Reading: Numbers 8:13-19.
We shall be occupied at this time with some finer breaking up of one or two
of the matters mentioned in our last meditation.
No Mingling of the Old and New Creations
We want to lay one further emphasis upon the word with which we concluded. We
were speaking about the complications of the old humanity, the inextricable
tangle of elements, and how that the Lord has no intention whatever of
disentangling them, but that His way is to bring in a new creation.
Then we went on to point out that so much of the confusion and consequent
failure, weakness, arrest and breakdown is due to an overlooking of that basic
fact that the Lord does not take up something that has advanced in the old
creation, something that has a history, but He begins again at the beginning in
the meaning of the firstborn, or in new birth.
It is quite clear that the Lord does this, because of the incidents on record
of where He shows His very strong disfavour of a bringing in of other elements
in relation to His testimony. We remember so well the instance of the ark in the
hands of the Philistines, and then the ark being put by David on a new cart, and
other than the Levites taking charge of it. In both cases (the ark, of course,
represents Christ and the Testimony of Jesus) the touch, the contact of non-Levitical
elements with the ark resulted in judgment, and in a very severe action of the
Lord against such as brought in those elements. In the case of Uzzah it was
judgment unto death, arrest of the whole course of things, and a prolonged
period of paralysis, of spiritual death. Then David discovered the nature of the
mistake, and put it right, quoting the Scripture on the matter as He did so,
that the Lord had said that none but the Levites should bear the ark.
All this is figurative, symbolic, and it stands to show that the Lord will
not allow old creation elements to come and take hold upon new creation
realities. Let us put that in another way: the Lord will not allow the old man
to be associated with the new man. Or, still in another way, the Lord will not
allow what is not Christ to be brought into harness with Christ. The Levites
stand for that which is Christ, all of Christ, and they alone can bear the
testimony; that is, Christ alone can express the mind of God and do the work of
God, and if we bring other features in, and relate them to God's thoughts, and
God's activities, we only come into the realm of judgment and certain spiritual
death. So the warnings are very strong, and the teaching is very clear; we must
not mix what is of man with what is of God in Christ. There has to be an end.
Having re-emphasized that point we are going back to some of those things
which were said quite early in paving the way concerning the meaning of
firstborn.
Becoming as a Little Child
You will remember we said that "firstborn" means a new beginning. We quoted
the Lord's words as recorded in Matthew 18: "Except ye turn and become as
little children, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven". That
certainly is a new beginning, and such a beginning obviously means certain
things. When you start with the little child (and the word is the diminutive
there, 'babe'), there is this to your advantage: that you have a clear course.
It means that there is no history to be undone, nothing to be given up, gone
back upon, but you have a clear way from the start, and everything lies before
you. Thus it is when you turn and become a little child. It is interesting and
helpful to remember the simple meaning of the word "repent". It is translated in
the Revised Version as "turn". It simply means that you go back and start again;
you reverse the course that you have taken, and come back to a new beginning,
and so you become as a little child.
The Lord would not have His people childish, but He would always have them
childlike, and there should be a cry in our hearts. God forbid that we should
ever be other than childlike, that ever we should get beyond the place that is
represented by the little child! We know all that the Lord says about growing
up, about maturity, but there is this that we always seek to bear in mind, that
real maturity is only possible to the childlike in spirit. It is the people of
the childlike spirit who grow fastest, who make the swiftest progress, who
arrive at things more promptly than other people. Remember that when the Lord
uttered these words He was dealing with the question of greatness: "Who then
is greatest in the kingdom?" Now the question of greatness is bound up with
childlikeness.
The standards of God are so different from the standards of men. When John
(in the book of Revelation) looks to see what he believes must be something
phenomenal as the explanation of all that he is hearing, he sees a Lamb. That is
a standard altogether different from this world's standard of power.
There is so much history to undo. That is the thing that is holding us up all
the time, the tremendous history that lies behind and that counts for nothing,
and has all to be undone. Yet we stand to the point of what we have just said,
that it does not matter at what time this great event takes place of turning and
becoming as a little child. That is, it does not matter how old we may have
grown in this life and in this world, it is still possible for us to be in a
position where there is no history to be undone.
New Birth the Essential Beginning
What is this beginning? What is this childlikeness that is essential, vital,
and indispensable? It is just our own firsthand, personal knowledge of the Lord.
