Letter on "Apostasy"

J. N. Darby.

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{Also published as 'The Bridegroom Cometh'.}

Beloved brethren and sisters in Christ,

The day of the apostasy is hastening on with rapid strides, and also the day in which the Lord shall come to snatch His own away. The present moment is of so solemn a character that I feel constrained to address you this word of exhortation. Godly men everywhere, who watch the signs of the times, see the moment approaching which shall terminate the present actings of grace. The time has evidently arrived when one must speak plainly and decisively, and ask you where you are, and what you are about. You have by grace, which has shone brighter and brighter as it has approached its termination, been gathered out of the seething mass of idolatry and wickedness which now threatens Christendom and the world with an overthrow more awful than that of Sodom and Gomorrah of old; and the question is whether you are adequately impressed with the responsibility, as well as the blessedness, of the ground you are on, and walking like men and women whose eyes have been opened. Believe me, there has never been in the world's history such a time as the present, and Satan is occupied with none as he is with you; and his occupation with you is the more to be feared because of the subtlety of his operations. His object is to withdraw your attention from Christ, while you suppose you are on safe ground and have nothing to fear. He would destroy you with the very truth itself. For mark the subtlety: you ARE on safe ground but ONLY while Christ is your all in all. Here is where Satan is drawing some away. Interpose anything between your soul and Christ, and your Philadelphia becomes Laodicea; your safe ground is as unsafe as the rest of Christendom; your strength is gone from you, and you become weak, like any ordinary mortal. Some of you are young, recently converted, or brought to the right ways of the Lord, and you do not know the depths of Satan. But you are hereby solemnly warned of your peril; and if mischief overtake you, you cannot plead ignorance. Again I say, Satan has his eye especially upon YOU, for the purpose of interposing the world in some form between your soul and Christ. He cares not how little, or in what form. If you knew but how little will answer his purpose, you would be alarmed. It is not by that which is gross or shameful; such is the DEVELOPMENT, not the BEGINNING of evil. It is not by anything glaring that he seeks to ruin you, but in small and seemingly harmless trifles - trifles that would not shock nor offend anyone as things go, and yet these constitute the deadly and insidious poison, destined to ruin your testimony and withdraw you from Christ. Do you ask what are these alarming symptoms, and where are they seen? The question does but shew what is the character of the opiate at work. Brethren and sisters, you are being infected with the spirit of the world. Your dress, your manner, your talk, your lack of spirituality, betray it in every gathering. There is a dead weight, a restraint, a want of power, that reveals itself in the meetings, as plainly as if your heart were visibly displayed and its thoughts publicly read. A form of godliness without power is beginning to be seen among YOU, as plainly as in Christendom generally. As surely as you tamper with the world, so surely will you drift away to its level. This is the nature of things. It must be so. If you tamper with the world, the privileged place you occupy, instead of shielding you, will only expose you to greater condemnation. It must be Christ OR the world. It cannot be - ought not to be - Christ AND the world. God's grace in drawing you out of the world in your IGNORANCE is one thing, but God will never permit you to prostitute His grace, and play fast and loose, when you have been separated from the world. Remember you take the place, and claim the privilege, of one whose eyes have been opened; and if on the one hand this is unspeakably blessed (and it is), on the other hand it is the most dreadful position in which a human being can be found. It is to be at the wedding feast without the wedding garment. It is to say, "Lord, Lord," while you do not the things that He bids. It is to say, "I go, sir," as he said who went not.

409 Beloved, I am persuaded better things of you, though I thus speak; and I have confidence in you, in the Lord, that you will bless Him for these few faithful words. Nothing can be more glorious than the position you are called to occupy in these closing days. Saints have stood in the breach, have watched through weary days and nights these eighteen hundred years, and you only wait for the trumpet of victory to go in and take possession of the glorious inheritance. Other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours; and yet, forsooth, you are lowering your dignity to the level of the poor potsherds of the earth, who only wait for the rod of the Victor (and yours too) to be dashed into pieces. Oh, awake, then from your lethargy: slumber no longer; put away your idols and false gods; wash your garments, and get you to Bethel, where you will find God to be better than ever you knew Him, even in your best days. Lay aside your last bit of worldly dress; guard your speech, that it be of Christ and His affairs, and not, as you know it now often is, of anything but Him. Let your prayers mingle with those of other saints at the prayer meetings; they never were more needed. Neglect no opportunity of gathering up instruction from that word which alone can keep us from the paths of the destroyer, and let your life be the evidence of the treasures you gather up at the lecture, or the reading-meeting, or in secret with the Lord If you want occupation, with a glorious reward from a beloved Master, ask that Master to set you to work for Him: you will never regret it, either in this world or in that which is to come.

