"When the Son of man
cometh, shall he find the faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8).
Place that passage alongside of
those read in our previous meditation (1 Tim. 6:12; 2 Tim. 4:7;
Jude 3; Rev. 2:13); we will not repeat them in full just now.
Just be reminded that the two passages in Paul's two letters to
Timothy were amongst them; first, his exhortation to Timothy to
fight the good fight of the faith, and then his own statement
that he had fought the good fight and had kept the faith; and we
were and are occupied with this phrase - "the faith".
I am quite sure that, in the
light of what we said in our previous meditation, the passage in
Luke 8:8 takes on new significance and we are better able to
understand it. "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find
the faith on the earth?" That certainly does not mean, shall
He find a Christian system of doctrine on the earth. He will find
plenty of that. And it certainly does not mean, shall He find
faith in the sense of people who believe in Christianity or in
general in Christ. There would be no point, I think in asking
that question, if He meant that. There are multitudes of people
who believe in a general way in Christ and Christianity, if that
could be said to be the meaning of faith, and I do not know that
we are to expect that kind of Christianity to diminish very
greatly, at least to such a point where it is really a question
whether He will find any of it at all when He comes.
But when we look into this
phrase, "the faith" as we were doing earlier, and
really understand its essence and nature, then the question has
some point, and it is really concerning the point of the question
that we are going to spend a little time now.
We have sought to see that the
faith in its essence is the essential and the unique nature of
Divine sonship. It is over that that the fight goes on, rages and
intensifies, and that sonship is something into which believers
are initially brought by new birth, and thereafter progressively
by a life in the Spirit, and it is therefore saying that sonship,
in the New Testament sense, is something more than being born
into a family; it is growing up in that family, and carries with
it the feature of spiritual maturity. A phrase used so frequently
in our New Testament is "perfection"; "go on unto
perfection" (Heb. 6:1), or as the margin expresses it,
"go on to full growth". Really it means the
consummation of things, coming to the full end for which you
exist.
Seeing then, that that is
sonship - going right on to the full end for which you exist as
children of God; which, again, implies a life in the Spirit
continually - then you have room for the question, shall He find
the faith on the earth? In other words, shall He find on the
earth a real going on in the Spirit unto full growth? I do not
think the question was meant to suggest that He would not find
it, that it would not exist at His coming, but I do think that
the question contains this factor, namely, that it would be far
from being a general thing and that you would have to look for
it. In order to find it, you would have to look for it; it will
not be there in such a way that everybody can see it. That, I
think, is the point of the question.
Well then, we want to look a
little more closely at this matter of sonship, seeing that
everything is bound up with it. It is the faith, it is the
occasion of the conflict, it is the cause of the question of the
Lord. What is the nature of sonship? We can answer that by two
or three quite simple statements.
Sonship
Essentially and Exclusively of God
Firstly, it is essentially and
exclusively of God. We are familiar with the statement in John
1:13: "who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God". Not this, nor
that, nor that, but of God! You might very well put in there - 'but
exclusively of God'. Sonship, therefore, is something exclusively
of God. It lies altogether beyond the power and possibility of
man to achieve, to attain, to reach unto it. It is not in man to
produce it or arrive at it. The secret of sonship is not resident
in man. The seed of sonship is not in man by nature, in spite of
all that of which we spoke in our previous meditation that is the
generally accepted doctrine concerning man today. The fact is
that this sonship is something which belongs to another realm
altogether.
We know that the Word of God
sees man as dead, so far as God is concerned, and nothing short
of a miracle can change that situation, for life is God's
prerogative and gift alone, and resurrection something which is
alone in the power of God. Therefore the principle, the law, of
sonship is an experience of resurrection which, to those who have
it, is such an experience as to settle forever in their
convictions that everything they have in relation to God is a
sheer miracle of God's own working.
