Reading: John 5:19-20,30; 16:13; Rom. 8:2,6.
These statements of the Lord
Jesus from the fifth chapter of John's Gospel contain two or
three elements.
The first is that they
constitute a clear and definite statement of what we may call a
negative fact. "I can of myself do nothing" "The
Son can do nothing of himself!" That is a plain statement,
but there are in that statement two inferences. One is that
inasmuch as He is, at this very time of speaking, doing things,
even as He had declared: "My Father worketh even until now
and I work" - and that is connected with the healing of this
man as recorded in the first part of the chapter - and also
saying things, and none of this activity is out from Himself,
then He must have another source of action and word; another
secret source is in operation. It is not the case that, because
He can neither do nor speak out from Himself, He is therefore
silent and inactive. The fact that He cannot do nor speak out
from Himself has neither arrested utterance nor checked action,
but He is full of utterance and of action, which means that
another secret source of expression is operating. That is, of
course, the first clear inference.
There is a second, which is
that the positive statement draws a contrast and marks a
difference. The difference is between Himself and others. To get
the force of that you can stress a certain part of the sentences:
"The Son can do nothing out from
himself" "I can of myself do nothing." Here is One
Who is alone in this matter, Who is unique, Who is peculiar in
this direction. It is a statement which immediately draws a line
between Him and all the rest of men; for that which marks the
natural man is the fact that he does speak and act out from
himself. It is the mark of all men in nature to do that, simply
because their first father did so in such a way as to involve all
his progeny. This was the very essence of the fall. Adam
deliberately acted out from himself when God's clear, expressed
will for him was that he should not do so, but that he should act
out from God. He broke away from God as the source of his
thinking, and his acting, and thought and acted independently,
out from himself. That brought about the fall, and all men in
Adam now think and act out from themselves. It is the mark of the
natural man. But here is One Who does nothing after that
principle. It is a contrasting statement, and shows us at once
God's Own mind about man, and what God is seeking to do in the
case of all those who come into a living relationship with Him.
Note how this thing works out
in the chapter before us. Because the Lord Jesus never thinks,
speaks, nor acts out from Himself the result is life - "For
as the Father raiseth the dead and quickeneth them, even so the
Son also quickeneth whom he will" (verse 21). The result is
life. You have a contrast presented in the chapter, which opens
with the healing of the man at the Pool of Bethesda. "And a
certain man was there, which had been thirty and eight years in
his infirmity" (verse 5). The Lord Jesus healed him, and
then the Jews said to him that was cured, "It is the
sabbath" (verse 10). Later, it is said, "And for this
cause did the Jews persecute Jesus, because he did these things
on the sabbath" (verse 16). And further, "For this
cause therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he
not only brake the sabbath, but also called God his own Father,
making himself equal with God" (verse 18). Firstly
they persecuted Him because He did these things on the sabbath,
and then they sought to kill Him, because He brake the sabbath
and called God His Father. You can see the opposite action, can
you not? There is a working of death. Why? Because they were
thinking, reasoning, acting, and speaking out from themselves;
that is, out from their own interpretation of the law, instead of
out of a Divine revelation of the law. They had the law, but they
construed it according to their own judgment, interpreted it
according to their own mind, applied it according to their own
will, and the result was death. The Lord Jesus had a secret
source of knowledge and understanding which they had not. He was
drawing upon that and not upon His Own reasoning, not upon His
Own interpretation, not upon traditional grounds but upon
spiritual. His activity was therefore always in the direction of
life. You see in this chapter the conflict between those who
think, and speak, and act as out from themselves - albeit in a
religious way - and One Who is not thinking, speaking, acting out
from Himself, but in the Spirit. There is conflict always between
the two sources, and the two effects are life and death, death
and life.
What is the word upon which all
that hangs? "My Father worketh even until now, and I
work." The Sabbath day! Yes, but how shall a man judge of
it? How shall it be known what becomes it? How shall he deal
rightly with the Scriptures regarding it? Again, these Jews
called God their Father, and knew not how they contradicted such
a claim, nor how their ways bore record that theirs was no living
faith in Him, so that when the Lord Jesus said: "My Father
worketh even until now..." they sought the more to kill Him.
But the Lord Jesus is working in life on the basis of a secret
fellowship with the Father, by which He knows what the Father is
doing, how the Father is doing it, and when the Father is doing
it. It is a secret source of fellowship and communion, resulting
in life. Without that there may be religious activity, everything
according to tradition, and yet the issue be death.