410 Beloved, bear with me; I am jealous over you with godly jealousy. You belong to Christ, and Christ to you. Break not this holy union. Let not the betrothed one be unfaithful to her Bridegroom! Why should you be robbed and spoiled? And for what? Empty husks and bitter fruits, while you waste this little span of blessing! All the distinctions acquired here in the energy of the Spirit will but serve to enhance your beauty and render you more lovely in the eyes of Him who has espoused you to Himself. Can you refuse Him His delights in you? Can you refuse Him the fruit of the travail of His soul, who once hung, a dying man, between two thieves, on Calvary, a spectacle to men and angels, and for YOU - you who have FORGOTTEN (for you cannot have DESPISED) this devotedness for you. He could have taken the world without the cross, and left you out, but He would not; and now will you, having been enriched by those agonies and that blood, take the world into your tolerance and leave Him out? Impossible! Your pure mind did but need to be stirred up by way of remembrance.

Let us therefore take courage from this moment. We have lately been offering up prayers, confessing the lack of piety and devotedness. May we not take this word as the answer of our ever-gracious faithful Lord, to arouse us - to re-awaken our drooping energies? And then the more quickly He comes the better. We shall not be ashamed before Him at His coming.

(Hebrews 10: 23-25, 37 )

The Person of the Lord

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How beyond all our wonder and praise is the Person of the blessed Lord! As an apostle could say, and more, because he knew it better "Great is the mystery." But in one respect Paul was one with us all, great as his revelations were - no man knows the Son. Yet He lets us see that He is that which no man knows. Who could say but there 'God is known in death'? Is it not there love, God's love is known, never known really till known there? Yet it is weakness, and, as to His place as man, the very end of man. But in Himself God is known in love by His being down here with sinful men - by that love reaching even to us. He made Himself of no reputation, emptied Himself - not that He could be other than God - there is the mystery - but as to the form of God he did. Hence having taken the form of a servant, He is always such - receives all. Even when He takes the kingdom, He goes a long journey to receive a kingdom, and, when, by His perfection in power He has subdued all, He gives it up to God even the Father. He gives up His own spirit when the time comes, but recommends it to His Father - raises up the temple of His body? but is raised by the glory of the Father - grows in wisdom, speaks what He knows, but He is the wisdom of God; He can do nothing of Himself - is obedient, but He is the power of God, and quickens too whom he will; created all things and upholds them by the word of His power. And this was His perfection, with the whole power of evil against Him, never to go out of the path of dependence and obedience - never to use power by His will. Thus He bound the strong man as in the wilderness - in death how much more even - He could have had, even in dependence, more than twelve legions of angels, but it would not have been obedience fulfilling the Scriptures.

But what an emptying that was when He who was God could come into death, through suffering, through obeying, bring all that God was in His moral perfection into death, and then when it was needed, in man's extremity through sin, in man's weakness, in the place of Satan's power, there glorify it - love, righteousness, majesty, truth, all found glorified there. God is glorified in Him, yet it was in death, and because it was death in all it meant for God; but it was all the power of love, i.e., God, in the emptying. I do not turn to John's writings here, already elsewhere spoken of, where the Divine nature of the Lord is so distinct,* where He comes out as God - not genealogic from - takes the place of receiving everything. It is contemplation of the wondrous and unsearchable fact I seek, not Adam or Abraham or David - and yet, as made flesh, always proofs which are everywhere where He is.

