Table of Contents

The Woman of Samaria

John 4: 1-26

Notes of Sermons

The Ten Virgins

Matthew 25: 1-13

Notes of Sermons

The Living Water

John 7: 37-39

Notes of Sermons

God Speaking from Heaven

Hebrews 12: 25

Notes of Sermons

The Wheat and the Tares

Matthew 13

Notes of Sermons

Adam and Christ

Romans 5: 14-21

Notes of Sermons

Life in Resurrection

Colossians 3: 1-4

Notes of Sermons

Washing the Disciple's Feet

John 13: 1-11

Notes of Sermons

God for us

Romans 8: 31

Notes of Sermons

Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life

John 11: 25

Notes of Sermons

The Parables

Matthew 13: 1-50

Notes of Sermons

The Sufferings of Christ

Psalm 22: 22

Notes of Sermons

Parable of the Sowwer

Matthew 13

Notes of Sermons

Christ as the Searcher of Hearts

Mark 10: 1-46

Two Warnings and an Example

Being the substance of a lecture on Matthew 26

God's Grace and Man's Need

Matthew 15: 1 - 28

Parables of Luke 15

"No more conscience of sins"

Hebrews 10

Growth through the Truth

1 Peter 2: 1-6

Why do I Groan?

The Prodigal with the Father

Luke 15

"The counsel of peace"

Zechariah 6: 13

Christ, or Antichrist

John 5: 17-47

Man's Responsibility and God's Promises

Galatians 3

The Church, an Habitation of God through the Spirit

Ephesians 3

Carnal Confidence, and the Confidence of Faith

The Marriage Supper of the King's Son

Matthew 21: 23 - 22: 14

Wilderness Grace

Exodus 17

The Passage of the Red Sea

Hebrews 11: 23-29

Balaam, hired of Balak, and used of God

Numbers 22 - 24

The Rejected Man

Genesis 3

Cain, his World, and his Worship

Genesis 4

The Accepted Man

2 Corinthians 3

Moses Veiled, and the Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ

2 Corinthians 3; 4: 6

The Church in the Wilderness in the Vision of God

Numbers 24

A Christian - Who and what is he now and hereafter?

The Church - What is it? Her Power, Hopes,

Calling, Present Position, and Occupation

Christ's Cross, and God's "due time"

Romans 5: 6-8

Faith and its Footsteps

Hebrews 11

[END OF EVANGELIC - VOL. 1.]

Man Fallen and the Seed of the Woman

Genesis 3

The Blood of the Lamb

Exodus 12

Christ a sweet Savour to God for us

Leviticus 1, 2

How should Man be just with God?

Job 9

Jesus Dependent

Psalm 16

Jesus Christ the Righteous

Psalm 17

Jehovah my Shepherd

Psalm 23

The Soul in Adversity considered

Psalm 31

God's House and the Way

Psalm 84

Emmanuel

Matthew 3

"Come unto Me"

Matthew 11: 25-30

Jesus the Sufferer

Matthew 26

Christ dealing with Conscience and Heart

Mark 7

The Sufferings of Christ

Mark 14

The Robber Saved

Luke 23: 39-43

The Word made Flesh

John 1: 1-13

The Presence of the Holy Ghost on Earth consequent on Christ's Exaltation to the Right hand of God

John 1: 29-34

Born Again

John 3

Notes of an Address on John 3

IS IT NOT TRUE THAT YOU MUST HAVE A NEW NATURE?

"THE SON OF MAN MUST BE LIFTED UP."

DO YOU DOUBT THAT YOU ARE PERISHING?

CAN YOUR HEARTS GO IN PEACE ON HIS WORD?

The Well of Water

John 4

Rivers of Living Water

John 7

"Before Abraham was, I am"

John 8: 58

The Resurrection and Life

John 11

Constancy of Christ our Comforter

John 13

Christ our Hope, and the Holy Ghost, with our Responsibility

John 14

Christ on high, and the Holy Ghost here below

John 16

The Son Pleading

John 17

Jesus the Willing Captive

John 18: 1-10

The Exercises and End of Grace

John 20

Peace

John 20: 19

Lost or Saved

Acts 26

Death with Christ

Romans 6

How are we Saved?

Romans 1-8

God's Wisdom in Christ

1 Corinthians 1

Christ and the Spirit

1 Corinthians 2

Indwelling of the Holy Ghost

1 Corinthians 6

Victory

1 Corinthians 15

An Epistle of Christ

2 Corinthians 3

_________

_________

The Christian a Representative of Christ

2 Corinthians 3

The Two Ministries

Death to the Believer

2 Corinthians 5

The Power of Life in Christ Risen

2 Corinthians 5

In Christ

2 Corinthians 12

_______

Blessed through Faith

Galatians 3

Not Law but Promise

Galatians 3

Sovereign Grace in Christ

Ephesians 1

Our Portion in Christ

Ephesians 1

Part 1

Growing up into Christ

Ephesians 4

The Panoply of God

Ephesians 6

________

Christ and His Reconciliation

Colossians 1

Part 1

The Freshness of Faith

1 Thessalonians 1

Promise of Life

Titus 1

The Saving Grace of God

Titus 2

The Suffering Son of Man

Hebrews 2

Purged with Blood

Hebrews 9

The Will of God, the Work of Christ, and the Witness of the Holy Ghost

Hebrews 10

[END OF EVANGELIC - VOL. 2]

JND - Evangelic

Evangelic [1]

J. N. Darby

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With the prayerful desire that the Lord Jesus Christ will use this God-given ministry in this form for His glory and the blessing of many in these last days before His coming. © Les Hodgett (contact@stempublishing.com) (2011)

The Woman of Samaria

John 4: 1-26

J. N. Darby.

<12001E> 1

Notes of Sermons

These first thirteen discourses were delivered without any thought of extending them beyond the immediate congregation to whom they were addressed. They were taken down by one of the congregation, and are now at the desire of a brother made public, with the permission, but without any revision of the preacher. Dublin, 1838.

