Reading: John 17:3; Philippians 3:8,10;
John 15:15; 14:21.
"That
they should know thee... and him whom thou didst send,
even Jesus Christ..." "That I may know
him..." "I... will manifest myself unto him..."
The
knowledge of Christ is THE basis of the whole of
the life of the child of God, and underlies every phase
and aspect of that life. That is, it underlies our very
relationship with God; it underlies all our growth in
grace; it underlies every fragment of our service. There
is nothing which comes within the compass of the life of
the Christian which does not depend upon the knowledge of
Christ. But that knowledge is a thing which will never be
exhausted here, however long we live, and however rapidly
we grow. We shall never overtake the finality of that
knowledge. That is why an apostle, at the end of his
life, still more than at any other time in all his
history, gave expression to the deepest desire and
longing of his heart as being to 'know Christ' (Phil.
3:10). We may say that for every increase in spiritual
life, spiritual strength, spiritual effectiveness,
spiritual usefulness to the Lord, some further measure of
the knowledge of Christ is essential. We increase by this
knowledge; we progress by this knowledge; we are more for
the Lord in accordance with the living knowledge of the
Lord Jesus which is coming to us.
This
knowledge is essentially a spiritual thing. It is a
knowledge which is altogether closed to any capacity or
ability or faculty, save that of the spirit. The measure
in which we represent the Divine thought and fulfil the
Divine purpose, will be the measure in which we are
learning Christ after the Spirit.
That may
represent one of two things for different people. It may
represent limitation for those who have learned Christ
other than after the Spirit; who, therefore, have to
unlearn a good deal more than others, before they can
learn. On the other hand, it may mean everything to those
whose knowledge of the Lord is by way of an absolutely
new beginning.
This
kind of knowledge marks a difference between Paul and the
other apostles. They had had a considerable knowledge of
Christ which was historical, which was earthly. Paul came
from the beginning into his practical knowledge of Christ
on a heavenly level. Right at the very commencement of
his Christian life, his was a spiritual knowledge of
Christ. Every fragment from that point onward was a
spiritual knowledge of Christ, and he jealously saw to it
that it remained so. He positively refused to go to
Jerusalem to get his knowledge of Christ from those who
were apostles before him. He maintained stolidly his
position that Christ, having revealed himself to him, COULD
and WOULD reveal Himself in the same way. Of
course, the other apostles came into that spiritual
knowledge later, but Paul had no other in experience.
There is
all the difference between a very large knowledge ABOUT
Christ, and the smallest measure of the knowledge of
Christ. One may be immense in its range; the other may be
very small in its measure. And yet the small thing may
count for infinitely more than the immensity of the
other.
The
knowledge of Christ in a spiritual way is basic to
everything in our lives as the Lord's children. As we go
on, and the Holy Spirit begins to unveil Christ in our
hearts, then we know how true this is. We know that it is
that which gives reality to the spiritual life, makes it
a very real thing. It is that which establishes us, so
that, while the adversities might turn us away from a
creed, a doctrine, an accepted position, a profession of
relationship, nothing can turn us away from a spiritual
knowledge. Spiritual knowledge is a part of our being,
and we can never separate ourselves from that. That is
reality! And that reality is capable of carrying us
through anything and everything. Nothing less than that
could have accounted for Paul's going through to the end,
when he saw his life's work going to pieces about him.
The very assemblies for which he had so to speak poured
out his lifeblood, forsook him at last, when all they in
Asia turned away from him. There is nothing to account
for his remaining, not only loyal to the Lord, but
triumphant to the last, save the fact that he knew the
Lord in a spiritual way. Reality is found there. And
every other virtue and value lies in the same direction.
It is what Christ is, being progressively disclosed to
our hearts.
The day
will come when most of us will be tested on this very
thing, and under given tests the one thing that will
become clear will be that a very great deal of our
knowledge of the Lord was not knowledge after the Spirit,
but knowledge which we had obtained by reason perhaps of
having been born and brought up in Christian families,
instructed from infancy; knowledge which we had obtained
by reading good books, devotional literature; knowledge
perhaps by all the 'providences', as we call them. They
carried us through to a right place - the providences of
birth and upbringing and association. And yet, unless
they go further than that, the time will come when it
will be proved that they lack the essential element in
our relationship to the Lord. And from time to time the
Lord does allow His winds of adversity to blow, He does
take His winnowing fan and throw everything up into the
air, and cause the wind to pass through, just to find how
much there is of solid grain that will fall and remain
uninfluenced by the wind, and just how much of the chaff
will be carried away.