{*John 5 gives plainly this position of the Lord; chapter 6 is more distinctly as man, still He comes down and goes up again.}

412 But I would weigh some facts in the Gospels as to the manifestation of God in Him. When the blessed Lord had to do with unbelievers whom He knew and had to treat as adversaries, though His being God comes out - save His knowing all men, as yet not judging - what God is does not come out at all; it is only when driven, by the wilful blindness and hostility of the human heart, to speak of things as they are, that forced and driven to the necessity of it, so to speak, the fact of His being God comes out, "Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at Him, but Jesus hid himself." There is no revelation of Himself in John 8. He does not come to judge, and the woman is not condemned - she is to go and sin no more. He gives Divine power to the law, or rather. He is, by His word, Divine power in the conscience - no grace is in question, and they all go away one by one - Divine power in the Word awakes the conscience. He is the Light of the world, and he who follows Him does not walk in darkness. But here there are none such; it is simply the Light shining in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.

But Christ is divine - He can bear witness of Himself, yet He says "as the Father has taught me" as ever, in John, receiving all. Nothing inconsistent with grace, but the simple absence of all contrary to it. He could not contradict Himself, but He is only Light in darkness. As Man He hardly appears here, for that is grace; other cases present themselves where grace is at work. We may first take the woman of Samaria - but here away from Jerusalem, where with the Jews (not the people) He is always in judgment - where the great change of leaving them and having to do with the world, and bringing men to have to do with the Father and with God spiritually, and that by life in the power of the Spirit, is brought out, and where Christ is the rejected Man and feels it, but is thereby thrown into the consciousness that He is the Divine Giver of eternal life in the power of the Spirit. But here we have the Lord fully as a Man; the Jachin and Boaz of Christian truth had been set up in chapter 3 - Man or Jew was naught, must be born again, and the Son of Man must be lifted up. God had loved and had given. Christ was a rejected Christ - He left Judea where the Pharisees were jealous and would none of Him. Christ must be a rejected Christ for us to have part with Him - sad thing to say, but so it is - if it die not it abides alone. No doubt He could always quicken whom He would, but without His death we could not righteously see God, and if a man received a new nature without His death, there would be no putting away of the old; we must be risen as well as quickened - a new place and a new life - and that is only by His death. But He was rejected, felt it, afterwards wept over the city, felt it deeply as none of us could feel - we see Him comforted, as rejected by His own to whom He came, by fields white to harvest.

413 He was weary with His journey and sat alone in the world - O wondrous place! The world He had created, but more, into which He was come in love: and here only a weary Man feeling the rejection of His love, but, as to the place He had taken, dependent for a drink of water - He who had made it - upon this poor sin-wearied woman. But He had come where He could only come in grace; salvation was not of Samaria but of the Jews - promises were theirs, but they had rejected all - grace had its work outside, but then it was humiliation and on rejection He must needs pass through Samaria. He submits to human circumstances and conditions - He acts in divine grace. Here therefore where grace, free grace, works, we find Him fully Man - a weary rejected Man, bound in spirit on a way He must needs take, and waiting on the kindness of another for a drink of water. Grace is in the humbled and obedient Man - there it is that what God is shines out. It is not "before Abraham was I am," but "if thou knewest the gift of God," i.e., grace, and who it is that saith to thee, give me to drink." It is not the supreme God forced, so to speak, to say He is so to heartless adversaries without conscience, but God revealed in what He was in a lowly Man, and by His being a lowly Man; and surely if grace is, that is grace.

What heart is in the words! What a need to win the confidence of a weary soul! Yet the simple expression of what His own heart was full of, of God as goodness and brought out, as to circumstances, by the pressure on that heart of the rejection by His beloved people which He was suffering under! How wonderful to hear Him saying just then "Salvation is of the Jews!" Perfect owning of God's counsels and ways! But in His rejection in them grace flowing freely out - the natural expression of what He was full of, but as that was love, love which seeks to bring a weary soul to confidence in God by bringing that love down to lay its wants at the feet of such an one, to win confidence in a love that could do it. "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith" - there He was - "give me to drink" - come even there - "thou wouldest have asked" - He would have given, for He was the giver. What a scene! Such a lowly place! And to learn what God is in it! Yea, what He is by it!

