Reading: Revelation 12:1-12.
Sonship in
Representative Fullness
Here we have, I believe, the whole
matter of sonship gathered into representative fullness.
This son, this man child, is sonship in representative
fullness: that in which all the principles and elements
of Christ have been brought to utterness.
The conception of Christ takes place
in the believer by the revelation of Christ in the heart.
Paul said: “It was the good pleasure of God... to
reveal his Son in me” (Gal. 1:15,16). Again he said:
“God... shined in our hearts, to give the light of
the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). The man child — sonship
— is conceived by the revelation within of Jesus
Christ. Something takes place in us, the beginning of
something new and wonderful, when we are able to say, in
these or other words, “By an act of the Holy Spirit,
a conceiving act of the Holy Spirit, God has revealed His
Son in me: in my heart I have seen the Lord Jesus.”
The principle of Christ is that He was “conceived of
the Holy Ghost” (Matt. 1:20), and that is true in
the case of every believer. The conception of Christ in
our hearts is by the Holy Ghost, and the method is the
revelation of Christ. We have to date everything, all
this wonderful new beginning and prospect, to the time
when we could say, “I have seen the Lord Jesus”,
which marked the conception of sonship.
Sonship Not
Possible to the Flesh
But again, the principle of
conception is that which we find stressed throughout the
Scriptures, Old and New: namely, that it is something
which is not possible to the flesh, not even to the
religious flesh. It is not possible to the church. You
know the Old Testament instances in which this very
principle is revealed. Isaac is impossible to the flesh,
even to the flesh of a separated and consecrated Abraham,
a man who is walking with God. He cannot of himself, by
the will of the flesh, produce sonship. This is of God,
wholly, utterly of God. The Isaac man child, with all its
tremendous significance, is something that the religious
flesh cannot produce. Samuel is another case. How
impossible Samuel was without a divine intervention, a
real act of God. Again and again we find the situation
under the sovereignty of God related to the bringing
forth of something to serve God’s purpose in a very
particular and special way.
This is an abiding principle brought
out spiritually in the New Testament. It is something
which cannot be unless the Lord does it. Sonship is an
impossible thing apart from God. This that is to come
forth as the full expression of God’s mind
concerning His Son is beyond us. It is outside of any
ability of our will or mind — it is of the Lord.
Christ said: “That which is born of the flesh is
flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”
(John 3:6). Here, in the “man child”, this
principle is brought to utterness: “...who were
born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). There is a
good deal of mixture in Christians. There is much of
being Christians by our decisions and willings and
efforts and activities. Many people are in a false
position as to the beginning of their Christian life. It
is not a thing utterly of God. It is something they have
done and decided upon. Many who are children of God are
mixing things up, mixing their own strength and effort
with what is of the Lord; and, in so far as it is like
that, it is a contradiction of divine principle and
cannot come to this ultimate full expression.
The principles of Christ are brought
to utterness in the man child. Let there be no mistake
about what it is that we have in view. It is not just
being Christians. It is the principles of Christ brought
to utterness. That is what is here set before us.
The Full
Formation of Christ
Paul said to the Galatians, and
through them to us: “My little children, of whom I
am again in travail until Christ be formed in you...”
(Gal. 4:19). The conception has taken place, there is
something there, but there has to be a full formation of
Christ within. Paul says, “I am in distress, in
agony, in great pain, till Christ be fully formed in you.”
The “man child” is the full formation of Christ
in the church.
And the formation, as we know so
well, is in the first place by means of a ministry —
a ministry which God provides to that end. If God’s
thought is full conformity to the image of His Son, the
full formation of Christ or the full expression of
Christ, He will provide a ministry sovereignly for that
purpose. So we have in the New Testament not just
ministry for the salvation of souls and for the care of
spiritual babes — it is there — but the
importance of the New Testament bears down upon this
other thing: the full formation of Christ. The real
weight of the New Testament has to do with full
formation, and God has marvellously provided ministry for
that purpose.
The formation, too, is by means of
discipline. By far the greater amount of the discipline
(what the Word calls “chastening”, literally
“child training”) in the life of a true,
earnest believer, has to do with this full formation.
There are phases of discipline concerned with our
wrongdoing, our sins, our errors, where the Lord has to
correct and has to chasten, but let it be understood that
by far the greater amount of the chastening or the
discipline of the people of God has to do with the full
formation of Christ.