These
things are constantly happening in the spiritual
experience of the Lord's children. Such things will
intensify as we go on, and the Lord will see to it that
we do not remain under any illusions that we have a
'spiritual life', when it is not really a spiritual life,
but is one largely in our minds. Thus He tests, He tries,
He proves, to make manifest to us how much of what we
possess is the genuine, the real, knowledge of the Lord
in our hearts, and how much is a knowledge which is not
that kind of knowledge. Nothing whatever can be a
substitute for that.
"This is Life
Eternal..."
Having
made these general observations, let us get closer to the
matter so far as the Word is concerned, and notice the
importance which the Word gives to this knowledge of the
Lord. The Lord Jesus put it in the front rank by saying:
"This is life eternal, that they
might know thee... and him whom thou didst send, even
Jesus Christ."
Eternal
life is not, in the Scriptural meaning, merely an
extension of life beyond time. There is nothing known
amongst men which corresponds to eternal life. To say
that it is but an extension of life is something which
the human mind can understand as being timeless, but that
is not the Scriptural meaning, and there is nothing in
human language to define the Scriptural meaning of
eternal life. It is not only extension; it is a quality -
it is the nature of the life. It is something which does
not belong to man; it is God's life, Divine life. And the
Lord Jesus says that the knowledge of the Father and of
Jesus Christ is THAT. It is that which is called
"eternal life". It is the possession and
activity of something which is of God Himself, something
which conveys God to us, something which is the gift of
God to us, something which is the energy of Divine
qualities, which are timeless, and could not be subject
to anything of corruption.
The
knowledge of Christ is that. We can see how different
such a knowledge is from a merely mental, or historical,
or professional knowledge. You know, if you have any
experience of this, that, when the Holy Spirit imparts
some little further fragment of spiritual apprehension of
Christ, you have become conscious of a new Divine energy
at work in you, which lifts you on to another level,
takes you off the merely human and earth level. You know
that by that knowledge you have come on to higher ground
spiritually. You have been taken out of the trivialities
of earth and given a sense of vastness, greatness,
eternity, wonder, glory. Every fresh apprehension of
Christ spiritually has an effect upon us. It is not just
a stimulus, but it has the power of a Divine energy to
lift us away from one order of things into another, and
we can only say we have touched God, and come into
another realm.
The
knowledge of the Father and the Son is "life
eternal". There is nothing whatever that can stand
alongside of that life, nothing that can compare with it,
nothing that is a substitute for it. It is the one
superlative, pre-eminent necessity for all our knowledge
of and fellowship with God from the very first step to
the last. When, from the moment of our being born anew,
we have been carried through this life, through into the
glory, and stand complete - then we shall have to
attribute everything to the fact that there was a moment
when life eternal was imparted to us, entered into us,
and became the basis and means by which God caused all
the Divine activities to proceed. God Himself can do
nothing in us and through us except on that basis. There
is nothing which takes the place of life eternal. And so
the knowledge of 'Jesus Christ whom God did send',
occupies this position of supreme importance. It is life
eternal!
It is
important for us to recognize that life eternal is not
just some abstract element in the universe, which creates
in us, or causes in us, some sense of, shall we say,
energy. Life eternal is related to spiritual energy, and
life is intended to mean to us a growing knowledge of the
Lord Jesus. The two work together. Life means increase in
knowledge, and increase in knowledge means the increase
in life. "THIS IS life eternal, that they
should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou
didst send, even Jesus Christ."
The Central Element in Knowledge:
Friendship
The
central element in this is suggested to us in the
fragment in John 15:15:
"No longer do I call you servants; for the
servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have
called you friends, for all things that I heard from my
Father I have made known unto you."
Here is
a knowledge from the Father through the Son which is
based upon this element which is called 'friendship'.