414 There is no feeling like that of the perception of the Person of Christ, and His words and He are one - He was what He said, always. Yet it is thoroughly in human nature I look at Him here, yea, that is the way and here I learn it. With adversaries He is simply God - in grace He is a Man yet God, and only precious as a Man because He is, and, as a Man, dependent. Yet we have seen the Father in Him.

I do not go into the state of the woman, that is another part of the question of the chapter. But He is the object of adoration for eternity.

I turn then to the Syro-Phoenician; here it is "He could not be hid." It was not the flowing out of a pressed heart to sorrow and need, but what God, so to speak, must be where faith is - Himself - He cannot deny Himself. Still grace rises above all promise and curse, and God is revealed. It is not as in John 4 where the pressure on His heart of the rejection of His beloved people, and all it implied had brought out what was in that heart; deeper still, the divine overflowings of goodness not meeting promise, but finding its comfort in going out in free grace to need where no promise, no title was - rejected love making new channels for itself; God giving, and hence naturally where need, not where promise was, and giving eternal life and bringing to God in Spirit and in truth, for God, as He is was revealed, and so the Father seeking worshippers. This was John 4, and hence we find the opened heart of the Samaritans wider than promise, knowing more than appropriating pride, own Him as the Christ, the Saviour of the world.

415 But in the Syro-Phoenician woman it was different; He goes to the borders of His earthly mission, retired to be alone (Mark 7) and would not have it known. Here it is not His own rejection, He labours among the poor of the flock - His mission according to prophecy: and as to Israel the designs of God, He is servant of this mission, nothing more, as to the place He takes; He is not rejected by proud Jerusalem, but sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But He is in His mission, but in His divinely traced, not free path, He goes out of the sphere of active service to the borders of the curse without.

Meanwhile moral truths had come largely out; ceremonial observances contrasted in Israel with divine commandments, but, still further, the heart of man, called in question in contrast with all such mere ordinances, lost in importance, not merely in contrast with divine commandment, but in their nature as merely external; God looked at what came from the heart, not what went into the belly - a simple truth, but which for man is hard to learn. God goes to the true nature of things in respect of man - what comes out of the heart - what he is; but what did come out of it? Murders, evil thoughts, all manner of evil, and the Lord had no more to say. Then He leaves this scene of labour, is alone personally - as Man in position He would not have it known; but it was. Then we come to what was known; He goes, as I have said, to the borders of the curse - the place which served Him as an example of hard-heartedness - the people on whom God's curse rested as compared with Israel. What wondrous elements are all brought together here! But He sought to be alone, i.e., out of His sphere of labour. His mission, as a sent one, a servant, He insists on. But a want was there, a want which sought goodness in power, and God was there; the poor woman drawn by it, though purposely repelled to prove her faith (the disciples would have got rid of her - neither owned promise, nor in fact exercised love as above all promise) draws out what is above all promise, what recognises fury the right to possess where promise was, but appeals to goodness as, after all, reaching over it, fully recognising man's complete misery and wretchedness without a title - a vile dog, which there was saying everything that was unclean and vile, but appealed to a riches in goodness which could reach in mercy even to that. Could Christ say "No! God is not that"?

416 No! God was there manifested and faith had all it sought for - it had found Him; there was no need of claim or goodness, but the confession of worthlessness and absence of all title - a need whose resource was in the goodness of God. The Servant who held Himself to His mission, as service He had to do, was after all the God of all grace, and God revealed in Him, and while owning God's ways in Israel, standing alone in the presence of the curse and the absence of all claim, what faith owned, but therein found God and infinite goodness - Israel's servant was God manifest in the flesh, was goodness, above all evil, above all curse, was God and God manifested. What God is is known in His being revealed in Man - being a Man; for that was infinite love.