The
Relationship that of a Common Life
We want to bring all this
together into a few definite statements. We see that what lies
back of the life of the Lord Jesus is a secret fellowship and
communion with the Father. Then the first thing which becomes
quite clear is that it was a relationship of life by the Holy
Spirit. This particular relationship between the Lord Jesus as
the Son of Man and the Father, as distinct from His relationship
in essential oneness, and deity, and Godhead as the Son of God,
was on a basis of a common life, one life with the Father. That
life was the secret of this fellowship, this communion.
That is a simple statement
which everyone should be able to grasp, and it vitally affects
ourselves, for we find that, after the Cross of the Lord Jesus,
when He is risen from the dead, our relationship with the Father
in Christ is on the basis of sharing a common life. "God
hath given unto us eternal life, and this life is in his
Son." That is the life which was, and is, in the Son, and we
have it in Him. Thus as partakers together of the one life we
have been brought into a relationship which is to work out in
fellowship, in communion, in intercourse. Everything springs out
of that.
We need not stay further with
this, save to point out how many and varied are the things to
which people fondly cling as a basis of true relationship with
God. I fear that multitudes of religious people, people who would
come under the title of Christian people, church-going people,
believing that they have a relationship with God, have a wrong
basis for that belief. The basis may be that they have had a
Christian home, and Christian up-bringing. It may be that they
have accepted the tenets of the Christian faith, the creedal
presentation of Christian principles, that they attend Divine
worship, say prayers, read the Bible, and many other things like
that. They believe that their relationship with God is a
perfectly sound one, and that all is well with them on such
grounds as these. Now unless I have sadly misread the New
Testament, the one and only true basis of a relationship with
God is that of sharing God's Own life by its impartation to us in
regeneration, new birth; the possessing of the very life of
God Himself, which no man possesses by nature. That hardly needs
to be said at this time, let alone stressed, but by way of
explaining what we mean by the relationship between Christ, as
Man, and the Father being the same as that into which we are
brought by new birth, it is necessary to see that the
relationship is that of life by the Holy Spirit, even as He said:
"As the Father hath life in himself, even so hath he given
to the Son to have life in himself." It is a Divine
impartation and only given to certain people.
The Law of
the Spirit of Life
The second thing is that the
relationship works itself out in life. It is a relationship of
life fundamentally, but it is a relationship which works itself
out by life. If you read quietly again through the life of the
Lord Jesus, with your eye watching for the indications of a
government which does not lie on the surface, but which gives
rise to what is seen on the surface, you will find a great deal
which makes it perfectly clear that everything in His life was
coming from another, secret source.
The times of His movements are
governed times; they are not impulsive movements, they are
governed. You cannot get away from the fact that these times,
these set times, these fixed times, are not haphazard. We are not
in this having to do with something incidental, there is a fixed
time for His movements. Any time will not do for Him. Man's time
will not do. He has to have the true time for everything. We have
sought to show that His life was very largely governed by that
principle, and the watchword of the Son of Man was, "Mine
hour!" "Mine hour is not yet!" "The hour is
come!" His mother very early in His life sought by an appeal
of need to persuade Him to act in relation to the exhausted wine.
No appeal of circumstance, of need, of persuasion, of sentiment,
of human affection, nor of anything of the earth, of man, of
nature, could persuade Him. His rejoinder immediately was,
"Mine hour is not yet!" But that time came very
quickly. The feast did not proceed much further before evidently
that hour came. It seems to follow almost immediately. "Mine
hour is not yet!" Then there appears to have been just time
for His mother to say to the servants, "Whatsoever he saith
unto you, do it," and the hour was come. But if there is
only the space of three minutes, five minutes, He will wait for
it. He will not anticipate it by a minute. His times were
governed. "I go not up yet unto this feast!" Then when
His brethren were gone up Jesus Himself went up. What was the
governing thing? "Mine hour is not yet!" Now evidently
His hour had come. But it only took apparently a little while. It
may be but a few hours between, "Mine hour is not yet,"
and the arrival of the hour. There is something in the heavenly
realm holding as to times. The times are governing His acts, and
His acts are the expressions of set times.
With His words it is the same.
He speaks not His Own words. He is counting upon the Father for
the words all the time. He is receiving the words from a secret
source. Times, acts, words were all governed by the Father.
But now the question confronts
us, By what means did the Father govern? How did the Father
govern times, acts and words? To put that round the other way,
How did the Lord Jesus know when the time had come, and what the
words were, and what the acts were? I think the answer is
undoubtedly this: By life, by the quickening of the Spirit, the
life-giving Spirit. There is a law of the Spirit of Life in
Christ, the Spirit of life in Christ, and a law
of the Spirit of life in Christ.
