READING:
John 10.
At this point in the
Gospel of John we find ourselves in the presence of a
distinct transition. Up to this point, everything has
been individual; a long series of individuals or
individual cases have been in view. At this point a
change takes place: we pass from what is individual to
what is collective and corporate.
Henceforth what will be in view will be a company. It
will be collective, in the sense that all the
parts represented in the first half of the Gospel will be
brought together and found gathered into this company. It
will be corporate, because a common life is the
basis of everything.
We make a distinction
between what is collective and what is corporate. Note
this distinction. A congregation is not necessarily a
body. It is collective, because a lot of units are
brought together into one place; but a body presupposes
an organic oneness, on the basis of life. Life is here
clearly seen to be the basis of what is corporate: as in
the case of the flock, where the members share a common
life; or as in the case of the vine, which is an organism
where all the many parts are made a unity by the one
life. And so we find that, from this point onward, all
that has hitherto been said about life as related to
individuals, is now reproduced in principle in a
corporate company, a corporate body, in the sense of many
being one because of one life.
Chapter 10 introduces
the characteristics of what is corporate, and
specifically the characteristics of this corporate body
or company which is in view.
Let us underline the
fact of the transition. If the Holy Spirit is to be true
to the Divine mind, there is bound to come a point in the
history of any local company when if He is allowed to
have a free way quite spontaneously things pass from what
is just individual to what is corporate. It is a
spontaneous and inevitable movement, because it is
perfectly clear from all the Scriptures that God has
purposed to realize His full design, not in separate,
unrelated parts, but in a corporate whole, on the basis
of life. So I repeat, if the Spirit of God is in charge,
He will be consistent with the Divine mind, and, sooner
or later, where He is really in charge of a company,
things must inevitably pass from mere individualism to
the corporate. It is not announced at this point in the
Gospel that that is the nature of the change, but it is
perfectly clear, and it is something that we should take
account of for ourselves.
We are very fond of
this chapter; we should be very sorry to lose John 10. We
should also be very sorry to lose John 15. These chapters
on the sheep and the vine are very precious portions of
God's Word. But let us take note that the values
contained in these chapters are corporate values, and can
only be enjoyed by the individual in a corporate
relationship. That will be borne out as we go on.
What I am trying to
emphasize and make clear at this point is that this
matter is in the hands of the Holy Spirit, who is so
consistent with the thought of God as to bring about
quite naturally a spontaneous transition from the
individual to the corporate at some point in our
spiritual course. To fail to recognize that, and to fail
to be in that movement of the Spirit, means to be left
with just the spiritual measure that an individual can
have, which is far short of what the Body can have; and I
think this explains a very great deal of the limitation
in literally multitudes of very devoted and earnest
Christians, who are just individual Christians, living
individual lives, trying to be individuals devoted to the
Lord. There is limitation in that, and so, noting the
movement of the Spirit of God in this matter, we should
be intent upon knowing what the characteristics of that
corporate life and Body are.
Another thing about the
matter presented in chapter 10 is that, in common with
all new beginnings of God, it contains the germs of all
future development. I think you are aware of the
principle that, when God takes a fresh step, in that
fresh step there is inherent, in principle and in germ
form, all that will eventually develop. We will not stay
to illustrate this from other passages, but it can be
seen here, and you will be able to follow it as we go on.
Suffice it to say that all that is going to come out
later on, not only in John's Gospel but in the whole
revelation of the New Testament, will be found in a few
basic principles in this very chapter.
The
Rightful Shepherd
The first
characteristic, then, of this corporate company, now
introduced, is Christ, the authoritative Shepherd. It is
a question of who is the rightful shepherd, who has the
right to be the shepherd, who stands in that position and
relationship by God's own appointment, approval and seal.
Whom has the Father sealed? You notice that word.
"Him the Father, even God, hath sealed" (John
6:27). "Sanctified" (John 10:36) and
"sealed." It is the question of the authority
and right to be the shepherd. His own words about Himself
are not just that He is good, in the sense of moral
goodness. They go further than that. They declare that,
on the basis of that goodness of character, He is the
true Shepherd.
We could very much
enlarge upon Christ's right on the basis of His
character, His nature, to be the shepherd. For the
present we must note that, before there can be a real
spiritual company, in the good of God's blessing in
fulness, Christ must be in His place as rightful
Shepherd, rightful Lord, the One in whom there must be
reposed absolute confidence, about whose position there
must be no question.
