"...but God,
being rich in mercy, for HIS GREAT LOVE wherewith he
loved us..."
In our previous
meditation, we were seeking to point out that, although
this whole vast universe has behind it a mind, a reason,
a design, a plan, a will, a fiat, yet back of all that
there is a heart, and that means love. We sought first to
see that the very creation of man was dedicated by the
heart of God for purposes of His own love, and then that
the whole Bible is a progressive and growing unveiling of
that fact. It is God's love for man that lies behind all
His dealings with man. We traced that fact from Adam,
through the chosen seed, particularly citing the case of
Abraham, and then of the chosen nation, Israel. How full,
wonderful, altogether inexplicable, was the love of God!
We went on into the New Testament and pointed out how
that eternal, mighty, mysterious love of God became fully
embodied in the person of His Son, 'Who lived His life,
did His work, gave Himself, all on the basis of love for
the Father and that the Father might have in man that
upon which His heart has ever been set. We dwelt at some
length upon His love for God His Father, and we marked it
also in connection with His disciples, whom, having
loved, He loved unto the end; and we saw at what infinite
cost to Himself all was at length accomplished, all in
the strength of that love.
GOD'S
LOVE FOR THE CHURCH IN THE BELOVED
Passing from the days
of His flesh over into the next part of the Bible,
beginning with the book of the Acts and running on to the
book of the Revelation, we have the love of God from
eternity as now seen to be centered, in the first
instance, in something called "the Church": "the
church of God which he purchased with his own blood"
(Acts 20:28). "Christ... loved the church,
and gave himself up for it" (Eph. 5:25). It is
quite impossible for us in a brief time, to go right
through all that section of the New Testament, but I
think we shall be agreed that this unveiling is brought
to us, not exclusively but in its fullest and richest
form, in the ministry of the Apostle Paul, who himself
was a wonderful embodiment of God's love. It was the one
note deepest in his own heart, breaking out from time to
time in nothing short of utter amazement. He "loved
me, and gave himself up for me"! (Gal.2:20). "O
the depth of the riches..." (Rom. 11:33); they
are the riches not only of wisdom and knowledge but also
of His love. And this man, who could never understand why
that eternal love should light upon him and single him
out, has given us such a marvellously full, deep, rich
revelation of that love. We are just helpless and
hopeless when we try to cope with this revelation through
and in Paul. We can only do the best the Lord enables us
to do in thinking about it and bringing it to the notice
of others.
We remember, as we
pointed out in our previous meditation, that, when the
Son of God's love stepped out into His great public
ministry at Jordan, the Father's word from heaven was - "This
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt.
3:17) "My beloved Son." You will recall what we
said about that little prefix- "BE-loved";
not just "My loved Son," but "My beloved
Son," that is, one to whom I am utterly given. Now
this Apostle of the eternal love of God - with what would
be frightful audacity were it not the whole doctrine of
the love of God - dares to use that same phrase of the
believer, "hath made us accepted in the
beloved" (Eph. 1:6. A.V.). "Us in the
beloved"; God giving Himself to us in the same way
as He gave Himself to His Son. Oh, I do hope you do not
just take that as a kind of play upon words, a little
touch of interest, when I stay to underline the beginning
of the word "beloved." I pointed out that it is
the beginning of many words and every one of them has to
do with a complete thing. If it is "BEtrothed,"
that is the complete giving. If it is "BEseech,"
that is something more than asking. When I come to you
concerning something with which my life is wrapped up,
something which is of very great importance, I do not
just simply and casually ask you about that matter; my
whole being goes out to you; I beseech. God is very
particular about that, and He very often heads us up to
something more than easy asking - to beseeching; not
because He is reluctant or unwilling, but because He
wants us to get right into the matter. It is of paramount
importance. "I beseech," said Paul - that was
how he approached men. "We beseech you on behalf
of Christ, be ye reconciled to God" (2 Cor.
5:20). It is a life and death matter. Or take "BEsiege."
If you are going to besiege anyone or anything or any
place, you do not just walk up to them or it. You
give yourself to that thing, you are all in on that
matter. That is where God is over His Christ - the
Beloved; and that is transferred to us.
CHOSEN
IN THE BELOVED
Here, in
this letter to the Ephesians, right at the beginning
everything is put on that basis. "He chose us in
him before the foundation of the world, that we should be
holy and without blemish before him in love" (1:4).
