Reading:
Gen. 1:26; Col. 1:15; 2 Cor. 4:4; Rom. 8:29; Col. 3:10,11; Eph.
4:13,15,16; 5:22-32; John 20:21-23; Matt. 28:18-20; Acts 1:8.
The
Identification of the Son with the Father
I
think we might take our meditation up at the point where it most
immediately relates to the Lord Jesus. At the close of our
previous meditation, we were especially emphasizing the principle
that representation is upon the basis of identification. The
Lord Jesus was very particular and very emphatic when He was here
in the matter of His relatedness to the Father. He kept that
always in view. Of course, every consequence arose out of
that. We will not deal with the consequence for the moment,
we remind ourselves of the fact. “He that hath seen Me
hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). “I and My
Father are one” (John 10:30). “Show us the
Father... Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not
know Me?” (John 14:8,9; ASV). So we might gather up the
tremendous amount that there is which bears down upon that
identification of the Son with the Father, of Christ with
God. Our special point at the moment is this, that we are
not dealing with two, we are dealing with one. That is to say, we
are not meeting Christ apart from God, apart from the Father. When
we meet Him and have dealings with Him, we meet God.
And,
what is more, from the other side God refuses to meet us on any
other ground but the ground of His Son. “No man cometh
to the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6), and any going to
God independently of, and apart from, the Son will have but one
result: the Father will refer us to the Son, He will not act
apart. The oneness is absolute and is divinely, sacredly,
jealously safeguarded and preserved. It is identification.
The
history of Israel since then can be summed up on that one
principle, that one law. Israel refused to take account of
Christ as God’s Son, set Him aside and essayed to approach
God, and found a closed door. From that day the door to God
has been closed to Israel. The Father has very effectively
and forcefully said to Israel, There is no independent way; if it
means a thousand or two thousand years, time will not alter this;
you will still be at the place where you will have to come by way
of the Son if you are going to find Me! That is the position
today with Israel. God is jealous over this thing.
Why
is this? The answer could be given in quite a number of
ways, but, for our present consideration, it is a matter of God’s
intention to bring Christ His Son into the inheritance which He
has appointed for Him, the dominion. “Adam was a figure
of Him That was to come” (Rom. 5:14), and God had said,
“Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let
them have dominion” (Gen. 1:26). That “them”
is very significant. We will not follow it for a
moment. “Let them have dominion.”—“A
figure of Him That was to come.” Says the writer of the
Hebrew letter, “Not unto angels did He subject the world to
come, whereof we speak. But one hath somewhere testified,
saying, ‘What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the
Son of Man, that Thou visitest Him? Thou madest Him a little
lower than the angels; Thou crownedst Him with glory and honour,
and didst set Him over the works of Thy hands: Thou didst put all
things in subjection under His feet. But now we see not yet
all things subjected to Him. But we behold Him Who hath been made
a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the
suffering of death crowned with glory and honour'” (Heb.
2:5-9; KJV: ASV). Here is the Antitype, here is the greater
than Adam, here is the One of Whom Adam was a figure, eternally
destined to have dominion, with all things put under Him, Jesus,
and God is keeping very close to His arrangement concerning His
Son. The Son is the supreme and all-inclusive representative
of God for executive purposes in dominion, and their oneness is
absolute. So it is that, if all God’s purposes are
bound up with and vested in His Son, He must bring that Son into
His place, that must be His supreme business, that the Son shall
there be as God.
That
thought is an Old Testament thought in type, as well as a New
Testament thought in reality. You know right through the Old
Testament God had His representatives, and those representatives
were in their day as God here. The statement to Moses is a
very utter one. When the Lord was sending Moses to Pharaoh,
He said to him, “You shall be as God to Pharaoh”
(Exodus 7:1), and in effect, in actual outworking, when Pharaoh
met Moses, he met God, and was having to do with God. Whether it
were the patriarchs, or whether it were the prophets, by reason
of their Divine appointment, they were there as God, dealing with
them was dealing with God. The very term “Son of Man”
as used in the Old Testament implies that representation, God
represented; and God not as apart, God standing by, God
committed, God involved. No matter how long you may have to
wait, the end is absolutely sure.
Jeremiah
represents God on the spot. Well, they may do all sorts of
things with Jeremiah: they may refuse his word, drop him into the
dungeon, well-nigh kill him, so that officials will go to the
king, and say, Unless you take that man up, he will die! They may
do that, and years may roll by and it may seem that Jeremiah has
not been vindicated, but it will be written, Now at a certain
given time in the reign of Cyrus that the word of the Lord by the
mouth of Jeremiah the prophet should be fulfilled... (Ezra 1:1). It
does not matter, wait as long as you like, do what you like, it
is God you are dealing with; representation. Oh, the Old
Testament is full of it in principle, but it is all gathered up
into Christ; He is the sum and the total of it all.