Now, God is going to be very
true to that principle and position, and we will discover that a
life in the Spirit, which is the life of sonship, cannot be a
life in the flesh, cannot be a life out of nature and nature's
springs. A life in the Spirit, which is the life of sonship, has
continuously behind it the realisation that we cannot live save
out from God, that we draw our very life from Him every day. The
more we go on with God, which means the more we live in the
Spirit, and the more spiritual growth and maturity takes place in
us, the deeper will be our consciousness of utter dependence upon
God for our life, and for everything in the realm of our
relationship with Him. Self-resource, self-strength,
self-confidence, self-ability, self-wisdom, self-esteem,
self-reputation, will be steadily undermined and sapped and
drained by the Spirit of God, and we shall come more and more to
the place where we know that it is not in us to be Christians,
not in us to live a life in the Spirit, not in us to go on with
God. It must all come right out from Himself. Sonship is the most
dependent thing of which you can have any conception. He said of
Himself, in words perhaps all too familiar to us; "The Son
can do nothing out from himself" (John 5:19). Again, "I
can of myself do nothing... because I seek not mine own will, but
the will of him that sent me". (John 5:30). The Apostle, in
the spirit of a true son, will say, "I know nothing by
myself..." (1 Cor. 4:4). "We have this treasure in
vessels of fragile clay, that the exceeding greatness of the
power may be of God, and not of ourselves" (2 Cor. 4:7).
"Who is sufficient for these things? ...our sufficiency is
of God" (2 Cor. 2:16, 3:5). Now, that is sonship, and that
means living continually on the ground of resurrection.
Sonship Based
on Resurrection
And so we come to Romans 1:4:
"...declared to be the Son of God in power... by the
resurrection of the dead" - sonship based upon resurrection.
That is wholly of God, only of God. The Lord Jesus, in putting
the truth of sonship into operation, said and did several things
which are full of significance in the light of what we are
saying. You remember in those early chapters in John how He said,
"The hour cometh, when the dead shall hear the voice of
the Son... and... shall live" (John 5:25). Why?
"As the Father raiseth the dead, and giveth them life, even
so the Son also giveth life to whom he will" (John 5:21.
A.R.V.). This relationship with God in terms of sonship means
that by dependence upon God, by a life in God, a life in the
Spirit, that which is God's sole and exclusive prerogative of
raising the dead becomes an actual fact in the sphere of sonship,
an actuality at work in the sphere of sonship. The Son becomes
the sphere in which the Father's power and right of resurrection
operates. But, while that is true, that resurrection life is
working through the Son from the Father, the Son is still saying
in the very same parts of the Word, "The Son can do nothing
out from himself, but what he seeth the Father doing" (John
5:19). That is in the early part of John.
You get well on in John and
you have the case of Lazarus, and Lazarus is taken up, as you
know by the introduction to the incident, with one object. The
Lord Jesus states the object of Lazarus' sickness and death.
"This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God,
that the Son of God may be glorified" (John 11:4).
And so Lazarus is not healed. The Lord Jesus does not come to the
home in Bethany as the doctor to give a remedy, and to recover
Lazarus. He stays away deliberately until Lazarus is not only
beyond hope in this life, but is beyond this life itself, and
then, when the Lord Jesus knows that he is dead, He says,
"Our friend Lazarus sleepeth". The disciples
misunderstood and thought He meant that he was having a sleep: so
Jesus said plainly, "Lazarus is dead". Then, when He
knew in His spirit that Lazarus was gone, He came to Bethany. He
was acting out now what He had said before, and the thing which
governs the action is "that the Son may be glorified".
Then John sums up the whole of that Gospel in the words of chapter
20:31: "These things are written that ye may believe that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God". The whole of John's
Gospel is written with that object in view.
Now John has written the
statement which we have about the Son raising the dead by His
relationship and life in the Father, and dependence upon the
Father, and John too has written about Lazarus; and he says, I
have written all these things and all the other things with one
point in view, namely, "that ye may believe that Jesus is
the Christ, the Son of God". Sonship is all the time on this
basis of resurrection.
What was true in the case of
the Lord Jesus is true of the spirit of sonship, wherever that
spirit is found. Turning to Galatians again, the Apostle says,
"Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son
into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father" (Gal. 4:6). We are
sons. But how many of the Lord's people are willing to live on
that basis? How many there are who want to have it in themselves;
the strength, the wisdom, the ability, the efficiency; everything
in themselves, not a life of utter dependence and daily
resurrection. "When the Son of man cometh, shall he, find
the faith..."? You see the point - something which is
exclusively of God; and God takes pains to undercut every
tendency and inclination to have it in ourselves, because
that is the way in which at the first this very purpose of God in
sonship was set aside.