[The Editor would say here, once for all, that the contents of this volume in general being mere notes, he has taken the liberty of correcting the more obvious slips, most of which are perhaps due to such a means of transmission. The author is not justly responsible save for the substance, though no doubt the words are often his own; if he corrected, he would assuredly do so much more freely than another would feel free to do.]

There are three chapters in this Gospel of John which speak of the effects and operations of the Spirit of God. The first is one with which we are all doubtless familiar; namely, chapter 3, which brings before us the power and efficacy of the Holy Ghost in His quickening office - bringing forth dead souls, and causing them to be born again. Another is chapter 7, which shews the internal effect of the indwelling of the Spirit, being described by our Lord as "rivers of living water." "He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." And it is added, "This spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive." And in chapter 4 it is very expressly spoken of as "living water," and "a well of water springing up into everlasting life." It may be profitable now for us to advert to this subject, and consider it attentively, to ascertain how it is spoken of; what are its operations; and whether we find it in ourselves, as believers, a well of water springing up; and shew how it is rejected by them that believe not.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the giver of the Holy Spirit to them that believe; He is the fountain and giver of all good: all blessings are obtained by His sacrifice and intercession, and in no other way. Indeed it is the only way God can be a giver to sinful man; there is no possibility of His giving any blessings to us as sinners except through this channel. As sinners, our intercourse with God is suspended forever, except through Christ; but through Him the most intimate intercourse is restored. We lost it by virtue of our association with sin, and were then cast out from the presence of God, bringing forth fruit to the flesh, the world, and Satan. How could any intercourse subsist between God and us in that state? The thing was impossible. But by the finished work of Christ, and in virtue of His resurrection, having taken His people from their former position, and set them in a perfectly distinct state, He brings them into fellowship with the Father, into (as far as regards His work) an unhindered communion with God.

They come to know Christ then as the medium of communication, of fellowship, and of intercourse; they see themselves by faith in the presence of God, in the Person of Jesus, and thus have free and unrestrained communion with Him. Just as by faith they saw themselves cast out from God, so by faith are they brought again into His presence. Now they are practically conscious that they are driven out - that they were justly excluded, having wandered from the way of holiness. This was the fruit of their own work; and then by faith they learn practically, that on the work of the Lord is founded that association which, making them one with Him, brings them into the nearest union and closest communion with God. They see the transfer of sin, and the transfer of righteousness, bringing them into this state. He was made "sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." In Him we see the whole body - the church gathered into one - being made divine righteousness, and so presented to God. We see Him before God perfect, and we (I speak of believers) in Him. This blessed righteousness is made known to us by the Spirit which Christ sends down from heaven, and so leads up the souls of His people to a participation in His happiness. By seeing themselves and their own state by nature, He leads them out of themselves into Christ. But this is the gift of God. This is what Christ promised while on earth: "When the Comforter is come, he shall convince the world of sin, and of righteousness."

2 Now it is in full agreement with this that the chapter before us unfolds itself - a chapter replete with most wonderful facts of God's wisdom, and His mighty love. The Pharisees were jealous and murmured at hearing that Jesus had made more disciples than John. Jesus therefore, to follow peace with all men, left Judea, and departed again into Galilee, going through Samaria; there being, in His eternal counsel, a needs-be for it - even to meet with one poor sinner. He had taken a long journey; He was wearied, and He sat down on the well to recover His exhausted strength. Indeed it was a world of weariness to Him while He laboured in it. He had left His rest which He had with the Father from all eternity - had left His home of glory and of blessedness, and come down to this sinful world to be wearied indeed. There was everything around to make Him weary - sin, hatred, ingratitude, ill-will, and open opposition, and toil; but, though wearied in the contemplation of these, He was never wearied in the testimony of love: this was meat they knew not of. When driven by exhaustion and persecution from the crowd, we find love taking Him into desert places apart, to pray. There was no love of bodily ease, no selfishness dictating His conduct in any particular: it was one unmitigated scene of active love. He was wrapped up in the one sole object for which He was on earth, and nothing could divert Him.

3 We see how full His whole soul was on the subject from the circumstances related in this chapter. The providence of God had (so to speak) brought Him to Samaria. What do we find Him there doing? Just sitting alone with a wicked sinner by the side of a well to settle the great question of eternity with her, to shew her herself, and to make known Himself to her. And this He does now to every soul whom He calls to Himself - just sits alone with them, leads them into the recesses of their own hearts, and then makes known to them in whose presence they are, leading them to ask those gifts which He had prepared for them. In the case of this poor sinful woman we see the blessed way in which the Lord led her. She, full of her worldly employment, unconscious whom she was to meet, came to the well. He first asks her for a drink - a drink of cold water! - considered the very poorest and meanest gift which this world contains. See how the Lord humbled Himself! Among the Jews it was considered the depth of degradation even to hold any communion or converse with the Samaritans; to be beholden to them for a favour would not be tolerated by them. But here we have the Lord of glory asking for a drink of water from one of the worst in the city of the Samaritans! Such was His humiliation, that the woman herself wonders that such a request should be made from a Jew to one whom the Jews ever looked upon and treated with the greatest contempt.

Now, brethren, just think of this; do just contemplate the mind and the spirit in which He met this poor outcast - this wicked Samaritan. He did not enter into argument about the prejudices of the Jews, or their justice in thus treating their neighbours; His mind was on the one subject - her salvation; and therefore He needs nothing else. He answered and said unto her, "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith unto thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." Now there is the great truth, the ignorance of which ruins the world. They do not know who it is that is asking them to give Him a drink - still beseeching them to be reconciled - "We pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God" - still entreating them, in terms of the greatest gentleness and love, to give themselves to Him - still in this character of petitioner for a favour. The point of distinction which the world knows not is this, that it is the Son of God who thus humbles Himself to ask sinners to come; that it is the Lord of glory doing it - the Son of the eternal God doing it. They know not who it is that is asking them, and therefore they ask not from Him that gift without which they never can enter into the kingdom of God. "If thou knewest . . . who it is that saith to thee, . . . thou wouldest have asked of him."