It
is not necessary for me in a company like this to stress this
great fact, that we have to deal with God when we touch the Lord
Jesus. When we have to do with the Lord Jesus, we are
dealing with God in a far greater way than was true with any
prophet of the Old Testament, and it was great enough then.
The
Church’s Identification with Christ
But
what are we leading to? Well, along this line of
representation on a basis of identification, we come to this
present dispensation, and the nature of it. This present
dispensation is the dispensation of the Church, and the Church is
here on this very ground, and if you and I have been baptized
into Christ, we have been baptized into His Body. Do not let
us think of the Church as something objective and apart from
ourselves. We are in this, it has to become a matter of
personal application as we speak, not thinking objectively of the
Church, but thinking of ourselves as members of Christ.
Well
now, this identification with Christ works out in exactly the
same way as did Christ’s identification with the
Father. That is why I read Ephesians 5:21-32 about husbands
and wives and wives and husbands, and why I emphasized that
strange word in Genesis—“Let them have dominion:”
and you noticed that it is followed out again in Genesis 5:1 and
2. “In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God
made He him; male and female created He them: and blessed them;
and called their name Adam,” called their name
Man. That passage in Ephesians 5 about husbands and wives
brings out this principle here, and if we could just see that, I
am sure it would be tremendously helpful, and lift us away from
modern views in this world on this matter. There is this
eternal thought, this Divine thought, back of this relationship,
this thought of God in representation on a basis of
identification, and the phrase to be underlined there is, even
as Christ and the Church, the Church and Christ. The
oneness here, the identification, is the Divine thought and
intent. You are not dealing with two things here, two
independent lives, two persons apart. “He made them
male and female, and called them Man,” called a plural a
singular! And that is what He does with Christ and the
Church; that is what He did between Himself and the Son, called a
plural a singular, in effect. And He is saying here in other
words, that a wife loses her own independent identity when she is
married, she loses her own name, she lets go her own separate
life. Now her one single idea is the life and vocation of her
husband, into which she merges herself, and the twain become one,
even as the Church Christ. When we come into the Church, we
abandon our own independent separate identity. All that is ours
personally and privately is yielded up and we are merged into the
Body of Christ, so that the Church and Christ are one flesh, the
twain are one: I know that modern views on woman’s place in
this world will not accept that, but you are not bothered about
modern views: but I hope you are just as strong on these
principles. Lift it here.
God
has vested in His Son everything, and you inherit
everything. The Lord is simply saying about this earthly
relationship that it is meant to be a representation of that
heavenly thing, that if that relationship between husbands and
wives and wives and husbands were as it is meant to be, the
husband would be standing for God in this world, as a servant, a
minister of God—do not misunderstand that; I do not mean he
would put a clerical collar on and go into “the ministry”—he
is standing as representative of God in a positive way, and his
wife would be working into that, the results of that; not herself
apart in independent ministry and life, not pulling another way,
but yielding all that is personal to that. That is the Divine
idea, and in that way she would come into the Divine endowments,
the Divine vocation, the Divine blessing; she would get her
portion in that relatedness and, with the loss of what is merely
personal and private, in the larger. That is the Divine
thought, and the Divine blessing lies in that direction and not
in any other direction. Take that, but do not take it as
merely a human idea, as the modernist and the people of the world
say, That is Paul’s idea about women and we do not accept
this! This is a Divine thought going right back, and its
vision is Christ and the Church, the Church and Christ.
The
point is, it is identification, that on this line where that
relationship is right, the effect is this, that when you meet the
wife, you meet the husband. I mean this, that she will not
act on her own independently, she will express the mind of her
husband, she will refer to the husband, and in meeting her you
will have to meet the husband. It is no use trying to get
round some other way in this kind of woman, to get her to take a
line on the quiet when her husband is absent. Oh no, you
cannot get her away from her husband; she is bound up there, so
one that you cannot meet her apart from him. It is not a
matter of whether the husband is present or absent, seen or
invisible; you are meeting him all the time. That is the
relationship.
The
Lord is saying this about Christ and the Church, and He is saying
the identification is so one that when you meet the Church, the
members of His Body, you are not meeting something apart, you are
meeting Him. “Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto
the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). That is the
principle. That is not merely an individual thing, that is
said to the Church: the nucleus was there and it was said to the
Church. “I am with you always, even unto the
consummation of the age” (ASV). “I am with you.” How? In
the midst, right there in you by the Spirit.