The Travail
After the conception and the
formation, we come to the travail. To begin with, the
travail starts, not with ourselves, but with the Holy
Spirit Himself. It is the Spirit of God who is in the
first place travailing to this end for the full formation
of Christ. You have only to read the letter to the
Galatians to recognise that. See the place of the Holy
Spirit. We must understand that this travail in the
apostle Paul is not Paul’s working of himself up to
a state of trouble and anguish, but something in him by
the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit takes up this matter of
travail, and wherever He expresses Himself He will cause
this sense of pain concerning spiritual life. When you
and I have a bad time over our spiritual life, it is a
mark of the Holy Spirit’s work. It is indeed a sign
of His working when we have a bad time over other people’s
spiritual life — provided we are having a bad time
about our own as well! You understand what I mean. There
is the possibility of always being troubled about other
people’s spiritual life, and not looking after our
own; but, provided we know what it is to have the work of
the Spirit in us, it is a mark of the Spirit’s
moving in us that we are deeply pained about spiritual
conditions in the Lord’s people. The travail begins
with Him.
Women, in the Bible, are types of
spiritual principles, and Hannah, being a woman in the
Bible, represents a spiritual principle. It was Hannah
who, in the presence of God, in the House of the Lord,
was found breaking her heart over this matter of the man
child, in travail for a man child. Hannah, in type,
indicates that a principle by which God is going to reach
His end, His full expression, is the travail of our
spirits brought about by the Holy Spirit.
Travail at
the End-time
Now, this picture of the woman in
travail, in Revelation 12, belongs to the end-time. There
is no doubt about that, because Satan here is still in
the heavenlies, where Paul showed him to be in his letter
to the Ephesians. John has outlived Paul by thirty years,
so that, sixty years after the ascension of Christ, Satan
is still in the heavenlies, operating and making war.
John is being shown the things that shall come to pass
afterwards, so that this travail belongs to the end-time.
It is the church in suffering in order to produce
something.
Do not let us be led astray, do not
let us be deceived and become mistaken, if the Lord
should for a time do a work of what is called “revival”
and many saints are gathered in, and there seems to be
some tremendous thing going on; do not let us be
deceived. That is one aspect of end-time need, that there
shall be an ingathering, but — let there be no
mistake about it — the actual end-time is going to
be marked by suffering on the part of the church. How
that will come about I do not propose to discuss now. The
possibilities for the church, with the irresistible
spread of one great power over the earth, are pretty
clear. It will not be put back, it will go on; it is
anti-God, anti-Christ, and wherever it holds sway it will
begin to limit the activities of the Lord’s people,
and presently it will break out. But whether that be it
or not, there is coming, and it may be in our lifetime, a
time of real suffering to Christianity, and out of that
suffering there will come that which goes right out to
the Lord. Many will fall away, many will give up, many
will drop out of the race, paralysed by the situation,
but there will be those who see that the only thing is
utterness for the Lord — to go right on.
Is not that the question which
confronts us, in a small way, a particular and personal
way, in every bit of suffering? Something comes upon us
— the Devil makes an onslaught — and there are
alternatives for us. One is to sit down in hopelessness
and give it up, say that you cannot go on, to turn with
bitterness against the Lord, to become full of questions
and almost cynical. The other alternative is to say:
“There is nothing for it but just to go on!” We
are all brought to that situation in simple ways. “Am
I going to succumb, to yield to despair, to give up? Or
am I going right on, and all the more because of this
activity of the enemy?” The Spirit of God would
bring us to that. You notice that that is the thing upon
which Paul put his finger in his word to the Galatians.
Because of certain things, they had stopped in the race;
they were Christians, but they had stopped, come to a
standstill. “O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch
you?” (3:1). “I am again in travail until
Christ be formed in you” (4:19). “You have to
go on. The only thing for you is to go on; not to stop,
to give up, but to go on.”
The Birth of
the Man Child a Crisis
And it is those who go on who reach
that which is here represented by the man child —
full sonship. But it is the product of suffering, the
effect of suffering. It is going to be made corporate at
the end, and — there is no doubt about it — the
birth of the man child is the crisis. Thank God, it is
going to be a definite crisis, an act. It is going to be
a rapture. The word here is quite clear. It is not a word
that has been coined to express some theory. “Caught
up” to the throne is just the word “raptured”,
and it is used in the New Testament in other connections.
When we read that Philip the evangelist was “caught
away” by the Spirit and found at Azotus (Acts
8:39,40) the same word is used; he was raptured, he was
caught away. When Paul said: “I know a man in
Christ, fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I know
not; or whether out of the body, I know not; God
knoweth), such a one caught up even to the third heaven”
(2 Cor. 12:2), it is the same word — raptured.