Nothing else counts with the Lord at all, and we can, quite rightly, set
everything else aside. It may have been a long set history in the world of sin
and godlessness, indifference or hostility to the Lord; or, mark you, it may
have been a long life of close association with the things of God, our having
been either born in, or later been a part of, a Christian home where around us
were all the things of God: much teaching, much truth, much that was related to
the Lord, and we were right in it, and in a way a part of it. Yet, in both cases
- as God-rejecting in the world, or as right in the centre of a strongly
religious order of things and yet not ourselves of it - there was no real
personal, firsthand knowledge of the Lord, and both of those things count for
nothing
where the Lord is concerned. The Lord says, "Whether you have been utterly
outside and against, or indifferent, or whether you have been physically, by
reason of your life here on earth, right in the midst of things which related to
Me, but not yourself living in the knowledge of Me, those things do not count,
that is not history with Me. What is history with Me is just your own personal
knowledge of Christ, and at whatever point you enter into that, that is the
beginning with Me." History begins there with God.
The church of the firstborn is not a traditional thing. It is not a thing of
creed, which has been taken up generation after generation, not a thing of
adopted truth, however full and deep and true that truth may be. The succeeding
generations do not become the church of the firstborn because they accept the
truths which their fathers held, the truths into which they were introduced,
perhaps by their natural birth and with which they have been associated by
reason of their family relationships. That is not the church of the firstborn.
The church of the firstborn is that which has come into a firsthand personal
history with God, and all the rest does not count. It is possible, in the
briefest time, to move into a very real knowledge of the Lord if you are truly
born, but if we bring over something or try to carry on something, or adopt
something which is not of our own walk with God, we complicate the whole
situation.
That word, of course, is set against a certain order and a certain course;
but, oh, the value of it on the other hand! What a burden a history can be, and
what a set-back a history can be, if we allow it. Of course, we may also allow
years of unrelatedness to God to cause us a good deal of distress, and make us
feel that because so much time has been lost in our lives we can never come to
any fulness, and must be content with a very little. Now, that is a wrong
attitude entirely, and it is not the attitude that the Lord takes. The Lord can
bring us into a great measure of Christ's fulness in what we might call a
comparatively short time, provided we
take the attitude towards all other history that He takes: that it ends with the
Cross of the Lord Jesus, and spiritual history begins in resurrection union with
Him. That gives God a clear way. Then again, in the other case, oh, how often
religious upbringing has been a hindrance! It is not always a helpful thing to
be brought up in a hothouse atmosphere of spiritual things. Thank God for
anything that can be a help when once we are on the right line and in the right
position, but until we have our own personal knowledge of God, all that can be a
great burden, and a great weight, and a great death to us, and not a help at
all.
We do not have to think that we have to adjust ourselves to all that truth,
and that teaching that is around us. Not at all. We have to begin as
babes,
and with God none of that other counts for us. All that counts is where we begin
a personal, direct, immediate spiritual knowledge of Him. There is no government
of time in our progress. Time does not govern the matter of spiritual progress.
It is our escape from ourselves into Christ that governs. The thing that holds
us back is some kind of occupation with the old creation. If only we knew the
clean cut of the death of Christ between ourselves by nature and Himself, then
we should know the way of spiritual growth which is not a time matter at all. It
is the utterness of our acceptance of the meaning of His death to all that is
not the living Christ in our own hearts, whether it be religious or irreligious.
That is what we mean by the way back, the clear course being opened. You do not
have to deal with what is not living at all; you have to rule it out. God rules
it out and puts it aside. What we have to be concerned with is the point at
which we come to a firsthand, personal, living knowledge of the Lord, and that
from that point we do not bring in the old creation and make difficulties for
the Lord, saying; "Yes, but Lord -." We must not have a lot of "buts" with the
Lord, but a clear way of faith's obedience, without any of the complications of
our reasoning and our wanting, or not wanting, our likings, and our not-likings,
our going to, and our not going to. Our need is of a clear, steady, swift
response to the Lord, and the progress can be very rapid, and the knowledge of
Him can increase in a wonderful way. I am quite sure that the thing that holds
us back is the fact that we are taken up with a history that the Lord has
finished with,
be it a religious history or a non-religious history. The Lord has finished with
it altogether, and so He says, "Now then, back from that point, that is not the
way; turn and
become as a little child." The church which is the church of the firstborn is
those whose history is nothing other than the history of a firsthand, personal,
inward knowledge of the Lord, and that is open to all.
The Essence of Childlikeness
This childlikeness which gives God a free, clear, full way is a teachable
thing. The essence of it is teachableness and adjustableness. If we know
anything, and think we know anything, that very mentality is the hindrance to
our progress. So many of us perhaps have been held up by a tremendous amount of
knowledge that we think we have had of the things of the Lord. Oh, we do not
know what a hindrance such a mentality is to spiritual progress.