An alternative rendering to that is, "He
chose us in love before the foundation of the world that
we should be holy." "Having foreordained us
unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself,
according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise
of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us
in the Beloved: in whom we have our redemption." (This
is the R.V. reading of Eph. 1:5,6). It is all in the
Beloved, in the BE-loved. Do you catch the
emphasis? It is not just that He chose us, or that He
chose us for this or that. It is WHERE He chose
us. Nor is it just that He chose us in Jesus Christ: He
chose us IN THE BELOVED, giving the character and
the quality of the basis of our relationship to God. That
being so, our very existence in relation to God is a love
existence, a love relationship. It is what Christ's
relationship was to the Father that is ours; and you know
how in the New Testament this very word 'beloved' is
frequently used concerning believers. (Note: Let it be clearly
understood that nothing said here or elsewhere means that
the unique and exclusive nature of Christ as "the
only begotten of the Father," the eternal Son, is
infringed or overlooked. The peculiar nature of the
Person of Christ is preserved and jealously preserved. We
are here dealing with our calling in Christ.) Paul was tremendously fond of
using it. Here he says it inclusively - "in the
Beloved," but again and again he will say to the
saints, "beloved of God." That is not just a
pleasant thing said. We can use that language to one
another, we can address people in those terms; but Paul
was not just saying a nice thing, calling them beloved of
God to make them feel comfortable.
For him,
the whole doctrine of grace was wrapped up in
that. He comprehended the eternities past and future in
that; "in the Beloved," "beloved of
God." If you think that is just language and words,
do remember that Paul's horizon, his whole world, beyond
which for him there was nothing, was what he so
frequently called "in Christ." You have little
need that I remind you of the way in which Paul used that
phrase. I have managed to find 128 occasions in Paul's
writings alone in which he uses that phrase, or what
corresponds to it. "He chose us in him."
"In whom we have our redemption." Now you go on
and see all that he has to say about "in
Christ." It is in the Beloved.
UNION
WITH GOD IN THE BELOVED
Now, what
does that mean? As I see it, it means that the sum of
Paul's ministry, which was the outflow of his own life
and experience and understanding, was and is UNION
WITH GOD IN CHRIST, and that, LIVING union, ORGANIC
union. I would have to take you back to the Old
Testament again to indicate how much that was so in the
terms used. We saw in our previous meditation the terms
used by God concerning Israel, calling Israel His child,
His son, His daughter, His betrothed, His wife. All these
are organic, vital conceptions. It is not the
relationship of one brick to another in a building,
inanimate, cold, however closely connected. It is the
throbbing life of a love union, so strong and deep that
Paul will cry in one of those inexpressible utterances of
his "Who shall separate us from the love of
Christ?" (Rom. 8:35). Then he tabulates and
catalogues all the things that do effect separations -
life and death, things present, things to come, and all
the rest, and he says, But none of these "shall
be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord." The union is so much a
part of Himself that it would be dividing God and
dividing His Son.
I am not
stepping over now to the obligations and responsibilities
of this love where we are concerned, but at once you will
glimpse something when I quote that passage from
Corinthians- "Is Christ divided?" That is only
one way of saying, that you cannot divide Christ, you
cannot make Christ into parts without destroying His very
Person. So this love makes for such a oneness with God,
of an organic and vital character, that to separate would
be to destroy an organism. Oh, that we had a right
conception, God's conception, of the Church and of
relatedness! What a tremendous statement that is - "I
am persuaded that neither death, nor life," nor
this and that and that (tremendous things) "shall
be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:38,39). What a
pity it is that the chapters should have been broken
there (Romans 8 and 9). We need to read on to get the
full force of it. But we must not be too detailed now.
Paul's
whole conception and unfolding of the purpose of God from
eternity is in this little phrase - "in Christ,"
"in the Beloved." Here, in the letter to the
Ephesians, you have the summary of it all. He goes right
back before ever we were formed, and before ever this
world existed in its present order - before the
recreative activity of God. It was back there God chose
us in the Beloved. Looking right down through all the
ages, He chose us in Him.
CALLED
INTO THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE BELOVED
Then Paul
passes from the eternal choice of love and speaks about
our being called into the fellowship of God's Son.