Antagonism
to the Shepherd and His Flock
That stands so
strikingly in contrast to the atmosphere surrounding Him
in the chapter which we have read. We note the steadily
intensifying atmosphere of question as to His right,
antagonism to His claims, refusal to acknowledge Him. In
the end of the chapter is a company who "believed on
him there," who repudiated the repudiators, who
stood against the whole atmosphere charged with questions
about Him. You see, this antagonism is a very strong
thing. It is something malicious, malignant, very
strongly evil, as to the place of the Lord Jesus, His
title, His rights; and it is over against this that such
a company will have to stand. If you and I are to be
found in all that it means to be really members of that
elect Body, we are going to be in a relatedness which has
the whole malignant force of hell set against it, because
it is standing for the rights of the Lord Jesus.
From the beginning,
Satan and his whole company have been set against the
rights of the Lord Jesus. Satan is not against us as
Christians, he is not against us in ourselves. We do not
meet this antagonism simply because we have become
members of the Christian fold. You can be that - you can
be Christians in name, in title, in profession, and never
meet the fury of hell; but stand in this relatedness of
one life on the ground of the absolute sovereign
Lordship, authority and right of Jesus Christ, and you
are involved in that which He found Himself. There will
be plenty of stones taken up; there will be plenty done
to bring to an end that testimony. This corporate company
will meet much more even than the individuals as such.
The individuals will find that they have to encounter
very much more when they stand on the ground of the
oneness of the Body of Christ than they would if they
stood on an independent, individualistic ground. So that
the very first characteristic of this corporate
expression of Christ and His life is the testimony that
the rights are all His, that He alone occupies this place
of Shepherd.
An
Elect Company
The next thing which
becomes so clear in this chapter, which I hinted at just
now, is that this is an elect company. We are now, of
course, able to read this chapter in the light of the
fullest revelation of the truth, brought us later in the
New Testament particularly through Paul, although not
through him alone, that the Church is an elect Body.
While the Lord Jesus speaks of Himself as having been
sanctified and sealed by the Father, He speaks in similar
language of the sheep. How often it is from this point
onward that the Lord Jesus is found to be speaking of
"those whom the Father hath given me,"
"those whom thou gavest me"; and here in this
chapter we read: "I know mine own," "I
know them," "mine own know me." There is
something about them that marks them off as known of God,
foreknown of God, and He distinctly says to these other
people that the reason they do not believe, they do not
hear and they do not know His voice, is because they are
not of His sheep. If they were His sheep, they would know
His voice, but they are not, and that by their own
exercise of will. "Ye will not come unto me that ye
might have life."
Two
Folds
The next thing here is
the division which immediately appears and broadens when
He is in His place, and when He is securing that elect
company. There are here in this chapter, mentioned or
implied, two folds, and He says quite clearly that He
came to lead His flock out of one fold and that He is
making another fold. It does not require a great deal of
insight to recognize what the two folds are. There is a
little fragment which is the key to it. "God
sent forth his Son... born under the law... that he might
redeem them which were under the law" (Gal. 4:4,5).
That is only saying, in other words, "that He might
get them out of that fold, that legalistic fold."
The whole atmosphere of this chapter speaks of the
legalistic fold the fold of Judaism, where it is law.
This is in keeping with the introduction to this Gospel: "The
law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through
Jesus Christ" (John 1:17). The Lord saw a fold -
and what a fold it was, and what shepherds they were!
Firstly, they had made the sheep that were really His
their own. They therefore regarded Him as a
"sheepstealer." Then the effect of their
relationship to the sheep was to bring them into
spiritual bondage, to limit their spiritual growth, and
to make them servants of a tradition, an earthly and
man-controlled system, rather than the Lord's free
people. It would not be a bit helpful to pursue that
thought, but it is very like some forms of Christianity
as we know them. That is the kind of fold - hard,
legalistic, selfish. Christ came to lead His sheep out
from that fold, and to bring them into another - the fold
of grace, liberty, life, life more abundant, and all the
full heavenly purpose for the Church.
So the two folds are,
clearly, the fold of merely traditional religion, and the
fold of spiritual truth, reality and life in Christ.
The
Way from the Fold of Law to the Fold of Grace
What is the way out and
the way in? The way out and the way in is Christ's death.
"I lay down my life for the sheep." Here it is
not so much the sin question that is to the fore,
although that lies, of course, at the root of everything.
He was "born under the law." His death was to
extricate from that fold, that system, that deadly thing
that was against them "the bond written in
ordinances that was against us" (Col. 2:14). He laid
down His life for the sheep. His death was the way out.
The whole of the New Testament afterward bears down upon
this, that it is by the death of the Lord Jesus that we
are delivered from the bondage of the law - that law
which is constantly and eternally battering us with our
own sin, breaking and shattering us with our own state.
His death is the way out; His resurrection is the way in.
"Who according to his great mercy begat us again
unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible" (1
Pet. 1:3,4). So deliverance by the death of Christ is one
of the characteristics of the company. They have come
into the good and value of the delivering death and
resurrection of the Lord Jesus, with all its blessing and
enlargement. They stand on that ground.