We speak about natural laws.
What are natural laws? Take the law of nourishment. Provided that
law is complied with, honoured; and at the right time the body is
given what it needs, not more, not less, the law of nourishment
deals with that and quite spontaneously works out in development,
growth, to express itself in various ways. It is the working of a
natural law spontaneously. You do not sit down with the law, and
watch it, and worry about it. What you do is to feed yourself,
and leave all the rest to the law. If you violate the law you
know all about it, but acting rightly in relation to the law you
will not be fretting all day long about the law of nourishment,
you will simply be taking your meals and getting on with your
work. The result is that you are able to work, able to go on; you
are nourished.
The law of the Spirit of life
in Christ is like that. It is a law of life, and it works out in
a practical way when respected and honoured. It works out
spontaneously in certain directions. It has its own results quite
naturally. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ is that law by
which we become aware. That is the simplest way of putting
things. The Lord Jesus knew that at a certain time He could not
act, could not speak; He had no movement of the Spirit in
quickening, no life so to do at that time; in His spirit there
was no movement of life; the law was not active in the positive
way. But when the Father, Who knew what was required in speech or
action, saw that the time had come, He did not bend down and
speak with an audible voice into His ear, and say, Now is the
time! Say this! Do that! He simply quickened Him inwardly. The
law of life became active in that direction, and He knew by an
inward quickening what the mind of God was. That is what Paul
means when he says, "The mind of the Spirit is life."
If you want to know the mind of
the Spirit about anything, you will know it by quickening, by
life in that direction. If you want to know what the Spirit is
against, you will know it because there is death in that
direction in your spirit, you have no life, you say, in that
direction. All right, that means you know the Lord, you know the
Spirit, you know what it is to move on the basis of the law of
the Spirit of life in Christ. The Father governed Him by that
law. He governs us by exactly the same law when we are joined to
the Lord, one spirit. Guidance, direction, is a matter of life in
the Spirit, life by the Spirit. The Lord Jesus had His life
ordered, governed, conducted, arranged in every detail by the
quickening Spirit; the Spirit of life in Christ.
This it is, again, that
provides the contrast. These Jews came along and said: Here is
the Scripture, and the Scripture says, You ought not to do
certain things, and You are doing them; You are all wrong because
the Scripture says this! When Christ so acted was He violating
the Scripture? Or was He giving God's meaning to the Scripture?
When God gave that law, did He not have a fuller meaning than
what men see just on the surface? Was there not a spiritual
interpretation? Was it not pointing on to something, which when
it came was to supersede - I do not mean break but transcend -
simply because higher, fuller, deeper meaning was reached? Christ
is God's Sabbath. It is in Christ that God comes to rest in all
His works; His new creation. But they said, You must abide by the
letter! We put it in that way to show the difference between
taking the letter and having the Holy Spirit's illumination of
the letter. Life and the letter are often contrasted in the Word.
The letter killeth, the Spirit maketh alive.
I wonder if you are recognizing
this fact, which should be quite clear from what we have been
saying, that this life, this particular life which God gives by
His Spirit, is not just a deposit in us. It is a gift, but not
just a gift. If I were to take a penny from my pocket and give it
to my boy, he would take it, and he would say, Thank you! and he
would put it down in his pocket, where it may stay, as good a
penny as ever was, with all the values of a penny. It will
accomplish all that ever a penny could accomplish, but it is down
in his pocket; he has it; it is a gift; he said, Thank you! and
took it. He realizes that there is a value bound up with that
penny, and he keeps it tucked away there in his pocket. The day
may come when, in an emergency, that penny will save the
situation. That emergency day may lie ahead, and it will just be
that penny that will get him through. Now, it may be exactly the
same with eternal life. The gift of God is eternal life through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Thank you, Lord, for eternal life! And it
may be taken and, as it were, put away, with the thought that one
day it will save us from hell and get us through. Is that all
that eternal life is meant to be? No! Life is not just a gift, a
deposit to be stored away. There is far more bound up with life
than that. It has to do with all that we have been speaking of.
Our whole course is to be governed by life. That life is God's
basis of ruling, ordering, and of revelation. We shall only have
a growing knowledge of the Lord as we have that life. Revelation
is by life. Revelation to the believer is only on the basis of
having Divine life. The increase of that life means the increase
of light, for light comes by life. "In Him was life, and the
life was the light of men."