"I have called you friends". Surely that means
that we have to come into a relationship with the Lord
Jesus of a very deep, inward character - of a very
confidential nature, shall we say. There is something
about that relationship which speaks of understanding
born of the very closest communion. Someone may say to
you about a friend of yours, that they said a certain
thing or that they did a certain thing, and your
rejoinder would be: 'No! I am quite sure that so-and-so
never said that or did that. I know them too well. I know
that they would not say or do a thing like that.' There
you have touched the inner meaning of friendship. It is a
knowledge which understands quite well what would be
expected and not expected, what could come from that
direction and what could not come from that direction.
But that is a knowledge which is a deep, inside
knowledge. You can never get that by observation; you can
never come to that position by simply listening,
studying; you have to know, and when you know by
communion, by living in touch with that one, you know
instinctively what to expect and what not to expect.
The Lord
Jesus says that He takes the disciples into that
relationship with Himself, and on that basis He opens His
heart; that all things that He had heard from the Father
He made known unto them, because of the relationship.
"I have called you friends..."
What is
the point of saying such things? You and I are not going
to get the real knowledge of Christ by listening to
addresses, by attending meetings. The value lies in the
fact that we go away with what is said, into the presence
of the Lord, having a background relationship with Him.
Things may be true, and of the greatest value as things
for our spiritual help, but we have to work those things
out in the secret with the Lord. Otherwise we shall be
'meeting-mongers'; we shall simply be attending meetings
and getting an accumulation of knowledge. The real value
will lie in the time which we spend with the Lord on
these things: it will be personal communion with the Lord
in the secret place; it will be what is going on deep
down in our hearts, between ourselves and the Lord. This
knowledge is on the ground of what the Lord Jesus calls
'friendship'.
The Excelling Value, the Estimate
and the Cost
Notice
where Paul puts this matter, as he writes to the
Philippians: "Yea verily, and I count all things to
be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ
Jesus my Lord" (the word "excellency"
there is the 'super-eminence' of the knowledge of Christ
Jesus): "for whom I suffered the loss of all
things".
The
estimate of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord was
far above all other things. If you look back you will see
that the things he counted loss were not small things, as
man values things. They represented all his inheritance,
which was no mean thing; all his attainments; all his
position; all his prospects; all his ambitions. He tells
us elsewhere that he had gained eminence above many of
his own age. It means that Saul of Tarsus had been a very
promising young man, who had gained a position far ahead
of most other young men. He was distinguished as quite
brilliant in his realm. And now he says: 'I count it all
loss for the super-eminence...' Was he eminent? Well,
there is a SUPER-eminence about the knowledge of
Christ Jesus his Lord. Was eminence his life ambition? He
has come to see the SUPER-eminence of the
knowledge of Christ. That is his valuation of this
knowledge.
There is
another way of looking at it, if you want to change your
angle. No doubt, although the knowledge was such a
tremendous thing with the Apostle, there were times when
he realized that it was costing. The cost was great, when
all those amongst whom he had had recognition, place,
reputation, had not only dropped off from him, or he had
left them, but now they were all against him, and
regarded him perhaps as a fool, and certainly as deluded.
And that was not the only phase of the cost. The cost was
all round; and not a small part of the cost was the fact
that his own brethren in Christ did not wholly trust him,
and very few understood him. For him, whatever there was
to let go, and whatever there was of price to be paid,
everything was regarded as refuse in comparison with the
knowledge of Christ.
Here
again we may not be able to enter altogether into the
position of the Apostle, but these things are pointed out
with a view to our seeing that there is something here in
the knowledge of Christ, if Paul was not mistaken, which
must go far, far beyond just being saved. If a man who
has been saved all these years, and who has done all this
amount of Christian work, and has been God's instrument
to spread and establish the Gospel over such an immense
area, can at the end still see in the knowledge of Christ
something which draws out his whole being, so that what
has been and what is is as nothing, compared with what he
sees there is to attain unto in the knowledge of Christ,
where are we?
That
brings us to the point. I cannot tell you what that
knowledge is, because I do not know it, but I can say
that I see enough to make me perfectly certain that Paul
was right, and to know that the one thing that we are
here for is to learn Christ, and in learning Christ we
have everything. It is not the kind of work we are going
to do for the Lord. It is not the number of Christian
activities, or the tremendous measure of energy which we
put into Christian activity. That is not the measure of
the value. The measure of the value is just how much we
are getting out of our growing knowledge of the Lord.