4 We come then to inquire, What is this gift? The gift of God. Living water. A well of water - a springing well - springing up continually into eternal life. There are just two things to he considered: first, what it is - namely, the giving of the Holy Spirit; secondly, who it is that gives it - Christ. To have known the latter would have been to have asked for the former. It is the knowledge of whom we have to do with that puts us upon asking for His gifts; for this gift of the Holy Spirit in us (which is Christ's to give) is to be in the believer a well - always living water - not a pool, which, though full, may be liable to be dried up, but a well that cannot dry up. There is the fountain which can never be exhausted that is given to him - is put into him, and lives and abides for ever. Now this is the promise to the believer - "The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

Now the possession of this water must consist, first, in the knowledge of the Giver of it: without that there must be total ignorance, darkness, stupidity, and entire inapprehension and inability to recognise or understand the worth or value of the gift, or its spiritual signification. As in the case before us, the woman's mind took in nothing of this, because she was ignorant of Him with whom she was speaking; her mind could not therefore apprehend the truth, and we see her carnal reason entirely misconstruing it, and turning it into another channel. "Sir," she said, "thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?" And here we see what her mind was occupied with - the world, the duties, pursuits, and employments of the world; and so she could not rise to any higher thoughts - could not see who it was that spoke, nor what He was offering to her attention. And thus blinded is the world, led away from the things of Christ, by the things of time and sense. Satan uses these things as instruments in his hands of keeping the soul from Christ. Let it be what it may, let it be only a waterpot, he cares not, so that it occupies the mind to the exclusion of the knowledge of Christ. He cares not for the instrument, so that he gains his own end, to draw the mind away from the apprehension of spiritual things. It may be pleasure, it may be amusement, gain, reputation, family duties, lawful employments, so that it keeps the soul from fixing on Christ. This is all he wants. A waterpot will serve his purpose, just as well as a palace, so that he can blind them, "lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."

5 I ask you now, my friends, Is there nothing which is thus keeping you from knowing Christ, and seeing His great salvation - from giving yourselves up to Him, and obtaining from Him this living water? It may be harmless - it may be innocent in itself - it may even be praiseworthy in itself. But has it been of sufficient weight with you to keep you from Christ? Is He a stranger to you? and are you a stranger to His great gifts? Is there anything even this day - no matter what - family duties, lawful employments - which has held you? Perhaps something less harmless and innocent than a waterpot has been found hitherto of sufficient weight with you to keep your soul dead to the spiritual apprehension of Christ's words. See yourself then in the case of this woman, as far as we have yet considered it. Her mind was occupied in the purpose for which she came to the well - a lawful and necessary purpose; and so she had no mind for the things of Christ. She saw nothing in them but what related to her then employment; she saw not the love, the graciousness, and compassion of the Lord's mind just going to be openly manifested towards her. There was the Lord of life and glory, weary with His journey, at the well, while His soul was full of thoughts of reconciliation towards her. But she saw it not; she thought more about her waterpot; it was greater in her estimation than the living water He had been speaking of. Still pursuing her own carnal train of thought, she continued, "Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?" Jesus answered her, "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

6 Now one would have thought that such a powerful truth, from the lips of Truth itself, would have awakened her from her stupid dream, and shewn her that there was more in it than carnal nature could discern. But no; she saw nothing of it, and replies, "Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw." The natural mind is on natural things, and sees everything through that medium; it is shut up in its own little circle of feelings and ideas, and can neither see nor feel beyond it; there it looks for all its enjoyment; there it lives, there it continues, and there it dies. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned"; and the reason is this - they have neither seen nor know the God in whose presence they are, neither have they ever been partakers by faith in Christ of God's gift of the Holy Spirit, whereby they discern spiritually; they have no perception of the excluded state in which they are with regard to God and heaven; neither do they know anything of the entrance into the new life - the new creation, because the entrance of the Spirit has never been experienced in their hearts, they are foolish and worldly and know nothing of God.

But notwithstanding all this we see the perseverance of our God. In spite of all the stupidity of this sinful Samaritan, the Lord still continues His labour of love, though exhibited differently. He now changes His manner. But the patience of the Lord of love is never wearied by the obstinate perverseness of His people. We, judging from our own feelings, might well suppose the Saviour would have left her in dark stupidity, and have given her up. But no; He is God, and not man: therefore we are not left to our own blindness. The patience of His love is never exhausted, for it proceeds from an inexhaustible source: "God is love."

The Saviour now takes another course in His wisdom; but the end is still the same - love. He had tried expostulation and entreaty, but she could not understand Him. He therefore says, "Go, call thy husband"; you are proof against all I have offered you; you cannot understand My motive and My meaning of love, so I must make you get a view of yourself - of your ruin - of your utter wretchedness. In this one sentence her little world of iniquity was unravelled to her mind. He brought her to the consciousness of what she was, and to the knowledge of what He was. She answers, "Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet." The secrets of her heart and life were laid open to her by One whom she had never seen before. The Lord struck the chord to the conscience of the sinner - it vibrated. The Stranger convinced her of what she never before in reality believed - that she was a sinner. He laid open what she had so carefully concealed, stripped her of her self-disguise, and shewed her that He was acquainted with the hidden recesses of her heart. And such ever follows the testimony of the truth, when brought home with power to the soul of the sinner. "He is convinced of all, he is judged of all; and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth." And it is thus the Lord acts generally, before we come to the distinct apprehension that we are in the presence of One who has the keys of our conscience, and knows the secrets of our hearts, in whose hands we cannot struggle or wrestle for relief; we are judged, we are convinced, we are dumb before Him; we feel His power, and are constrained to cry, "Come, see a man that told me all that ever I did." Even while there is no manifest perception of the blessing offered, yet the soul is brought to see and feel the power of Him with whom it has to do; that He who searches the heart and finds out our sin comes in the power of God, and that it is vain for us to dissemble with Him.