And here this man child is caught
up, raptured. It is an act. Philip was raptured in an
act, not over a lifetime; it was something sudden, quick,
precise. And so this man child is caught up to God and to
His throne. It is the consummation of a work of the Holy
Spirit of bringing children of God to a place of full and
utter expression of spiritual principles, the principles
of Christ. A principle is not an outward form, but an
underlying law, and there are these underlying laws of
Christ which are going to be made utter in us. Christ is
heavenly: that is a law. It will have its utmost
expression in the man child — born out from Heaven
and at last caught up to God and to the throne. It is the
principle made perfect.
The Wrath of
Satan Against the Man Child
“To rule all the nations with a
rod of iron” (Rev. 12:5). That word was spoken also
in promise to the overcomers of the church at Thyatira
(Rev. 2:27). If this is God’s thought and intention,
what may we expect? Well, there is a great red dragon not
far away, whose one concentrated interest is in this man
child. The woman, with the rest of her seed, the whole of
the church, will come second. They will be a secondary,
though by no means unimportant, interest and concern. But
the primary concern of the great adversary — here
called the “great red dragon”, later called
Satan, the Devil, “the deceiver of the whole
inhabited earth”, “the accuser of the brethren”
(12:9,10) — the dominant object of his hatred is
this expression of Christ in fullness, in utterness. He
is against that; he is out to devour this “child”.
His hatred and malice are concentrated in a determination
if possible to destroy those who are seeking to go right
on with the Lord, and those who are seeking to fulfil any
ministry in that connection, to destroy them, to swallow
them up and put them out altogether, to make it
impossible for them to come to their divinely intended
place and destiny.
Just look for a moment at this in
the Bible — the wrath of Satan against the man child
or against sonship in full expression. The book of Exodus
is just this. Exodus is sonship and victory over the
world. The very first verse strikes this note: “Now
these are the names of the sons of Israel” —
sons of a prince with God! Here is sonship right in the
first verse of the book. When you come to verse 16 of
that first chapter, you find Pharaoh issuing his order
for the destruction of all male children, and the word
is: “If it be a son, then ye shall kill him.”
How much of spiritual history lies behind that! We see
Herod coming in, centuries later, and killing all the
male children to get one particular Son (Matt. 2:16). And
again, in chapter 4 of Exodus, we read: “Israel is
my son, my firstborn: and I have said... Let my son go”
(vv. 22,23). It is sonship, and the exodus, the emergence
of Israel, is sonship triumphing over the world and its
principles. There is much more in the Old Testament
concerning the wrath of the enemy against the man child
— against sonship in fullness.
Satan
Cast Down
So there will be a climax. God will
get what He is after; it will be found in the throne
— it will be established in its position for its
glorious purpose and function. And it is quite obvious
that when that man child, that full expression, is found
in the throne, Satan is put out of his heavenly position.
He and his angels were cast down to the earth (Rev.
12:9). They have only been there until the right and
proper instrument of the heavenlies has come to its
place. There is no room in the heavenlies for the man
child and for Satan together. One or the other has to go.
When the Lord finds among His children those who satisfy
Him in the matter of a full expression of these divine
principles of sonship, the ground of Satan’s power
in the heavenlies is undercut, and he is cast down. What
a time that is, according to all that is said here!
“Rejoice, O heavens...” (verse 12). This is
indeed the climax of the ages. It is an immense thing,
and therefore it involves with us very great matters in
spiritual experience.
I close with something that I want you to take
particular note of. We are not occupied with a special
object called “the man child”, and we must
not be. We are occupied with Christ. But we must
recognise that there is a fullness of Christ to be
reached which carries with it very, very big issues
indeed. There are tremendous issues bound up with this
chapter that we have read — divine interests,
eternal issues, factors of supreme account. It is the
matter of government in the heavenlies. It is no small
thing to be caught up to God and His throne; no small
thing for Satan and his angels to be deposed. That is
bound up with a “man child” — a company of
which it will be said: “And THEY overcame him
because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word
of their testimony; and they loved not their life even
unto death” (vs. 11): their soul-life — a big
thing. But do not go around talking about the “man
child”. This is only a representation of Christ in
fullness. Talk about Christ. It is not the representation
that we are after — it is Christ in fullness we are
after: so let us keep our eyes on Him. Let us allow a
message like this to move us, not towards some THING,
under whatever designation, but towards Christ —
towards a position of utterness in Christ.