But there was more than the revelation of His Person and the exercise of His power; I turn to another case, Luke 7, the Pharisee and the sinner. Here we have not the rejected state of man and free grace rising above it all, but actual degrading sin in contrast with human righteousness - a legal condition as man stands in it, and what this blessed One was for sinners. Three hearts - man as he stands in his own righteousness - God's in Man - and the poor and degraded sinner touched by grace and won, in a certain sense unconsciously (i.e., with no dogmatic knowledge) by what was manifested in the Lord, what He was in blessed love first, then forgiveness. The legal man thought to judge, by human competency, if the Lord, this Preacher going about the country, were really a prophet, but he judged according to human righteousness - what man should be for God, but only in an outward way; his own heart, God's heart and light, and even this poor woman's heart unknown - light and love, light and conscience, and love in the heart, i.e., God, alike wholly unknown. God was in his house, in light, as He shewed, and love, and he never found it out - despised Him - had no civilities or courtesies for Him - and judged from his own heart - while He was not like it He could be no prophet. Here self-righteousness, divine grace and sin come together in fullest juxtaposition and contrast, and divine light which makes all things manifest too, and that in the Person of the lowly Preacher, the Son of God. The Pharisee is wholly blind - says he sees - judges from his own heart, and sees neither the manifestation of God in Christ, nor the work of grace in the woman. Light and love are alike wholly foreign to him.

417 The Lord shews fully that He is the light that makes all manifest - knows what is in the Pharisee's heart - knows the woman's sins - and what the Pharisee was thinking of Him and her. But more - His grace, the grace that was in Him had attracted the heart of this poor sinful woman - her need was great, her shame great, her sin deplorable, to no human eye could she turn that would not scorn her but One, and that was God; there her heart found confidence - the more she was distressed and brought low, the more was her comfort in finding that heart; there, in that mercy, her shame could hide itself, for it was grace to her - scorn was not there. But all this, through grace, had won her to hate and own her sin. It was the meeting point of sin and grace, confession of a convicted heart through confidence in goodness in Jesus - sin seen and God seen, and because God was seen in love. Divine sight was there, not blindness, divine love had brought in divine light, so that God and sin in self were both known, and God trusted, and a guileless heart produced because grace was trusted. How deep a work to bring a soul to God, and have sin judged and God known! And then Christ was all - she thought little of Simon and his guests save One, Jesus was there and that absorbed her, she was delivered from her shame even as to all the rest, but not her shame before God. Then a silent heart wept, and washed His feet with her tears. There was boldness in her confidence, yet lowliness and thanksgiving in the boldness, she kissed His feet too, and spent what she had of precious on Him. Then as He had occupied that heart with Himself in grace, He occupies Himself with that heart - He has done with Simon and the rest - to such a heart He must give peace. But first He takes her part in that which shows not only that He knew Simon's heart and all about it, but there was that of which Simon knew nothing - besides blindness as to His Person - forgiveness. God, happily for her, knew all her sins and had forgiven them - wondrous revelation! The grace that revealed love and goodness, had brought forgiveness with it - relief, full and perfect, from God - when sin had confounded the soul before God, was seen as sin because God was seen and in grace, the grace could tell that it was all gone - before God forgiven.

The Person of Christ had drawn - she loved much. The grace of God in Christ had forgiven - of that, of God, Pharisaism knows nothing. The Lord takes up the woman's case in presence of the Pharisee's contempt, and shews what he was - what she was - what God was - what He was in Himself. Then He occupies Himself with the woman alone, "Thy sins be forgiven thee"; their remarks do not arrest Him, "Thy faith hath saved thee - go in peace." He had sounded the Pharisee's heart, sounded and brought to light her's - revealed God's, and conferred forgiveness. Confession of sin and forgiveness of sin (and that is the Cross for us) are the meeting place of the sinner in truth and God in love. Here again we have God revealed in a man, but specially in respect of sin.

418 In the first case He does not come to judge, but He is simply with adversaries, and is simply in result "I am." In the woman of Samaria, He is rejected of the Jews and grace flows out giving life, going up to eternal life above, bringing to the Father - God known as a Spirit - and this by grace going out where promise gave no salvation and no claim to righteousness, but sin and need.

In the Syro-Phoenician, where faith comes, grace rises where grace is gone above all barriers - God is revealed to faith, and must be above them all, must be what He is in grace, cannot deny Himself, and faith pierces through all barriers, urged by need to appeal to what God is in Himself, in grace, and He cannot but be what He is, or be kept in by the barriers when that was reached, though He was there in One serving as sent where promise was; still God was there.