7 Her mind is now taken off from her waterpot, and she inquires where she was to worship God. Much might be said of the reply here given to her on the worship God alone requires - spiritual worship. The whole instruction of God's Spirit as to communion with Him is brought out here. But we pass on to the consideration of the blessed end of their converse. Her mind was now opening to the light. She was approaching to the knowledge of Him, whom to know is everlasting life, and she appears looking forward to the time when the Redeemer is to reveal himself. The Spirit leads her to say, "I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ; when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he."

8 Now trace these steps, brethren, and you will see the perfect blessedness and graciousness of the way in which she was brought to know Christ. Though a vile sinner, stupid and heedless of the wonderful blessings He was holding out to her, not one word of anger, not one word of reproach, passes the Lord's lips. He brought her sin to her remembrance - "Thou hast well said, I have no husband." He leads her to desire the revelation of the Messiah, and then, in a way the most engaging and the most insinuating, He makes Himself known unto her. There is not one of us, if the Lord were thus to unveil our minds, but would be ready to fly from ourselves and seek Jesus. But we see not our state by nature; we are too busy - too much occupied with the cares, duties, engagements, and pleasures of the world, to see ourselves as we really are. We are too much occupied with our waterpot to know the Lord of glory seated at the well. But let the truth be brought to ourselves, then even the world, self-lover as it is, will hate itself. In what a way of love was she brought! no reproach, no harshness, no unkind word. He simply opens up her heart, next creates the desire to know Him, and then exclaims, "I that speak unto thee am he." Here she now found what her soul was looking for. She might have some possible hope that He was coming; but how could she expect to see Him so full of humility and love as to become a suitor for a drink of cold water? This is the very way and manner in which Christ reveals Himself to any soul before that soul asks anything of Him. It is in this very position that we are able to ask anything of Him. It is in this way of dealing that we find Christ in all gentleness, all love, all condescension to our weakness and unworthiness. He shews us something of the greatness of His power in knowing our hearts; and then leads us to the point of blessedness when He reveals Himself - "I am he." The sinner can then ask from the Lord, whom he has seen willing to be a debtor for kindness; he hears Him exclaim, I do not feel at enmity with you; I am not about to reproach you; and to shew you this, I will entreat a favour at your hands, and am ready to give you what you shall ask of Me - the best gift - the gift of God.

Here, then, is what we have to look for - to know Christ, that we may obtain the gift of God. We find here that the Spirit is given to them that believe in Him. "If thou knewest . . . who it is that saith to thee, . . . thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water"; He would have given a well, put it in thee, which would ever be springing up. Thus the Lord acts now. When the soul is proof (so to speak) against the blessed invitations held out, the Lord sends the word of conviction. The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, goes forth, and brings the soul to see its real position - that it is depraved, lost; that it cannot stand sinless before the face of God. "Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet"; "He told me all things that ever I did"; is the experience of the heart, when He has thus wrought conviction in the soul. He teaches us what we could not know before - that we are in the presence of God, and that it is Jesus Himself who is talking with us. Then we come to Him, and He gives us the blessed gift which He intended for us all along.

9 Then we come to be taken out of our former position, as strangers, aliens, enemies, and are associated in our new position; no longer a worldly but a heavenly portion - Christ's portion. The Spirit is given to testify of this; to shew that the life which he now lives is the life of Christ, setting the Christian in the same position as Christ Himself. And what follows? what are its effects here? "The woman then left her waterpot," and reported it to all she met with, entreating them likewise to come to Jesus. And this effect will ever follow the clear perception of Christ to the soul - the total leaving of what before the carnal mind was centred in. She came for water. This was all she wanted then; her mind was on that one thing. But soon she thought not of well, water, or waterpot. Her mind had centred in another object, and towards that she was now carried. Christ had revealed Himself to her soul; the Messiah's glory was now her aim and end. She knows Him now, not from hearsay but in the personal revelation of Himself; and immediately she begins to preach Him to others. A total revolution had taken place; things are now all put in their right places. We see order, where all before was disorder or chaos. We come to see Him, who is the life, as our life. For whoever has thus seen the Lord, asking at our hands, being willing to be dependent, as it were, on us - where this really has been seen, there the revolution has been total: the soul is led to inquire, Am I indeed in Him? am I associated with Him in interest, in privilege, in glory? Is He my life? Then what is the world to me? What have I to live for, but for His glory, and to shew my gratitude for His unspeakable mercies!

10 To bring the soul into this state was just the subject of those thoughts which occupied the Saviour's mind from the beginning, and throughout the whole process, of this woman's self-conviction and shame. A new life is thus given; the soul is quickened; a well of water is put within us. There is then a something in the soul which, always springing up, has always the power of refreshment, tending to whence it came - the living fountains of water - Christ Jesus; tending towards the glory of the Lord Jesus, and receiving all its glory from thence. Under the full recognition and sensible perception of this the world is of little worth; wealth is despised, power is despised, distinction is despised; the soul finds no wealth but in Christ, no power but by Christ, no distinction but from Him. So far as this power of perception is in us, in so far will our joy be full; it springs up from the divine nature within us, which tends to its glorious giver, Christ. It is a fresh spring; it draws from the Lord of glory; it has fellowship and its associations are all with Him.

Now how is it with your souls? Is there this well within you, which is ever springing up, meeting its source? If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that asketh thee, thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water. Of His giving there is not a shadow of a doubt: if thou hadst asked, He would have given thee. Have you known Christ? Have you asked of Him? Have you within you this well? Is it springing up within you? There is a vast difference between drawing from others, and having it ourselves. Could a thirsty soul receive benefit from what it found in you, except it had experienced the refreshment within itself? If you have experienced it yourself, what practical influence has it had? Are you separated from the world, and separated to God? Do you consider what is your high calling? - heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ! Are you imitating Him? What was He here? Holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. Are you such? If you are Christ's, His Spirit has borne witness in your heart that He was such, and that He manifests this to you, "that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost." The glory of the Lord is manifested now in the power of God's Spirit on the souls of His people. This distinguishes them internally from all the world. They have come out from a participation in position with the first Adam, and are consequently partakers of a divine nature; they become altogether a part and portion of the last Adam, and are risen with Him. This they are called upon to manifest outwardly. Did you know one tittle of the love of God in Christ - had you seen Him, and asked from Him what He presses on your reception, it would be your desire, aim, and delight to exhibit it. Dear friends, is there in you this spring - this well of water? If not, you have not known as yet the gift of God. Be not deceived, my friends; if you have not this in you, you have nothing. If you have not the inward refreshing spring, which Christ gives to all His people, you will find whatever else you have of little - of no - avail; for when the sun of temptation, of trial, or of affliction comes, that which is in you will be dried up as a useless pool without spring, without any refreshing source.