Let me return to
something I said a little earlier, that while
individuals, of course, come that way and they must so
come - we must recognize that death with the Lord Jesus,
and resurrection in union with Him, sees the end of all
individualism. God's intention is to bring to an end what
is merely individual. There must be an individual
entering in, but for it to remain an individual thing is
contrary to the meaning of the death of Christ. Right
from this time onward, it is seen in this Gospel that the
full blessing lies on the far side of Jordan. In the Old
Testament, the Israelites were a much more integrated
people on the other side of the Jordan than they were
before; and when you get on the far side of the death of
Christ you are immediately found as a part of a people,
and not just as individuals.
So it is in the New
Testament. You come to Colossians and Ephesians, or to
what is represented by those letters. You find
immediately that you are "raised together with
him." It is the Church that is in view; you have
left merely individual ground, you are now on corporate
ground. Christ's death is intended to bring that about.
If we have not apprehended that, we are still in the
limitation which a merely individual life must know. It
is very important for us to recognize that.
It is all a matter of
God's purpose. What is God's purpose? What is revealed to
be "the eternal purpose... purposed in Christ
Jesus"? You will find always that the Scriptures
demand the Church for the eternal purpose; the whole Body
which gives Christ the vessel for His collective and
corporate expression. That is the way of the eternal
purpose, and it is on resurrection ground that we come
into it. Therefore that which is only individualistic
goes out with the death of Christ, and in the
resurrection of Christ it is found no more in the thought
of God. Christ's death is the way out; Christ's
resurrection is the way in. That is the principle here
enunciated.
"They
Know My Voice"
The next thing is that,
because of the relationship which we have set forth
Christ in unquestioned and undisputed authority; because
they have been brought out through His death and
resurrection from the realm of law to the realm of grace,
that is, from mere profession to the realm of life
("I give unto them eternal life"; "I came
that they may have life and may have it
abundantly"); because of their life-relationship
with Him, through His death and resurrection, there is an
inward "something" about this company, an
inward correspondence with Him. "My sheep hear my
voice"; "they know my voice." You cannot
explain that in language. It is something that goes
beyond language, it is something that can only be known
in fact. It is one of those mysteries of John. ("How
can a man be born when he is old?" - 3:4. "How can
this man give us his flesh to eat?" - 6:52.) But it
is fact.
I have often recounted
an experience I had once at a place in the Near East,
where, from various directions, shepherds were coming to
a well with their mixture of sheep and goats following
them. As they came to the well, all the sheep and goats
got mixed up. I stood a little way off, watching this. I
saw them all merge, and saw the shepherds get together
and have a talk. I thought, "This is a glorious
mix-up! What is going to happen? how will they be able to
get their flocks sorted out?" So I waited until the
shepherds had finished their talk and had decided it was
time to move off. One shepherd simply walked right away.
He got right away up on the hill and turned round and
started calling a strange note - I could not reproduce
the sound. And those sheep began to open up, and his own
flock just went up there to him, and all the rest were
left. Each shepherd had his own note and call. The sheep
knew the voice of their shepherd. I thought it was
marvelous how those sheep should know. Well, they had
learned to know. "The sheep hear his voice: and he
calleth his own sheep by name... and the sheep follow
him: for they know his voice. And a stranger will they
not follow." If I had tried to imitate that
shepherd, I should have got no response at all; but they
knew him.
There is something of
an inward correspondence which we know by the Spirit. We
know when the Holy Spirit speaks to us. And we usually
know when the stranger speaks; we detect something
strange, something foreign, about it; it does not answer
nor correspond to the Lord in us; we are not happy about
it. It is a mystical something, but very real. That is
the basis of spiritual intelligence, and it is the point
I am stressing. Those who are of this company, of this
corporate Body, have an inward correspondence with the
Lord, a basic spiritual intelligence whereby they know
Him. They do not always have to be told by others,
"This is what the Lord wants," or "That is
not what the Lord wants." They may be helped by
counsel; but there is a place, a position, of walking
with the Lord where we do not have to be told, where we
know, even if it is by making mistakes - we know by the
reaction of the Spirit of the Lord in us. The point is
that there is a spiritual intelligence which is essential
to the purpose of God in the company He is securing in
relation to His Son.
These are principles;
they are not expounded, but they are there in this tenth
chapter of John's Gospel. It is a wonderful chapter, and
what we have said is only a very small part of its
content. But let us seek to grasp these tremendous basic
laws of God's eternal purpose into which we are called in
Christ, and to lay them to heart and ask the Lord to work
them into us, so that they are not merely things in the
Scripture or in an address; they are realities in our
spiritual life.