Luke 7 goes deeper and light is there - Pharisaism and sin brought fully to light; the utter and deplorable blindness of Pharisaism manifested what man in self-righteousness is - no perception of God at all, nor of anything in Him. Then to the sinner a deep true perception of what He was as grace meeting need, and hence brought to God according to the power of His presence, and the grace of His nature, He being known, humbled fully before Him, but brought to Him according to what He was, the bond of the heart with Him formed, with Him known, and forgiveness, peace, and salvation received. It is deeper, because it goes into the full moral question of the state of man with God - light in the heart and soul of man as he was.

The case of the palsied man in Matthew 9 is somewhat different. It is not God revealed in His nature of goodness, what He is in Christ for men; it is relative - Jehovah of Psalm 103, manifested in Israel, His ways in Israel in grace, but relative - what He was, of course, but according to promise and prophecy.

419 I do not again enter into the full bringing out of the three hearts in Luke 7: 36 to end, the Pharisee's, the sinner's looking to Christ, and, blessed be His grace and name, God's own heart already spoken of; light and love were there, neither the least known to Simon - he was blind, thinking he saw. Christ, in whom it is revealed, is the subject of our adoration. I only notice now "Thy faith hath saved thee" - how God owns as, that which He sees in the heart of the poor convicted believer, what He has wrought. Tears and repentance were there, true love to the Saviour, excellent fruits of faith; but faith by grace gave her Christ; hence faith saved her - God's work in the heart, by which Christ was seen and appreciated. Her heart was thus shown, what God indeed had wrought in it, but in it; but then it was what it was, fixed it wholly on another, it was not objectively itself nor reflectively - it knew Christ only. It produced lovely fruits, most lovely, which the Lord owns, but it saved because it saw Christ only. But what is lovely here, that Christ owns, attaches value to what was in her heart, wrought there surely, but was in it; its action on Him as its object gives us to see divine appreciation of the state of the heart thus having Him for its object. He does not say, "Grace has saved thee," though true, "My work, My blood-shedding has saved thee," - that would have been speaking of something in God, of His own work; but He speaks to her of divine value for something in the heart of the poor woman. This is unspeakable goodness, divine tenderness and favour. If it be a wonderful picture in presence of Pharisaism, we have to leave the Pharisaism to itself, as the Lord did, and see the Lord owning what was of God in the heart that turned to Him. The poor, desolate, and lonely woman could go away and say, "I have His approbation on what is in my soul" - the comfort of His approbation, yet thinking of Him still, not of herself, for thinking of approbation, a father's approbation, is not thinking of what is approved, or of self. Faith had saved her, and she could go in peace - she had it from Christ - and her faith in His Person gave divine weight and grace to His words.

The Humiliation of Christ

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The humiliation of Christ opens out to my mind in a very full and blessed character. The essential being of Godhead cannot change, as is evident - the Absolute, as men speak - and whatever His humiliation, all the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily. His emptying Himself applied to the form. He was in the status, condition of Godhead, of which, not to speak of outward glory, will and acting from His own will (though one with the Father, see John 5) was proper and essential. But the full purpose of His will in free devotedness, and always so, was to give up His own will, and this according to eternal counsels; Psalm 40.

It was not a lowly being, to whom it is evil to have a will of its own, who had none - that would have been nothing; nothingness was the place of nothingness. But He who in His essence could will, gives up His place, or condition as such, and says, "Lo, I come to do thy will." It was a divine act, always so, but a divine act of making empty. He was thus relative to the Father, not only as Son but as Servant - an immense truth! He gave up, not Godhead - that could not be - but the status and position of it, and came not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him.

Man answered to this place according to the counsels and glory of God, as the angels, the obedient administrators of power, witnesses of a sustained creation. But he who had been made in God's image, and now fallen, was in the condition to be the sphere of the display of all God's moral glory, mercy, grace, righteousness, above all, love, for God is love; in a word - redemption. Christ was a man. And now, in the same perfectness, He takes no will, not even of man, not even to eat when He was hungry - He lives by every word out of the mouth of God. He humbles Himself and is obedient even unto death, and that of the Cross - no resistance - no escape, though legions of angels would be ready at His call. He perseveres in submitting to all - a tested obedience, even to death. Not merely obedience in peace, as Adam innocent might, or an angel (though doubtless they must feel the ruin) but tested by unvarying giving up of self and where evil was.