The Ten Virgins

Matthew 25: 1-13

J. N. Darby.

<12002E> 12

Notes of Sermons

These first thirteen discourses were delivered without any thought of extending them beyond the immediate congregation to whom they were addressed. They were taken down by one of the congregation, and are now at the desire of a brother made public, with the permission, but without any revision of the preacher. Dublin, 1838.

[The Editor would say here, once for all, that the contents of this volume in general being mere notes, he has taken the liberty of correcting the more obvious slips, most of which are perhaps due to such a means of transmission. The author is not justly responsible save for the substance, though no doubt the words are often his own; if he corrected, he would assuredly do so much more freely than another would feel free to do.]

There are just two classes of characters which we meet with in the world: first, those who have never heard the way of truth and salvation, and in consequence are not manifestly interested in it; and, secondly, those who have heard and professed to receive it. But the principles of the latter individually are very different.

The general character of the one part is summed up in the charge brought from scripture - "they profess that they know God, while in works they deny him"; while the others are really and in truth waiting for His Son from heaven and the kingdom of God. This is what they desire visibly to behold, as is declared in John 3: 3, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God"; and to be brought into it - as in verse 5, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." The perception therefore of this kingdom, and the entrance therein, arise manifestly from their being "born again."

Many are inclined to look upon the new birth, which is here referred to, as a change of views, desires, and sentiments only. It is a change, if indeed that can be called a change which is an entirely new creation; as it is written, "created anew in Christ Jesus"; it is a "translation" - "hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son" - a transferring, a putting into a different position, which the Gospel of Matthew strikingly brings before us.

The Lord Jesus is represented in different points of view by all the evangelists; and the reason the Holy Ghost has been thus pleased to exhibit Him is for the manifestation and furtherance of the Saviour's glory; for He fills up every blessing - all the greatness, wisdom, love, and power of the eternal Godhead are unfolded in Him. In Him dwells all blessedness, and from Him it is communicated; and the believer, who has found and known Him, finds Him to be such; his delight is in setting his mind on Christ; he feels and rejoices in his identification with Him in all things, and in his oneness with Him. Christ is his centre of attraction, and he is revolving round Him as the object of supreme delight.

13 Now the Gospel of John presents Christ to our view as the Son, and delineates all His offices and works as such, having authority, and exercising it as the Son. Luke displays Him as the last Adam - the Lord from heaven - tracing His genealogy, not downwards as Matthew, but ascending to the great original thus, "which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God," going about doing good continually and accomplishing all righteousness. And in Matthew we have Him exhibited as the Messiah, the object of the prophecies, the substance of the shadows and types of the Jewish ritual: and as He was the looked-for seed, typified of old, and promised to Abraham and David as their seed, so we have in this Gospel His descent from Abraham and David according to the flesh. But the mention of the kingdom of heaven is peculiar to this evangelist. In chapter 13 we have it much noticed: "To you it is given," said Jesus, speaking to His disciples, "to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven."

Now the disciples, in common with the whole Jewish nation, fully expected an earthly kingdom; but, as they had entirely overlooked those prophecies which foretold Christ's coming in humiliation, they were bewildered; and therefore this subject with which the Lord engrossed their minds just met their necessities; shewing them how the kingdom in mystery would be set up during the absence of their rejected Lord.

Now the period of the kingdom here referred to must be looked upon as the time of the development of the purposes of God, from His rejection by the world in the Person of His Son, to Christ's coming again in glory, when the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father - a kingdom into which they are admitted, and none else. And this shews us the complete, entire disunion and dissociation of the children of God with the world.

What is the position of the world as it now stands? What is its natural positive position? It is in a state, not merely of hostility against God - not merely in its standing chargeable with alienation from all holiness, of open rebellion and outrage - but in a state of absolute exclusion from the presence of God, absolutely and definitely excluded from God's presence.

The word of God says, "He drove out the man." He had lost his innocence and purity, and was no longer fit to live in an innocent world. A plain precept had been given, and wilfully, in defiance of God, broken. The matter of fact as to eating the fruit was simple, but involved momentous consequences. Even the fact of its abstract littleness heightened the culpability of the offence; the action, looked at in itself, was trivial, and yet it was the extent of every possible indignity which, under existing circumstances, could be offered to the majesty of heaven. The less the motive and inducement to sin, the greater is the guilt of it. Such however was man's depravity; and the world, as we now see it, is the result of such sin. Man sinned, and God drove out the man, because in his then state he could not dwell in His presence; "and he placed at the east of the garden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."

14 In this excluded state is the world with which we are conversant - full of toil, sorrow, sin, and misery. But the evil was not of God, it did not originate in Him - this was not God's doing. But after this delinquency and exclusion was there no reaction - no return to purity? No! - the world was never again to be an innocent world; what had once become radically guilty could never again become radically pure; the very source of innocence, being once defiled, could not by any possibility become again holy. Innocence, once lost, is lost for ever. Man could do nothing. God would indeed come to put away sin; but how? By the sacrifice of His own dear Son, bringing in a new dispensation of unbounded mercy, and setting up a kingdom, and gathering out of the world the subjects of this new dispensation.

The world had sinned, but was not left there. God manifested Himself, and made known His purposes; first, to Adam, when He called him - "Where art thou?" and brought his sin before him; then in the calling out of the world, and preserving Noah, the type of the church, after the flood; His calling of Abraham and the Jewish nation, giving laws, and exhibiting Himself in types and ceremonies as the object of the believer's faith. At length, when all these displays of superlative love had but more glaringly manifested the total enmity of man's mind, the Lord sent His Son: "I will send my beloved Son; it may be they will reverence him."