Chosen, now called. I wonder what weight you give to your
salvation, your conversion, your coming to the Lord,
however you may put it? Is it no more than just that one
day you met the Lord Jesus, one day you were saved, one
day you came to the Lord? Have you recognized that was
the day of a call, concerning something related to you
and to which you were related, which goes right back
before time? It is as though God in eternity past chose
you in love, and then called you according to His
purpose. He had to wait until you were here to actually
call you; and the call came; but that call was wrapped up
in something vast, and the vast thing was union with God
Himself in His Son in the terms of eternal love.
What is
God after? And when He gets what He is after, what will
things be like? We talk about the testimony of Jesus. We
have a lot to say about the fullness of Christ, of the
Church which is His Body, of identification with Christ.
All these are great truths, great conceptions. But what I
find is this, that we have not come to an end of God's
thoughts yet. I am very glad of this; but it is the most
painful thing we can know, that we never come to an end
here, and in order to go on a further stage something has
to happen to us that knocks the bottom clean out of all
that has gone before. That is to say, we go through a new
experience of death and desolation and emptiness, of
hopelessness, in order to come to something further on in
the Divine revelation. We thought, "Oh, now we have
come into the fullness of God's thought! Now at length we
are seeing what God is after!" We get on with that
for a time and it fills our whole vision; and then
everything is as though it were nothing, and we go
through a terrible time. Oh, yes, it was right, it was
true, but it was not God's end. My experience is that it
is through just such a history with God, of repeated
desolations and emptyings and despairings after wonderful
unveilings and times when you feel there cannot be
anything more, that you are brought up again into
something further on, with your vision enlarged. I do not
know whether we have come to the last point of God's
movements, but what I am saying now is this, that when
God gets His end, everything will be only, but
absolutely, a manifestation of His love.
I think
that is what Paul means here in the letter to the
Ephesians, for this is a wonderful revelation. But look
at the place of grace in this letter, look at the place
of love. "...the breadth and length and depth
and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth
knowledge," (Eph. 3:18,19). That is the
object. Paul holds it up into view, that we may come to
that in the end.
Well then,
if you and I are going on to God's end, what will
characterize us? This one thing - abounding more and more
in love. I state that and leave it for the time being.
ALL-SUFFICIENT
PROVISION IN THE BELOVED
He called us, but,
blessed be God, His calling of us is on to and into a
perfectly prepared ground, to an all-sufficient
provision. It is in Christ. What a terrible thing it
would be if He called us with so great a calling, and we
had somehow to attain to it of ourselves and to find all
that is required for attaining. Why, it were better that
we had never been called! We know how utterly impossible
it is for us to provide the smallest degree of anything
that can attain to God's end. Can you find in yourself
this love of God, this kind of love? Why, we have only to
read one section of this whole revelation to find
ourselves defeated at every point. I refer to 1 Cor. 13.
There is not a fragment of a sentence there that does not
knock us to the ground. "Love suffereth long, and
is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is
not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh
not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil.
" And to sum up all - "Love never
faileth"; that is, love never gives up. Where
are we? Can you stand up to that? No! But He called us in
the Beloved, and in Christ is a perfectly prepared
ground. "In whom I am well pleased" - an
all-sufficient provision.
That
causes Paul to go out along one wonderful line, and he
says, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it
is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and
that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith,
the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and
gave himself up for me" (Gal. 2:20). (Paul is
not saying that when we died in Christ we lost our
individuality. We ought to have lost our individualism,
but not our individuality.) There is some difficulty in
translating the verse just quoted. "I live by the
faith of the Son of God," or "which is in the
Son of God." It seems to me that, in keeping with so
much more that Paul says, it means this - "It is
Christ Who is providing what is necessary for this new
life [on] the other side of the Cross. I live by Him, I live
by the provision that He makes." Yes, and God, in
calling us into His Son, has called us into an
all-sufficient provision. You say, "I cannot love,
especially in certain directions." But Christ can,
and He has proved it in your case. Do you think everybody
loves you? There are some people who do not love you, but
Christ loves you whatever you are. You might be unloved
for very good reasons by everybody else; He loves you,
God loves you now with that love that can and does love
the unlovely. He can provide us with a love to love.