The absolute in nature becomes relative as a Servant in place - and "no man knoweth the Son but the Father" - but the Father is revealed; and in this character exalted as Lord above all now. We adore Him as God, we see Him gone down under death as man, yet emptying Himself, humbling Himself, laying down His own life what belonged to, what was divine all through. Now, the centre of all the sphere of display of the divine glory and of all in which it is displayed; but this is an outward consequence; Philippians 2. But the place of Man and Servant never given up - wondrous truth! Only He rules over all the sphere of His humiliation - heaven and earth are subjected to Him - as Man while such subjection is called for - He reigns till all things are put under His feet.

421 But in His own personal place, in which He is in connection with us, or rather we with Him, He never gives up the serving place - He takes it now; John 13. In Luke 12 He takes it in glory, but in the heavenly blessedness connected with us - those His Father has given Him. And finally, when the reigning and subjecting process is complete, and He gives up the kingdom whose power was needed for that, He takes the simple subject place as Man in the eternal blessedness of God - still "God over all, blessed for evermore," One with the Father - but His place as the subject Man perfect, and we with Him. Wondrous thought! The Firstborn among many brethren (companions metokoi), not, note (common equal sharers koinonoi) we could not be that. Compare Hebrews 2: 14, consequent on 11.

God - and no mediatorial kingdom and power - being all in all - His emptying is no more undone than His Godhead. He always was and is Son with the Father - was and is always God; and now is and ever will be Man, who emptied Himself. It was, and so ever is, His own divine act; only He has a temporary kingdom according to eternal counsels in this character, a kingdom which He gives up. The apostle John enters largely into this; his Gospel is the expression of it, but it comes out elsewhere in connection with the names of God, Light and Love, both of them essential names of God, yet with some difference, for Light has something of quality in it belonging to a person - Love is more absolutely personal. God is purity and manifests all things. But we are light in the Lord; as partakers of divine nature, we partake of this quality. In 2 Peter 1: 4, we are made partakers of divine nature, not of the, and it is by promise our own state. But we w not love, for Love is sovereign goodness - that we cannot be; we love as partaking of divine nature too, but we cannot be sovereign goodness.

422 But in Christ's emptying of Himself, and the course of His humiliation unto death, we find this love exercised - it is divine love expressed - we have seen the Father in Him - love brought to need - love active; "Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us." So that the revelation of God, that in which His Being acts, according to what He is, was in this way of emptying and self-humbling of Christ; only we add "He gave his only begotten Son," when we speak of it historically in its external action. And Christ, thus the expression of Love, i.e. of God, in the world, God manifest in the flesh, was also necessarily Light in the world - purity, and showing what all was, but showing sovereign goodness to it when thus manifested.

Formally, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ - He was the love of God in the world, and light in it. The darkness comprehended it not. But it was in Man, and it became thus impartitive, the Word of life, "He that hath the Son hath life," they that received Him being born of God; and being cleansed, the Holy Ghost could dwell in them in order to be the power of realisation. Thus the apostle prays that they "may be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith," not merely be life and righteousness, but dwell there in the power of the realisation of faith - He who is the expression and revelation of love - that we may be rooted and grounded in it. We dwell in love and in God, or rather here He in us, and thus are at the centre of the display of glory; the more external thing, and so far finite that it is in that which is created, but the display of God's glory in it, though not without love as its source and sustaining, for it is in redemption. Christ thus takes in all - first descended then ascended that He might fill all things - but then the saints, and this is their wondrous place, are associated with Him personally here, and we "comprehend with all saints"; for they are indeed His companions, loved as He is loved, however personally infinitely above them.