Ministry,
(speaking now of service) is not telling out truths. A
good many people have thought that ministry is preaching
sermons, giving addresses, or talking Christian doctrine.
That is not ministry. If that were ministry this world
ought to have been turned inside-out and upside-down a
thousand times over. If that were ministry, then every
weekend ought to see this world revolutionized with the
amount of preaching that is going on. Ministry is not
talking even the most orthodox doctrine. Service is not
giving out by word of mouth things which may be perfectly
true about Christ. Ministry is bringing Christ and
imparting Christ. It is ministering Christ. It is
communicating Christ. There is all the difference between
giving addresses and preaching sermons, and communicating
Christ. The measure of the success of our ministry is the
measure in which other people come to realize that they
have had Christ ministered to them, and that they are the
richer spiritually. That is not just mental
gratification, intellectual satisfaction, but something
deep down in the innermost being, which is Christ. The
Apostle would put it this way: "As ye received
Christ, so walk in him..." Not: 'As ye heard about
Christ'; but: "As ye received Christ..."
A
ministry like that is usually costly, and when we speak
about ministry let no one think that that belongs to a
certain class. We are all to minister. The business of
every child of God is to communicate Christ to others;
and, in so far as you can, by a simple word, communicate
Christ, you are a minister of Christ. The effect of our
being here on this earth as the Lord's should be that
others should say: 'I received something of the Lord
through that one; I came into possession of something
more of Christ through such-and-such.'
The Threefold Accompaniment
Finally,
note the threefold accompaniment of this knowledge:
"That I may know him..."
(1) The Power of His Resurrection
You and
I can only know Christ on that ground. All our knowledge
of Christ will be upon the basis of the power of His
resurrection. That means that the power of His
resurrection will become a necessity, in our experience,
and, as it becomes a necessity and then a reality, we
shall know the Lord on that basis. Situations will arise
for our spiritual increase, in which the power of His
resurrection will alone suffice. Then faith will have to
reach out for the power of His resurrection, and, faith
being honoured, we shall come to know Him and the power
of His resurrection through an experience in which that
power alone could meet our need. The knowledge of Christ
is a practical thing, not a theoretical thing. The
knowledge of Christ in the Word is a matter of very life,
and to fail to know Him at times means death. Thus it
becomes a matter of the power of His resurrection.
(2) The Fellowship of His Sufferings
The
place of Christ's sufferings in the life of His people,
as a means by which He is known. That could occupy us for
a long time, but it is simply stated as a related matter
of great importance. The Lord makes Himself known to us
by fellowship with Himself in His sufferings. What the
sufferings of Christ are we do not stay now to mention,
but we may take it that the sufferings of Christ as
shared by us now are always, in their essence, spiritual.
That is, the background may be that of circumstances,
adversity, difficulty; it may be physical; it may be in
many forms; but behind the foreground expression there is
a spiritual element, a spiritual factor. The sufferings,
of course, always represent a spiritual background.
Sometimes in our case they become purely spiritual
sufferings, sometimes they work themselves out in other
ways, but ultimately it is a spiritual thing; that is,
some spiritual factor is bound up with it. The sufferings
of Christ (to put it the other way) are not now only
circumstantial or physical sufferings. We may suffer in
body and in circumstances through our own fault, and
never can we claim that those are the sufferings of
Christ. But when we come into an issue which relates to
the purpose of God in Christ, the interests of the Lord,
then very often the foreground is a physical one or a
circumstantial one, but the background is a spiritual
one, with an issue of more than temporal significance.
(3) Conformity to His Death
We are
familiar with the meaning of the death of Christ. Not
that aspect of it in which we are not called to share;
not that atoning aspect, that vicarious aspect which is
His death in a unique sense. But that other aspect of the
death into which we are baptized, the death where all
that is of self, the "I", the flesh, is ruled
out. Conformity to that death, where man by nature is set
aside, and we have been crucified with Christ - that is a
way of knowing the Lord.
May the
Lord use these thoughts to bring clearly into view the
supreme importance and value of knowing Christ in
resurrection life.
From
"The Work of the Ministry" - Volume 3. Originally published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1955, Vol 33-6.