Identification
and Authority
And
that is the meaning of these other words, “Receive ye the
Holy Spirit: whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto
them” (John 20:22,23; ASV). That is
tremendous: the Church in the position of Christ saying, Thy
sins be forgiven thee. Yes, the Church under the anointing
of the Holy Spirit, if really filled with the Spirit, if the
Church is Spirit-governed, that is its right, its prerogative to
say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee;” on the terms, of
course, that condition all forgiveness, namely, repentance and
faith. “Whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained”
(KJV). The Church says, Look here, my brother, my sister,
you are violating a Divine principle and putting yourself out of
court, and we assure you most solemnly before God that you have
no way with God until you put that right: on the authority of the
Holy Spirit we say that to you. And God stands by, and it
does not matter, you may wait a generation, a lifetime, that
brother, that sister, will not get through, apart from obedience
to that counsel. They think the day is coming when they are
going to be vindicated along their own line. Not at all!
They will die unvindicated if they have not recognized that, in a
Holy Spirit governed representation of the Church, they are
dealing with Christ.
Of
course, I know that the Roman Church has taken this very thing,
and it is upon this very basis the Roman Church exists and
operates, but of course in a temporal realm. They have
brought it down from Holy Spirit government and made it purely a
priest-craft matter. Wherever you get truth you will get error
that simulates truth, a counterfeit of the true. But the
truth is here, and it is a tremendous thing to be in the Body of
Christ; and it is a tremendous thing to be in a local
representation of that Body of Christ, the Church. It brings you
on to executive ground, and I do feel so strongly that what is
needed in our day, perhaps more than anything else, is for the
Church as represented to function, the Church really to function
in local representation. There seems to be such a call for a
new functioning of the Church in its local expression along the
line of prayer, and prayer that is of an executive character.
In
Jerusalem there was the Church, and we mark that again and again
they are found in prayer. When Peter is in prison, the
Church made prayer unto God. It acted over this matter, and
it brought the Lord in on the ground of Psalm 2, and Peter was
released. Church function—I submit it to you that this
is a great need, that the Lord should have locally represented
this Body, which is Himself in expression, Himself in effect,
Himself in execution, doing it there in them, through them, by
the Holy Spirit. It is that which is called for today in a
new way, for meeting this tremendous on-drive of the forces of
evil. Who amongst the Lord’s people is unconscious of
that on-drive of evil forces? What is going on in the world
today? You can see the counterpart of this war in the
spiritual realm in almost every detail; intense malignancy, evil,
poison, hatred, violence and lies and misrepresentation; that the
time is short; and a gathering up of every diabolical bit of
ingenuity for destruction. And here within the last days we
have had a revival of talk about gas, the idea being that the
time is short, the day is drawing in; the enemy will resort to
any device, however wicked. That is the idea. But look
away from this. You see that in the spiritual realm, you
feel it. The enemy is out to crush, to cripple, to
annihilate the true children of God if he can, and his intensity
was never greater. Why? Because his time is short. “The
devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he
hath but a short time” (Rev. 12:12). The day is drawing
in for him.
How
is it going to be met? I again submit it to you that it is
the Church that has to meet this. I confess that I cannot
meet this alone; you cannot meet it alone. We have to have
co-operation, we have to come on to our ground of identification
with Christ and let Christ representatively meet this
thing. None other but Christ can meet it, but He can. “All
authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth... and I
am with you” (Matt. 28:18,20). That cannot be just
taken for granted. It seems to me that the Church has to
come into a faith position on that ground and act with
Christ. I submit that to you for what it is worth, but I
feel intensely about it myself, that there is a great call and
need for the Lord’s children where they are, as representing
the Church, even though they be but two or three in any given
locality, really to act in this matter executively in the name of
the Lord. “In the name of Jesus”—it is only
another way of saying, Representatively we say,
representatively we act, it is Christ by us; given always that
the Holy Spirit has His place. Well, you see, identification
means representation. That oneness with the Lord means that
the Lord has a way to express Himself. Well, that opens up
all those matters of oneness with the Lord, unhindered oneness,
unsullied oneness with the Lord, so that He has a free way of
expression.
