shall be as God" (Gen. 3:1-5).
Pride flared up, with desire to have and to be something
that God never intended - and certainly never intended in
that way, along that line.
The act of rebellion,
the counterpart of Lucifer's rebellion, issued in a
nature; and who will deny that in our very nature, we are
perverse? It does not matter, dear friends, how saintly
and consecrated and devoted to the Lord you may be, how
deep may have been the discipline in your life, and how
great a measure of Christlikeness may have been developed
in you - if you have a child, see if it inherits all
that! Why, it will not be many hours old before you can
see and hear 'I will,' 'I will not.' We do not inherit
the Christlikeness of our forebears, unfortunately.
Perversity is in every fresh generation. It is there, and
from what we may call the simple form of that perversity
in the rebellious, discontented, peevish cry of the
little infant, right up and on to the vast circumference
of this whole creation, in all this anarchy, strife, war,
murder, cruelty, 'man's inhumanity to man,' it is the
same thing, the same nature, the same in-bred perversity.
Man cannot tame it, nor eradicate it nor heal it. He may
set up his League of Nations or his United Nations
Organization with intent to curb or to cure international
perversity, and what happens? Well, so much the worse for
the League of Nations when it comes into collision with
original sin! We who are believers in the Lord Jesus
Christ, lovers of Him, devoted to Him, know only too well
that if we are put to the test, tried by adversity and by
suffering and by disappointment and by frustration and by
the Divine withholding from us of those things upon which
our hearts are set, is it not all too easy for perversity
and rebellion to rise up in us? Is it not all too
difficult for us to keep it in check? It is there in the
old man; that is the nature of sin. And this in Satan is
the very fountain head of all this other with which we
are so familiar and which is so common in the creation.
That is where it came from and that is its nature, and
from this source man has become what he is. That is how
it is, that is why it is.
Self
the Stronghold of Sin
Well, then, we must
look at man, and what do we find? What is the central
thing in man? It is this same thing - self, self, self,
in some way. What is born in the blood will come out.
Self-will, self-interest; the calculating upon a basis of
how a given proposition or course will affect me, whether
it will be to my advantage or disadvantage; and so on
without end. It is not seen only in grossly sensual
forms, nor alone in the more common forms of ambition
that might even be called worthy - the desire to climb
the ladder of success, and so on. But this thing can move
right through into our spiritual life and become a secret
hidden motive even in our quest for blessing, for power.
It can come out in a Peter who, when his Lord says to him
"If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me"
(John 13:8) will respond, with eager desire to have as
much for himself as possible, "Lord, not my feet
only, but also my hands and my head." I do not want
to get you analysing and introspective, but I say we have
to get down to this thing before we understand the Cross
and before this spiritual personality which is Christ can
be developed; for it is only, as we have said, by way of
the Cross that self-interest, self-sufficiency,
self-realisation, and a dozen other forms of self go out.
Not only the self which asserts itself, and is
aggressive, imperious, seeking and loving the limelight,
but also that which is pitying and drawing attention to
itself because it is so poor and miserable and wretched a
thing - it is all self. Anything which has the effect of
bringing us into view is self, and the Cross stands right
in the way of that and says No to the whole thing that
came from Satan, whatever form it takes - whether it is
self-realisation, asserting, forcing, driving, or
self-pity with its negatives and its inferiority. Satan
is somewhere behind it all, and he will use it, and the
effect is the hiding of Christ; and it has got to be
dealt with somehow. That is the school we are in. It is
this alliance of fallen man with Satan in the very nature
of things which sums up the whole Bible from one
standpoint, and shows where God stands in relation to man
when man is on his own ground and not on God's ground.
Sin
Essential to Satan's Kingdom
Well, the issue - it is
a kingdom. That is where we started. What is the kingdom
of Satan? Something out there, remote, objective? Are you
proposing to gird on armour and to go out and attack the
kingdom of Satan - something at a distance, in India, in
China, in the slums of London? No; the kingdom of Satan
is first of all within you. Until something has been done
within, Satan is not dethroned, his kingdom is not
overthrown; it is there. His strength is in the nature
that he has bitten into the race as poison, by man's
permission and agreement. That is the dark and terrible
side, but it is essential that we apprehend the fact and
nature of that kingdom. Until you see that clearly, you
have not come near to seeing either the meaning of the
Cross or of the kingdom of the heavens, for the Cross
comes right in there, to say No - fully, finally; for
ever, No - to that fallen creation; and, thank God, it
not only says No, but accomplishes it also. We are in the
hands of God if we are the Lord's people. We know - and
if we do not know there is something wrong somewhere,
there is a hindrance somewhere that has got to be looked
into - we know, or we ought to know, by the Spirit's
witness within us, whenever self asserts itself in any
form. Oh, is that not the explanation of those many
secret battles and experiences when we have had to get
away alone, and have dealings with the Lord? We have said
or done something that was not fitting; or our manner, if
not the substance of our words, has been wrong; or we
have had a self-important bearing, we have been talking
about ourselves, and we have been bringing all the tinsel
of this life and of this world into view and making
something of what belongs to the old creation; and we are
miserable afterward, we are wretched about it. 'Oh, was
not that all death? Why did I get caught like that?' The
only thing to do is to get away into the presence of the
Lord and get readjusted. We know a lot about that. We are
in the school when that is going on.
I think we must stop
there, with just this rounding off. This, dear friends,
is the nature of the kingdom that we are called to
destroy. This is the nature of the warfare. It is not
primarily a matter of dealing with Satan and demons
personally, but of dealing with the ground upon which
that kingdom is founded and which supports their power.
That ground is sin, and sin is this inborn rebellion and
perversity. Therefore the overthrow of Satan's kingdom is
at the Cross of the Lord Jesus where the background of
everything was dealt with, and Satan was cast out - not
just personally: do not get pictures of Satan as a person
being thrown out - Satan cast out in this sense, that his
moral ground of strength was taken from him. He was confronted with another
nature in which there was no perversity, and that nature
was too strong for him; and there are given unto us
exceeding great and precious promises whereby we may
become partakers of that same Divine nature (1 Pet. 1:4).
It is along that line that Satan loses his power.