In this stage of the world we behold man, as it were, in a fresh position of more determined enmity and fiercer malignity, in league with Satan, and full of deadly animosity. The world's feeling now is, "This is the heir; come, let us kill him." And when was this foul principle exhibited? When the Lord comes in sympathetic mercy to meet the wants and bear away the sins of His people. It was then they declared they would not have Him. When He comes to reconcile, and to display the tenderness of His sympathetic love, then nothing would do but they must get rid of God. When He comes into the very midst of the sufferings and woes of a world lying in wickedness, they refuse to have Him. He was God, and therefore (as far as man could do it) they turned Him out of the world.

15 Now in this last act of man we do not see simply rebellion, or even defiance, but absolute rejection of God. They used the opportunity of His humiliation to heap indignity and scorn upon Him; and at length, as far as they were concerned, drove Him out of the world in which we are now dwelling. "We will not have this man to reign over us" is practically its determination.

Now believers are associated, in thought, feeling, affection, and interest, with Him who is the object of the world's determined enmity; they are subjects of another kingdom and another King; the King whom the world will not have to reign over them is the King they own and serve. They see that the world which surrounds them is a judged world; that it has been convicted of rejecting all right and truth; as our Lord Himself says, "Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out." The judgment was passed when Christ exclaimed, "It is finished"; in the very act of His crucifixion was their judgment sealed. The most determined and inveterate enmity of man against God was at its height on the cross of Christ; man's malice could go no farther, and God's love was there also manifested in the highest degree. Sin abounded, but love much more abounded; the very act which exhibited enmity of the deepest dye on man's part opened the highest love on God's. Here they met, as it were, in a centre - at a point, each drawn to the greatest possible extent; and here love obtained the victory, triumphed over sin, and brought in everlasting righteousness.

And this judgment of the world is known to all believers; yea, the Holy Ghost Himself convinces them of it. "When the Comforter is come, he shall reprove [or convince] the world of sin," said Christ; "of righteousness, and of judgment . . . because the prince of this world is judged." So that they are convinced they lived in a judged world, a world found guilty of, and condemned for, rejecting God, but on which sentence has not as yet been executed. It is now just in the position between sentence having been passed and the final execution.

16 In the very act which thus displays man's rage the believer sees also his own perfect acceptance; that God, in whom he delights, and in whom he rests, has risen in mercy above man's depravity and triumphed in love over the bitterest hatred. The summit of malevolence the most abominable, when the Saviour's side was pierced, was met by a tide of blood and of water, to sanctify and to purify the unclean: this is the glory, the blessedness, of the child of God.

But from the parable before us of the ten virgins we necessarily perceive that there are those who, though associated with the people of God in profession and outwardly appearing to belong to them, are not in reality alive to God. They appear to be looking for His coming, but they are not longing to behold Him or to go in with Him to the marriage. It is not the earnest desire of their hearts to behold Him as He is; their souls have not gone forth, crying, Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. They more resemble those servants who exclaimed, "My Lord delayeth his coming," and then followed on in their own pleasure. But they know not the delight, the joy, the heavenly happiness of waiting in longing expectation to see His face, and dwell with Him for ever!

But we have in this account of the ten virgins an evidence of the extent to which even outward profession may go. Though there were but five wise, yet they all went forth to meet the bridegroom - yes, ostensibly for the same purpose, they all "went forth." They were alike in companionship; they had all the lamps of profession. In what then did they differ? In this: they had not just the one thing, the only thing, that fitted them to receive the bridegroom. They were without the light wherewith to usher in the Lord; they wanted the very thing which alone could make them suitable companions for the Master; namely, the participation of the divine nature, the impartation of light, the indwelling of God the Holy Ghost. They wanted the fixedness of the affections wrought in the soul by the oil of gladness, the unction of the Spirit, which filled the souls of the wise virgins, and which waited but for the appearance of the bridegroom to emanate in a flame of glory. This was what they wanted; this is what the believer has; and this it is that makes the mighty difference between him and the world.

17 "At midnight the cry came": the heavenly virgins arose. Though conscious of much weakness in themselves, they rise at the cry of their beloved; for there is that in them which answers to the cry. The foolish virgins trimmed their lamps; but their lamps failed to burn! And is there no remedy then? None! According to the Saviour's awful declaration: "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still."

Here finishes the total distinction between the tares and the wheat. Now it is openly seen that their objects, hopes, and associations were totally different - opposite and irreconcilable. One is of the world, the other of God; one is quickened by Christ, the other is reserved to be burned. "Bind the tares in bundles, and burn them; but gather the wheat into my garner."

And why are the wheat still spared, but as witnesses of the grace of our Lord; to display to the world the image of Him, whose they are, and whom they serve; to manifest the inseparable union existing between them and their glorious Head, as He said Himself, "that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me"?

And are you, believers, thus distinguished in the midst of a world judged guilty of the crime of rejecting the Lord of glory, and turning Him out of the world? You are walking in a condemned world, on which sentence has been passed, but the execution of it is still averted, until the last of Christ's saints is gathered into the garner. Are you conscious of this, and yet are you, can you, be living in association of pursuits, feelings, desires, or appearance with them? The believer's delight is the Lord's glory. Where is the Lord's glory - in an association in any way with His enemies? No. The saint that looks with delight to his Lord's coming is one with Him in feeling and desire - the Lord's will is his. Now do you contemplate the time when He will come to receive you to Himself and when subsequently all that offends Him shall be swept away, and His own shall reign with Him? Can you contemplate with delight that period, when all that oppose the truth of God, everything that you now behold belonging to the world, shall be destroyed by the brightness of His coming, shall be consumed by the breath of His mouth? All things that offend shall no longer dwell there.

18 This is the saint's whole delight; this is what he is looking and longing for, and hastening unto, namely, the coming of the Lord. Is this your personal desire? Is this your habitual experience? Then are you crying, Tarry not; come, Lord Jesus: even so, Amen? Then are you aiming at greater meetness for your heavenly Master and Bridegroom? and are you trimming your lamps to have them in readiness to meet and light your Lord when He shall appear?