Identification
and Human Relationships
This
identification with Christ, and His coming in along that line, if
we could see it, if our eyes were open—and I would that our
eyes were opened to this—does set up a very real solemn and
serious piece of business for the Lord’s people in the
matter of human relationships. How can I best pass this on to you
and explain what I mean? You know, some of us have been to a
number of different countries in this world, among other nations,
and one of our greatest difficulties has often been the national
character of the people to whom we were ministering. I need
not mention different nations and their characteristics, but as
you know, different nationalities do differ very much one from
another in their constitution, their make-up. They seem to
me to represent all the temperaments of humanity. Some are
very emotional; others are intensely practical; others mental, in
the right sense—I was going to say intellectual, but that is
not quite the right word—living always in the realm of the
mind. They must have the thing thoroughly threshed out in
reason, and they keep yon in that realm. Well, they differ,
and our problem has often been this—Oh, we cannot get
anywhere here at all, because here is this superficiality, or
there is this intellectuality, this intense national
disposition! And you might give it up if you accept that and
work on that basis alone. But we have come to see that that
whole thing has to be relegated to a secondary place and not be
allowed to dominate at all. You see, Christ is other than all
that, He is different from all that, He is of a peculiar
disposition, make-up, constitution. The Holy Spirit is all
powerful, and if the Holy Spirit can bring Christ in, introduce
Christ into these lives, no matter how they are made, He has
introduced that which is going quietly, deeply, surely to work to
supersede and transcend all that other. Give Him time and
you will find something there that is quite other than the
natural disposition, altogether different from the natural
make-up. It is something other, and that will hold on its
way. That is Christ. Herein is the universality of the
Holy Spirit.
Now
that is exactly what happened on the day of Pentecost in
Jerusalem. There were representatives of all nations under
heaven; Parthians, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia,
they were all there. That was strategy on the part of
the Holy Spirit, and that day He came and so spake through the
Apostles as to be understood by them all. That was the thing
which amazed them. Here are we, all nations and languages
under heaven, and yet as these men speak we hear them, every man
in our own tongue wherein we were born, just as though it might
be that it was but one language that was being spoken. The
universality of Christ, the universality of the Holy
Spirit! Just how it was done may not be clear, but there was
evidently a miraculous transcending by the Spirit of the curse of
confounded speech among men. It sets forth a principle, that
Christ simply ignores the differences of nationality and human
make-up, and He is Himself one constituent, one basis, Who can
come into all and constitute all one in the innermost reality,
make all one. That is the meaning of those words which we
have cited as one of our passages—“Have put on the new
man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him
That created him: where there cannot be Greek and Jew,
circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman,
freeman: but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:10,11;
ASV). The Holy Spirit can make of all nationalities,
temperaments, constitutions, a oneness which is Christ,
deeper than what we are in ourselves. We are all
different. If we simply met and tried to proceed on a purely
and merely human basis, well our differences would be clashing
all the time and making immense difficulties. But if we will
seek to relegate them to a secondary place and take account of
the fact that, being members of Christ’s Body, we all have
something in common, and that it is that common something which
is to be the basis of our relationship and our going on, which is
to be cherished and safeguarded and looked after, then there will
be a building up of the Body, and an increase of Christ; and that
is the way of representation. Let us deliberately turn our
backs on that attitude that says, I cannot get on with so-and-so,
I give it up! and say, So-and-so is a child of God, there is
something of Christ there and I am going to cling to that. That,
beloved, makes for increase, and that too is the way of
representation.
I
know this, that when there is some real business for the Lord’s
children to do, if it is only two of them, husband and wife, or
two in a place, some real matter which has to be dealt with
corporately together, the enemy works upon all kinds of human
conditions to paralyze that. He is out all the time, in
advance very often, before we recognize the business that is
going to arise, he is out working upon those human elements to
get us across one another, to bring strain in relationship, to
create phantoms in the mind about one another, and lies. And
they seem so true! So-and-so said something and did you
notice how they said it, and did you notice how they looked?—and
you give an interpretation which has no truth in it! The
enemy puts a construction; nothing is too small, too petty for
him, and he is trying to get you across one another, a strain in
relationships, because there is an issue. Presently you
will be required to stand together on some matter, and you
cannot; he has seen to that beforehand, by sowing seeds of
destruction and discord. These are real things, they are not
imaginations; they are the result of experience and observation.
What
I am saying is this, that we have to get on to the ground of
Christ if Christ is to be expressed, and seek to keep off this
ground of what is Jew and Greek, circumcision and uncircumcision,
barbarian, Scythian, and so on. Have that ground where
Christ is all, and in all, hold that ground, and then He comes
in. Representation of Christ means identification with Christ,
and that is the only identification that you and I will ever find
here, unless it is identification with the Devil himself. There
are only two alternatives, it seems to me.
I
do trust you are not confused but are seeing glimmers of light,
and that we shall recognize why we are here. We are here on
this earth as the Lord’s representative. But it is not
that we are here or there and He far away; we are here to be the
vessel in which He is, and He is here because we are
here. That is to be the implication of our presence. Oh,
that this might not just be a theory but more and more a fact, by
reason of our living in the Spirit, that our presence may mean to
all unseen intelligences, as well as men, Christ is here by His
Spirit. The Lord grant it may be so.