Is not
this the wonder of the whole evangel? Have we not many
times heard missionaries who have come home saying,
"When I was called of God to go to such and such a
country and people, they were the very people I felt I
could never love; everything about them stirred up in me
only bad feelings; but I have come to love them, they are
my people." Well, that is simple enough. My point is
that to be called into Christ is to be called into
a provision for what that very word "beloved"
means. You have the great example of Paul and the
Corinthians. If ever a people deserved the opposite of
love from a man, those Corinthians deserved it from Paul.
They owed everything to him, and they treated him, to say
the least of it, most shabbily, so that he could say that
the more he loved them, the less they loved him (2 Cor.
12:15). When you read about them your uppermost feeling
is that it requires a great deal to love these people.
Yet what is Paul's attitude? His heart is going out in
brokenness over them. This is love that is not natural;
it is in Christ, it is the provision in the Beloved. Do
you catch the thought? I need not labour it. In
Christ is an all-sufficient provision.
Well, Paul
has many aspects to this great reality of "in
Christ." As you know, he says that God put us all
into Christ in the Cross. When Christ died and was judged
of God, in Him we, too, were judged and death passed upon
us all. We are in Him also risen; and not only so, for we
are not just left here on this earth as risen: we are in
Him seated in the heavenlies. How many aspects of this
"in Christ" matter there are! What does it
amount to? It amounts to this, that only Christ is the
sphere of the believer, and in Christ that great heart
intention of God in the creation is realized - a people
in the Beloved, beloved of God, the objects of that love,
and who should be filled (the Lord forgive us for our
failure!) with that same love of God. It is in that
sphere of Christ that God proceeds with His love purpose.
CONFORMITY
TO THE BELOVED
What is God doing with
us in Christ? Inclusively, He is seeking to conform us to
the image of His Son in terms of love. What is your idea
of the image of God's Son? He is the Son of His love, and
the very word "Son" is a love term, than which
there is no higher and fuller, and in the revelation of
God, Son, Sonship, is the embodiment and exhaustion of
love. "Conformed to the image of his Son" in
terms of love. I am putting something on you and on
myself when I say these things, but there it is. You must
ask the Lord to write the force of this in your heart and
do not just take it as an address. The Lord will have to
help us after this, for there will have to be some very
real dealings with Him. We are going to be challenged and
found out on this. It is well that we are very much
occupied with the word "grace." "Oh, to
grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to
be." We love that word. Do we realize that is only
the other word for love, and that it speaks of the
initiative of God in this whole matter? In grace He chose
us. The initiative of God was in love.
Then what is true of
our position in the Beloved is put upon us as our
obligation, and when we are bidden to love one another we
are bidden to show to others the grace that God has shown
to us. In 1 John 4:19 there is a fragment which is so
often quoted - or misquoted when it is quoted from the
Authorized Version - "We love him, because he first
loved us." It is a misquotation because the
"him" should not be there, and to put it in
really does not make sense with the context. "We
love, because he first loved us." That is the
whole of John's argument in that letter. "If God
so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (1
John 4:11). "God so loved"; He gave the all
that He in heaven possessed. We therefore love one
another, because He loved us first.
That is a tremendous
test of the reality of our being "in Christ,"
and a tremendous challenge, and we need something with
which to meet and answer that challenge. Paul says that
provision is all in the Beloved. That does not get us
close enough. It is not as though the beloved Christ is a
kind of sphere and God has put everything inside there.
It is Himself. "It is no longer I, but Christ
liveth in me." Christ is the supplier.
Oh, how much Paul dwells upon that! Right through to the
end, to the ultimate realization - "Christ in
you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). If there
is anything beyond what I have said, it might be summed
up in that word "glory". "...hath
called us unto his eternal glory" (1 Peter
5:10). But what is the glory? There is no glory except
the glory of perfected love. Perfected love is the
glory of God. The glory of God is His love.
Well, if you forget all
that has been said, do get the impression upon your heart
of the one thing "His great love wherewith he
loved us." This whole matter of a Christian's
life is gathered into that. That love in us is the
satisfying answer to the heart of God. It is not how much
truth and doctrine we possess, how much teaching we have
or give; it is not a matter of the mysteries of the
Gospel; it all resolves itself into this - the love of
God shown to us and then shown by us; that is all. The
Lord help us!