Christ has taken this place in the same divine, perfect love, self being gone, that He might put us in the same place with Himself - whom the Father had given Him - and even now, His peace, His joy, the Father's words, the Father's love, and the glory given to them - gone to His Father and our Father, His God and our God - to be with Him where He is; for in emptying Himself and becoming a Man, it was to associate us, the joint heirs in the same place, though ever Firstborn. Hence the apostle adds "and to know the love of Christ" - not abstract here, "rooted and grounded in love," through His dwelling in our hearts, who is the divine fulness of this love - Himself; but now He has entered into the counsels of actual glory, length, depth, etc. - it is the love of Christ, the actual, manifested, exercised love, yet still divine, "it passes knowledge," that we may be thus filled into all the fulness of God Himself, which indeed dwelt in Him bodily; compare 1 John 5: 20.

423 Colossians does not enter on this ground, only touching it in "Christ in you, the hope of glory." It is blessed to see how the highest being of God is exercised in grace towards any poor sinner. It is there it is, though afterwards perfected in us; see 1 John 4: 12, 13. This has partly led us in this inquiry into the counterpart, that "as he is, so are we," because it is thus we enter into and understand it; "we are in him that is true, i.e. in his Son - he is the true God and eternal life."

But the gospel of John gives us large communications on this humiliation of Christ. His Godhead shines in every page of all the gospels, but John, as everyone knows, in a peculiar way gives us the Person of Christ - the Word made flesh Now I have remarked elsewhere the fact of the way in which He is everywhere One with the Father, yet receives all. But it is the direct expression of the truth we are studying - He is God, He is one with the Father, He is I Am. Everywhere He speaks to His Father on a divine footing of unity; "I have glorified thee, now glorify me." But He has taken the form of a Servant, never "now I will glorify Myself." "My Father is greater than I"; "Father, glorify thou me" - yet it was a glory He had - "along with thee (the Father) before the world was," "Thou hast given him power over all flesh" - "I receive whoever comes, for I came not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me." He finishes the work the Father gave Him to do - it is the Father that sent Him; so chapter 8: 26. But it is in this chapter the Lord says: "Before Abraham was, I am," which the Jews well understood.

In a word His path was "that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father hath given me commandment, so I do." His divine nature and Godhead shine throughout, but He receives everything - is sent - and has taken the relative place of recipiency and subjection. John 5 has a peculiar character in this respect, and presented at first some difficulty to my mind. "As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, so the Son quickeneth whom he will"; "My Father worketh hitherto and I work," as the apostle notes, from the Jewish consciousness, making Himself equal with God. But in verse 19 He at once takes the place He is come into. "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do." "Whatsoever he doeth, these doeth the Son likewise," and quickening comes as part of this - "The Father loves the Son and shews him all." But He, though He acts with the same divine power as the Father, yet is shewn all - does nothing of Himself; and in verse 26 He hath given to the Son to have life in Himself, i.e. the Son in the form of a Servant down here, and given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is Son of man. So that we know that it is in this humbled state that this applies.

424 Thus it becomes the clearest exposition of this unspeakable truth, the result of that, when in the form of God, He emptied Himself - His own act - divine all through, at every moment. How true it remains, "No man knows the Son but the Father"; but we adore Him. He is not ashamed to call us brethren, for now we are all of one.

But the point my mind rests on is the emptying of Himself; the rest is consequence, however blessed; Psalm 45: 6, 7, and Hebrews 1: 8, 9. Christ emptied Himself, taking upon Him the form of a Servant. Our best delight will be to be hidden behind Him and see Him have all the glory. It is interesting to see that whatever depth the Person of the Lord may give to this, the blessing itself, which has its very character from its adaptation to our state, is enjoyed by the simplest faith, and the more simple the more it is enjoyed. Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith is enjoyed by him in whom He dwells, not by him who can explain it, though it be true it must be enjoyed in order to be able to explain it.

But this humbling of Christ by Himself is divine love, and in exercise - we know God by it. It is Himself in activity, yet in giving Himself up in this unspeakable way. In the Father God remains in essential Godhead; in the Son, one with Him in the exercise of it: coming down to serve, the Object in which we know God and see the Father. God is objectively before us in the Spirit power, operative power in us to be able to apprehend, and have the love shed abroad in our hearts so that we dwell in God and God in us.

[END OF MISCELLANEOUS - VOL. 1.]