The Law of
Faith and Dependence
Adam was created with sonship
in view, sonship after this kind, but he was placed upon the
basis of dependence upon God, faith and dependence. That was the
law of his life, and that was to be the law by which he would
come to the realisation of sonship in its full sense. Satan came
and suggested to Adam that he could have it in himself if he
liked. He need not have it of God and have to look to God all the
time. If Adam did but follow his advice, there need be none of
this servitude to God, but he could be as God and have it in
himself, and be delivered from the bondage of this life of
dependence and faith, and obedience. Adam accepted that
suggestion and sought to take it, to have it in himself without
reference or deference to God. Sonship was lost for Adam and his
race. The last Adam comes and accepts a life of absolute
dependence upon the Father, and obedience to the Father in an
utter self-emptying. "He emptied himself... and became
obedient"; He took "the form of a bond-servant"
(Phil. 2:6-8). He had it not in Himself, by His own choice: He
had it in the Father; and sonship was established, realised and
expressed in fulness in Him.
We, beloved, are called on to
that basis. Oh, there is nothing which will work against the
spirit of sonship, God's purpose of fulness in us, like pride,
the pride which wants to have it in ourselves. Pride hates a life
of dependence. Pride cannot bear to have to look outside of
itself for everything. Pride must have the root of things in
itself. "Be not wise in your own conceits" is a phrase
the Apostle used (Rom. 12:16). What is conceit? The very word
itself means "having the seat of things in yourself";
wise by having the seat of things in yourself. The Lord Jesus,
Who had the highest place in heavenly glory, the highest and
greatest title and name - all rights were in His power - accepted
the position of girding Himself with a towel and putting water
into a basin and kneeling down to wash the feet of His disciples.
That is the mind which was in Christ Jesus. That is sonship. It
is not nice for the flesh, nor for our reputation, it is not
pleasant to our education; we look for something better than
that. But that is sonship. That is a life in the Spirit. That
spirit will be the mark, the hall-mark, of spiritual growth, of
spiritual maturity. The person who is really growing spiritually
is not the person who is becoming something important
spiritually. The one who is growing is the one who is growing in
the servant dependent spirit more and more. The one who can get
down lowest is the one who is really getting up highest.
That is the nature of sonship.
It is something which is wholly of God, exclusively of God, not
of ourselves. We cannot produce it.
Sonship a
Spiritual Thing
It is, therefore, in the next
place, a spiritual thing. "That which is born of the flesh
is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit"
(John 3:6). Sonship, therefore, is essentially a spiritual thing
and is always connected, in the Word, with the Spirit. The new
birth is connected with the Spirit - "born of the
Spirit". "As many as are led by the Spirit of God,
these are sons of God" (Rom. 8:14). Born; led. You come to
Galatians: Galatians is just full of these things, full of
sonship and the Spirit. "Because ye are sons, God sent forth
the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba,
Father." Then you know Paul's argument about Hagar and
Ishmael, and Sarah and Isaac; the one born after the flesh, the
other born after the Spirit; and the one born after the flesh is
to be cast out, that the one born after the Spirit may be
established (Gal. 4:21-31). It is sonship and the Spirit again.
Sonship, therefore, is a spiritual thing. It is obvious that this
kind of sonship is not a natural thing.
Sonship
Indestructible in Itself - The Work of Satan to Nullify its Power
But the point that I want to
get at and emphasise is this, that because it is a spiritual
thing, it is something which interests Satan in a particular way.
Being exclusively of God and being wholly spiritual, it is
something which, shall I say, tantalises Satan; it is a cause of
tremendous annoyance and grievance to him. He cannot get at this
thing directly, it is beyond him. You notice that in the Word of
God there is no denial from any realm that there is such a being
as the Son of God or as the Christ. There is no denial; that is
recognised, acknowledged and accepted everywhere. There is a
denial that Jesus is the Son of God, but the fact of
sonship as a reality in God's universe is never questioned.
Antichrist is not the denial of the existence of Christ, but the
counterfeiting of Christ: and that is a tremendous admission, a
tremendous acknowledgment. If you counterfeit something, it is
your way of admitting that there is something real. You do not
counterfeit if there is not the genuine thing. You see my point.