The mark of maturity, of growth, is this: that the more you know and the
further you go, the less you know that you do know, and the more you realize
your need to know. That is where the spirit of the child is carried right
through to the end. It is a teachableness, resultant from the consciousness
that, though we may have been on the road for a life-time, we are yet only on
the fringe of things so far as the Lord is concerned. That is a mark of the Holy
Spirit's power working in us. That we should at any time come to the place where
we think we know - we refer to that knowledge which brings us to a place where
we deem ourselves authorities or experts - is not the work of the Holy Spirit.
We do come to a place where we are able to say: I do know the Lord on that
thing; I do know the Lord in this. But in that full sense of knowledge we have
ever to be coming more and more to the place where we realise how little we
know, simply because we are seeing more and more of what there is that we ought
to know, need to know, and that there is to know in Christ. You can adjust a
child. A child is ready to be adjusted. But that is the trouble with so many of
us, we are not just like that, we are not adjustable.
There was a beautiful childlikeness and simplicity about David, although he
was king. How marvellously adjustable he was! You notice that whenever David
made a mistake the Lord had no difficulty in putting David right. He adjusted to
the situation every time. He did not stand out against the Lord, he let go, he
yielded, and whenever a new position required that he should adjust himself to
it in the Lord's interests he did so. What a rich life of the knowledge of the
Lord David's was. There, on the one hand, is this beautiful simplicity, this
teachableness, and this adjustableness, and on the other hand, a wonderful walk
with the Lord. How much his Psalms mean always! What a fulness of personal,
simple walking with the Lord is in those Psalms. That is becoming as a little
child.
The Issues of the New Birth
By this new birth we come into a new world altogether, where none of the old
abilities stand us in any stead, if we did but know it. We are so long in
recognising and realising it. We may have in this natural life certain abilities
- we can do things, we can think things out - but when we come into the kingdom
of heaven we come into a world where all this old natural faculty is of no use
at all. We have a new life, and that life has its own particular laws, and the
old natural life is useless in that realm. You and I cannot live by our natural
life in the realm of the Spirit, in the realm of the things of God. We have to
have a life that is suited to the kingdom of the heavens.
Now we find ourselves possessed of this new Life, a different life
altogether. It requires certain things that we cannot provide it with from our
natural life. We have to learn how to live according to this new Life and what
its requirements are, and we discover from time to time as we go on that things
are not right, they are not well, that new Life is not getting on; what is the
matter? Then, by the very suffering of that Life, that sense of strangulation in
our spiritual life, we learn some law of that Life. We have been violating it in
some way, we have been depriving it of its demands, we have not been cooperating
with it. It is something in itself which has its own laws, and we have to
discover the laws of that Life and live accordingly. It is all a new, strange
thing. It is a wonderful education to live according to Divine Life, which has
its own Divine ways, and will not adapt itself to this other life that we have
by nature. It is a new and different Life altogether. It is "the altogether
other-ness" that we are talking about of what Christ is from what we are.
We have a new walk. We have never walked before. It does not matter how long
we have been walking according to the course of this world, we have never walked
in this sphere before, and we have to take our first step in the spiritual Life
just in the same way that a babe takes its first step in the natural life. It is
a new kind of walk, and we learn how to walk after the Spirit very often by the
tumbles that we have and the mistakes that we make. This walk after the Spirit
is all new, and partakes of nothing of the natural, of self-confidence.
Self-assurance is a disastrous thing. We have said to our children in the
beginning of their exercises, "You were too sure of yourself and you came to a
crash. You thought you could do more than you could. It was your own
self-assurance!" It is like that in the spiritual life. Walking after the Spirit
and not after the flesh is a new kind of walk, and there is no place at all for
self-assurance here.
It is a new knowledge. We have found ourselves in a new world of things of
which we know nothing. "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it
entered into the heart of man", but God is revealing these things to us by
His Spirit. It is a new knowledge that we have not possessed. It is all fresh,
strange, and we have to realize that this new world in which we are now to move
is one where our experience is that of a growing newness. One of the blessed
realities about a living, personal, inward, spiritual walk with God is that you
have always something fresh coming; there is always something new, you never
exhaust things; things never become stale or stagnant, there is new wonder all
the time. How often we have thought that we had reached the end; and then there
has followed the next deep, dark crisis and painful experience, and out of the
depths has come something new altogether; a new revelation, a different aspect
of the fulness of Christ. We think that now, of course, we have reached the very
peak, there is nothing further! That is how it seems. What more can there be?
The only thing now is for the Lord to come, we have reached the end of all
revelation! We live perhaps for some years in the wonder of that, and then again
the same thing happens. We go down to the depths, and everything seems to have
gone, and out of the experience comes something more that never was before; and
once again we wonder if there can be anything beyond this. We have had
experiences enough like that to make us know that there must be yet much more.
We never reach the end. That is the wonder of this Life. Everything is open,
everything is possible if there is a clear way for God.