Let this be your desire, your joy, your delight: that you may be found watching and waiting to go in unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.

The Living Water

John 7: 37-39

J. N. Darby.

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Notes of Sermons

These first thirteen discourses were delivered without any thought of extending them beyond the immediate congregation to whom they were addressed. They were taken down by one of the congregation, and are now at the desire of a brother made public, with the permission, but without any revision of the preacher. Dublin, 1838.

[The Editor would say here, once for all, that the contents of this volume in general being mere notes, he has taken the liberty of correcting the more obvious slips, most of which are perhaps due to such a means of transmission. The author is not justly responsible save for the substance, though no doubt the words are often his own; if he corrected, he would assuredly do so much more freely than another would feel free to do.]

In order fully to understand the meaning of this scripture, and the circumstance for which this feast, to which Jesus went up, is a type, we must, in the first place, see the way in which He is presented to us in Scripture - at present as an absent Lord. Under an anticipated sense of this absence we find Him comforting His disciples, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me"; consequent upon that discourse with His disciples, wherein He says, "Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me afterwards." And when Peter under a dread of that absence, exclaimed, "Lord, why, cannot I follow thee now?" Jesus says, "Let not your heart be troubled." You shall not enjoy My bodily presence, it is true; but, though absent, believe in Me. Ye believe in God without seeing Him; now believe also in Me: though I go away from you, I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man takes from you. Here, then, is now the position of the believer. Jesus has gone, and the believer stands in the apprehension of His absence; his desires are tending toward an absent Lord. He feels his joy still incomplete, because his Beloved is not present; and he is looking for and hastening towards the time when He is to be revealed, and we shall "see him as he is." But he knows at present he is not where Christ is; he is in a usurped world, where Satan is setting up his kingdom, whose subjects are described as saying, "I sit as queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow." Here is nothing of the consciousness of the Lord's absence as felt by the church - no cry for deliverance - no cry for the Lord to come; no such thing as saying, "In this [body] we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven."

Here we have the character of those who are members of Christ's body. They are such as have an habitual consciousness that their Lord is absent, that the adversary is present, and that they themselves are in a world which rejected their Lord and is under the usurped dominion of their adversary. Hence they are looking for "a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." And they are believers, who are not looking to receive their portion here from the persons and things of this world. Theirs is an "inheritance reserved" for them, the earnest of which they now receive, not by sight, but by faith - "receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls." They experience troubles and trials here, "which are not joyous, but grievous"; but they have the blessed consciousness of the love of the Father brought to them by His well-beloved Son, and of which they partake, through the fellowship of the Holy Ghost.

20 There are two cities referred to in Scripture. Paul says, in the name of all believers, "Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come." And believers are conscious that they are where the "city is low in a low place." The other city is "the city of confusion," or Babylon, which are synonymous terms; this is quite distinct from that city which we seek. The city of confusion, or Babel, cannot then bear any analogy to this city: they are not - they cannot be - united. They are the two opposite corporate systems, irrespective of each other, and opposed to each other.

There is this testimony of the Spirit in the hearts of believers, that, though surrounded with "Great Babylon," it is not the city to the laws of which they owe or practise obedience; that their city is the "city of God" - the manifestation of which they are looking for.

The believer is conscious that, if he is living bodily in this "city of confusion," he has really by the Spirit "come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God." It is to this he belongs; of this city he is a citizen, and for the visible perception of this he is hastening onwards. The Spirit testifies that he has now the visible perception of the other system, dwelling there, but not as belonging to it; but as waiting for that time when "he that shall come will come and will not tarry," who will then overthrow the dominion of Satan, and reign for ever!

But, besides the absence of the Lord, which this scripture infers, it also evidences the presence of the Holy Ghost with such as do groan under a sense of widowhood (that is, while they are in the wilderness, before coming to the land of Canaan), and particularly points to the latter times, just previous to the coming of Christ, when the outpouring of the Spirit should be peculiarly manifested.

To the understanding of this, it is necessary for us to review the statements of the circumstances in which our Lord was placed at this time. The Jews were coming up to the feast of tabernacles at Jerusalem. "Jesus was in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him"; and for this reason, because He had healed the impotent man, who for thirty-eight years had vainly looked for a cure from the pool of Bethesda - which, like the law, good and salutary in itself, was perfectly useless to him by reason of his inability to use it, his own infirmity entirely disabling him from any hope of cure from it. And so he must ever have remained, had not the Lord passed by and with a word of power commanded him to live. This called forth the envious malice of the Lord's enemies; and, until He appeared at the feast, He had been still in Galilee.

21 The feast of tabernacles had not been, nor could it be, kept in the wilderness; and it is one of the remarkable types which manifestly have not yet been fulfilled. This was the third of the three great annual feasts which the Jews held in commemoration of some great event. The time when this was first kept was after their entering into the land of Canaan. The very circumstances of it shewed that it could not be kept in the wilderness. It was to continue for seven days, and also on the eighth day, which was to be a great sabbath. It was to be kept in memorial that they had dwelt in tents; that they had been in the wilderness but were now out of it. It was a day of solemn assembly - the ingathering, the acknowledgment that, though they had been "strangers and pilgrims," or wanderers in a foreign country, yet now they were settled in the land whither they had been journeying all the time they had been in the wilderness; and therefore we see that this is still an unfulfilled type in the Christian dispensation; for real facts testify, that as the feast of tabernacles could not be kept until they had come out of the wilderness state, it is still to us an unfulfilled type, and that the third great type, which was to witness the gathering of the people to their own land, waits for its final accomplishment.

The feast of the passover, which commemorated the deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage by the slaying of the lamb and the sprinkling of blood, and prefigured the redemption of the church by the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, has been accomplished, as far as the absolute fact of His death and satisfaction for sin, in raising us from more than Egyptian bondage. The results have not indeed, nor will they be, fully accomplished, till the last redeemed sinner is in glory. But the positive fact demonstrably proves that it has had a definite fulfilment.