There is something in God's universe which is never questioned or
denied, but which is an established thing, which cannot be
touched as a reality, and that is sonship. To get at that -
well, anything can be done to nullify it in its effect - but the
fact is there, and it is that fact which is Satan's aggravation
and annoyance, the fact of the existence of this sonship, in
God's universe, and that that sonship has invaded and come into
his domain. There is sonship right in the very domain of Satan,
in the kingdom of this world, this world which "lieth in the
wicked one". Sonship has invaded and come into it; and there
is a fact which cannot be destroyed, it is inviolate in itself.
Oh, lay hold of this! Sonship
is something which Satan cannot destroy in itself. Sonship, is
something inviolate, lying outside of Satan's realm and Satan's
power. What then is the nature of the battle? Oh, Satan is not so
foolish as to think that he can destroy sonship as a fact, but
all his efforts and methods are employed to nullify the effect of
it as he can, as he will, in his domain. After this manner,
therefore, he started with the last Adam - "If thou be the
Son...". The sting is in that "if". If only the
Lord Jesus would admit an "if", Satan has scored, and
while the sonship is not destroyed, the effect of it in his
kingdom is.
That can be put in another way.
Admit a doubt, admit a question, and you are undone, and the
thing which in itself is inviolate is put under arrest with
regard to its effect against Satan. Doubt, unbelief, a question,
an uncertainty, suspends the tremendous potency of sonship as
against the enemy, even though the sonship position cannot be
destroyed. If Satan can find a people here who believe on the
basis of sonship, and persist in believing, and refuse to doubt
and question, he has found sonship there which corresponds to
what he found in Christ, Who said, "The prince of this world
cometh and hath nothing in me" (John 14:30). Hath nothing!
What is he looking for? The ground of a question or a doubt, is
what he is after; and he found nothing.
So the faith you see, is faith
which is reposed in God's Son and which makes that sonship a
mighty power in the one who believes.
Now, what we are saying is that
the existence of this thing called sonship is the occasion of all
the conflict because it is something which in itself is beyond
Satan's power, and unless in some way its effect in his kingdom
is neutralised, it is going to be his ultimate expulsion and
undoing. Let us say again that, lying right there at the heart of
sonship, is no less a thing than the ridding of this universe of
Satan and his kingdom.. That is the issue of sonship. Therefore
let us look at the nature of sonship. What is it? It is a life in
the Spirit. Satan will constantly try to provoke unto a life in
the flesh. A life of dependence: then Satan will try to make us
independent. A life of humility, meekness, drawing wholly upon
the Lord for everything: then Satan will try to provoke us to
pride, to have it in ourselves, to be something ourselves, to
care for our reputation, to fight for our own vindication.
Remember that every tendency, inclination or attempt to secure
our vindication - we may be right, but that is not the question -
anything in the direction of securing our vindication is against
sonship. "He made himself of no reputation" (Phil.
2:7). He did not seek to vindicate Himself or to be vindicated.
He left the matter of vindication altogether with God, and became
obedient unto death, yea, the death of the Cross. "Their
righteousness is of me, saith the Lord" (Isa. 54:17). Oh,
for this grace of self-emptying, seeking no title, no name, no
reputation, no vindication, no justification for ourselves. It
cuts the ground from under the feet of the enemy, robs him of
that which he needs to save his own position and to nullify the
effect of Christ's presence. Let us ask the Lord for that grace
of selflessness, and of joyful acceptance of a life of dependence
upon the Lord in terms of daily resurrection. That is the way of
sonship. It makes room for the Lord and for the fulness of
Christ.
I think perhaps we could very
well close there just now. Do not forget that Satan is out to
bring the effect of sonship under arrest in his kingdom. He
cannot destroy it, that is something beyond his power, but he can
nullify its power so far as his interests are concerned, and he
does that by trying to get us to violate the very laws of
sonship. Those laws of sonship we have mentioned. They are shown
in the life of the Son Himself so clearly - nothing in Himself,
but dependence upon the Father, altogether dependent upon the
Father. A life in which the law of resurrection is a daily and
hourly operation and experience, a life without personal name,
reputation, standing or vindication, a life wholly handed over to
God, these and many other things comprise sonship, and are the
marks of a life in the Spirit.
The Lord make us good sons for
His own glory and satisfaction.