The
Relationship Established in Resurrection Union
All that needs to be said for
the moment in conclusion is that this relationship and fellowship
is available for all who are on resurrection ground, in
resurrection union with Christ. On resurrection ground, in union
with Him as risen, His risen life is for us. Then, if that is so,
all that that life means is for us: fellowship with the Father in
life unto increase; communication; secret knowledge of the Lord.
I am most anxious that you
should recognize that. One of the crying needs of our day, in the
case of those related to the Lord by the possession of eternal
life through new birth, is this personal knowledge of the Lord,
of having the life governed inwardly by the Lord, having that
inward intelligence of the Lord, the Lord's mind, the Lord's
time, the Lord's way; personally knowing the Lord in a living
way. One can simply be a Christian, saved, and living upon all
that is external to oneself of Christianity, but that is quite
another thing.
Do you know the Lord personally
for yourself? Do you know what personal fellowship with God is?
Do you know what it is to have the Lord inwardly quicken you in
relation to His mind about things, so that there is no need for
any one to tell you when a thing is wrong and not according to
the Lord, or what you ought to do in certain matters, or what is
not becoming to one who professes Christ and bears His Name; you
know. Your life is ordered and governed by that inward knowing of
the Lord.
It is most remarkable how those
who have life conform to the mind of the Lord even in ordinary
things such as dress and behaviour. Life governs everything, and
that life causes a shedding of things which are not according to
Christ; they drop away; there is an adjusting. There is no need
whatever to tell anyone in whom the Lord's life is active, in
whom the Spirit of life is governing, whether they ought to go to
certain things, or ought not to go to certain places, or do
certain things. The Spirit of life will govern and direct them by
that inward life. How often we have been approached and asked
about certain things, and reluctantly have given our mind, and
the individual has said, Well, I knew before I asked! How did you
know? It was the law of the Spirit of life in Christ making you
to know. You knew quite well that you had no life along a certain
line, that that was death, that was arrest, that was a check, and
that the witness of life lay in another direction. Perhaps you
vacillated, and as you wavered, as you postponed the deliberate
obedience to the law of life you found yourself getting into
confusion, losing your peace, and losing your testimony.
This relationship and
fellowship is common to all who are in risen union with Christ,
partakers of His risen life, but it demands recognition. Do you
recognize that it is for you individually? It demands
recognition. You have to look this thing straight in the face and
say, That kind of life, a life governed by the Spirit of God
inwardly, is for me; not for special people, but for me! Life is
the common basis of all believers, not the special privileged
basis of certain highly developed saints. "For in one Spirit
were we all baptized into one body..." Do you
recognize the fact? Then it demands obedience. We must be quite
sure that we have no controversy with the Spirit of life. We must
be quite sure there is no avoidance of, or resistance to, the
Spirit of life, and equally that we are not neglecting the
dictates of the Spirit of life, but are obedient. Not only must
we shun a position of positive resistance, but we must give equal
diligence not to slip into a careless one, where we say, Well, it
is all right, it does not matter very much! It does. It matters
tremendously. It is possible for death to begin to take hold, to
grip, to work, and for us to be altogether unconscious of it. It
works so subtly that we do not realize what has happened, until
we wake up to find that we are a long way away from the Lord, and
have a tedious path to travel back and a lot to encounter on the
way. It is a very costly thing to recover ground like that. The
law of the Spirit of life in Christ demands obedience, active
obedience, and not merely passive assent.
This demands a walk in the
Spirit. That means a going on, and that walk in the Spirit
represents not only an abiding in a certain realm, but
development or progress in what that realm represents. I mean
this, that none of us knows the will of God, the mind of God,
perfectly. Let no one think that what we have been saying means
that because we have the life we shall at once know what the Lord
wants on every detail. I doubt whether there is a person in this
world who has that measure of knowledge. There will always be
those things about which we are exercised as to the Lord's mind,
but for which the time has not yet come for us to know it, or
related to which some further factor remains in our knowing of
the Lord that has to be dealt with first before such knowledge
can be ours. We do not come to perfect knowledge of His times,
and His directions, His thoughts and His deeds all at once, but
we have the law, and as we move with the Lord we become more and
more sensitive to that law, and therefore more and more able to
judge of what the Lord's mind is. It is progressive, a growing
thing. We must walk in the Spirit, and as we do so we shall prove
progressively and continuously what is that good, and perfect,
and acceptable will of God. It is the law of the Spirit of life
which produces, shall I say, an enlarging organism.
You see what is available to
us; the nature of our relationship with the Lord; the tremendous
power of life; the secret resource which is ours through that
life, and how through that inward life we are to be governed by
the Lord. The Lord establish in us His law of the Spirit of Life
in Christ.