Now, why all this? It is this that is a true life according to the law of the
firstborn. It is not something that is merely a matter of religious teaching,
and truth, and doctrine, and interpretations, and crystallizings of truth. It is
not just tradition, it is not just creed, it is not words. It is a living,
wonderful, growing knowledge of, and walk with the Lord, which is marked by
these movements, these crises, which bring fulnesses into view that were
undreamed of before.
It is so dangerous to think that a big experience you have had is the end of
all things in the matter of experience. So many are living on something that
happened to them years ago, and they say they have had "an experience". It is
put in different ways. We may have what is called a baptism of the Holy Spirit,
and call it our baptism of the Holy Spirit. But let us not think that is the end
of all mighty things. Many people do. They are always saying, "When I received
my baptism...". Why, there is something more, and yet more beyond that!
It is a clear road when all is in the way of the firstborn; it is becoming
like a little child and giving God an open way for all His fulness.
The Incarnation and the Gift of the Spirit
Christ came on that basis. He started as a babe. Why did the Lord Jesus come
as a baby, and live to manhood here on this earth? Had the work of the Cross
alone been in view, God could have incarnated Himself in a fully developed Man,
and appeared amongst men, made His great proclamation, uttered His challenge,
and been crucified just as definitely as Christ was crucified, without the years
up to thirty-three and a half.
There are several answers to that question, and there is truth in them all,
but we may further say this: The Lord Jesus came here to live a life, and to
walk a walk, that had never been lived and walked before by any man on this
earth. There never had been a man on this earth who walked that walk, and lived
that life, and there was not another in all creation living that life, and
walking that walk, that He came to live, and walk. It was something unique,
something "altogether other". What are we to say of it? It was the life of God
among men, and the walk of God among men. It was as God would live, and as God
would walk, if He had a chance in men. If God had a chance to do what He wants
to do, He would live and walk as Jesus Christ lived and walked. The Lord Jesus
was the human expression of God's thought for man, as to his life, and as to his
walk.
With Him it was a matter of faith and of dependence. He accepted the position
that it was not in Himself, but it was by faith in the Father, as living out
from the Father. And so He weighed everything before He said it, or did it,
making sure that He was not doing it independently, but in perfect fellowship
with the Father: "The words that I say... I speak not from myself"; "The
Son can do nothing (out from) himself." That was His life and that was His
walk as out from God.
Now listen! That is Jesus Christ. He is the only one who has ever done it. He
is the only one who ever can do it. You and I know that quite well. "The
imitation of Christ" is rubbish and pious nonsense. If Christ does not live His
life in us there is no imitating Christ. Why has the Holy Spirit come? He is the
Spirit of Christ come that we might, by the Spirit, walk even as He walked. What
does that imply? Not the life of Deity, but divine Life in man, the Life of God
in man, lived by faith, lived by utter dependence, lived by obedience. "Though
He were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered."
Think of that concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh!
The Holy Spirit has come that you and I, and all who trust the Lord, might
learn how to live, and how to walk, as He lived and walked. Shall we put it the
other way, and the more accurate way, and say that the Holy Spirit has come that
the Lord Jesus might live His Life, and walk His walk, in us. That is what is
meant by being conformed to the image of God's Son. It is being brought on to
His basis, and by the Holy Spirit made to live, and to walk, as He lived and
walked. That is a progressive thing, which will be consummated in the perfect
likeness of Christ. That is why He came, and that is why He lived, that God
should have a Man who lived and walked according to His own thought, and that
having got that Man as the great Representative, He could send the Spirit of
Christ, the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of God, to bring that walk, and that
Life of Christ into us, and have us learn by the Spirit how to walk even as He
walked. It is all Christ. "Apart from me ye can do nothing." It is
impossible apart from Him, but if Christ is within it is possible, and that is
the church of the firstborn. It is Christ as a living reality within; it is a
personal, immediate knowledge of Him in an inward way.
We can all profit by being reminded of the nature of our life, and what it is
God is seeking to have: a church, a company, a corporate body, which is the
expression of what Christ was. So we are not to walk in the flesh. If we live
after the flesh we shall die; if we walk in the flesh we shall fulfil the lusts
of the flesh, and that is all contrary to God; but if we live after the Spirit
then we shall by the Spirit put to death the doings of the flesh, and Christ
will be formed in us.
We could resolve all this into this one thing: it is a matter of our own
immediate, personal walk with the Lord. That is the beginning of history with
God. No other history counts, nor need it bother us. It must not in any way
influence us, and certainly must not be the ground upon which we stand, whatever
it is. History with God is that where the knowledge of Him in a living way
begins, and there is no other history.
So much, then, for what we were saying about a new beginning.