22 The feast of weeks, or Pentecost, an offering of thanksgiving to the Lord for the increase of the firstfruits of the harvest, has had, so far as the absolute fact, a plain fulfilment, when the first-fruits of the Christian church were seen - the manifestation of the increase of the Spirit in His descent on the disciples on the day of Pentecost - the first-fruits of the finished work of Christ. Here it has been in part fulfilled. The results have not all been accomplished; the effects are still going and will continue to go on, though it has had in some measure its positive and ostensible accomplishment. But in no sense has the type of the feast of tabernacles been fulfilled; it remains yet to be accomplished, when the true Israelites, having left the wilderness, are brought into their own land, and commemorate with loud praises their blessed entrance.

The circumstances which occurred at these feasts prove also the fact of their fulfilment. In the time of the passover, and the feast accompanying it, there was to be offered a lamb, without blemish or spot, and on the morrow after the sabbath an unbroken offering, a sheaf of the first-fruits, exactly answering to Christ's sacrifice of Himself, as a lamb without any blemish, and presenting at His resurrection an unbroken offering - "the first-fruits of them that slept."

Now, at the feast of Pentecost, an offering was made of two wave loaves, mixed with leaven: and in the fulfilment of this type we see the wonderful contrast between it and that offered on the day of atonement. The Spirit descended on the disciples in the realisation of this figure; but, the excellency being put into earthen vessels, it was leavened; that is, it was mixed with the corruption of nature - therefore, a leavened cake. Whereas, in the former type, it was not a leavened but an unleavened offering, a sheaf of the first-fruits; wonderfully prefiguring the offering of Him, who had no stain or spot of sin, who saw no corruption, and in whom there was no leaven mixed.

Now there would have been no atonement had the paschal lamb been in any way blemished; but being faultless and then sacrificed, it was accepted, in that it was without blemish.

The feast of tabernacles, which is yet to be commemorated, was to be held in the land of Canaan, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when the fruit of the land was gathered in. It was after the harvest and vintage were over; which shews that, as yet, it could not have its fulfilment, but waits for it in the closing scene, when the saints "shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air," having "put on their house which is from heaven," that is, their resurrection bodies. And then shall come the time of gladness, of rest, and of fulness, to the church now free from all her enemies.

23 But now, concerning the Lord's going up to this feast of tabernacles which was at hand, and which was confessedly an unfulfilled type, His brethren said to Him, "Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world."

This was pressed upon Him by His brethren, who did not believe on Him: "Shew thyself to the world" - exhibit Thyself. They wanted a manifestation of Himself at that time, adequate to the claims He made; an indiscriminate revelation of Himself to all the world, proposing to Him to shew Himself then. But Jesus said, "My time is not yet come." That was not His time to exhibit Himself openly; but the time is fast approaching, which will be to the joy of His saints, and the terror of the ungodly. Then will He exhibit Himself, when "every eye shall see him, and they also that pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." "Then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory." This will be the time when He shall declare Himself openly. But as yet He has not come to confound the world by the manifestation of Himself openly; and this, to a world Iying in wickedness, is mercy - real longsuffering - the very height of forbearance; for when He does come, it is to thrust out of His dominion all that offend, all that do iniquity - all that practise or love sin: and why? Because He is holiness itself, and He cannot look at sin; and where He is, sin cannot find a place. And therefore His very coming must sweep, with the bosom of destruction, all the refuges of lies, and everything that is opposed to holiness. This forbearance therefore is comparative happiness. And well it is for the saints now, that the Lord did not act on the suggestion of His brethren, and shew Himself then. Well it is for them that it was not His time. The Lord's long-suffering was their salvation: otherwise they never would have been gathered out, and translated into another kingdom; nor would they who are yet to be gathered out still see Him waiting to be gracious, entreating them to come unto Him to be saved; they would never have heard that the Lord went up, as He did at this feast, and proclaimed, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink."

24 Blessed, very blessed is it, then, for the world, for the saints, and for those who are yet to be gathered in, that the Lord did not shew Himself openly at the feast, "because his time was not yet come." He went up however, but secretly. His very discourse - "I go not up yet to this feast" - shewed that it was to have a positive fulfilment, when there would be a consciousness of having been in the wilderness, but now rejoicing in being out of it. "Shew thyself to the world" was the request of His brethren. This He refused; but He went up secretly, and taught at the feast, inviting all to come and partake of His mercy, before He should disclose Himself openly.

In consequence of the effect the Lord's miracles had made upon the people, the Pharisees were enraged, and sent officers to take Him; and the Lord says, "Yet a little while am I with you." There is a peculiar display of affection in this, as if He would call upon them, while they have the light, to believe in it, to walk in it, and so be saved. And He adds, "Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me." There is a time coming when you will be glad to find me; you now seek me in ill-will, in enmity, in malice, but the time will come when you will endeavour to find me from a very different motive. And He says precisely the same to His disciples, "Ye shall seek me, and, as I said unto the Jews, whither I go, ye cannot come." Such, therefore, is the present position of the people of God: they are where Christ manifestly is not; and where He is, there they cannot come as yet. It is painfully true, it is sorrowfully true, that this is their experience now. They are not with Jesus, though the Lord in mercy makes it up to them; by the earnest of it which He puts within them, they have the certainty that they shall be with Him. This is the desire of their souls; this constitutes their hope of glory, to be in the presence of Christ; to see "him who loved them, and washed them from their sins in his own blood"; to "see him as he is," and "to be like him."

25 This is what we are looking for, if we are believers. We have, it is true, while here, another Comforter, a blessed Comforter; but His very teaching and instruction leads us to desire more of Him, and more of the Father, and of Jesus; and He sends forth our affections towards Jesus, and leads us to desire His presence; just as here, with sensible objects, where we really love, we are longing to be in the presence of the object; so, the indwelling of the Spirit, who is love, draws out our affections towards Jesus, making us practically and painfully conscious of the present truth of Christ's words, "Whither I go, ye cannot come."

Now, brethren, I ask you, Have you come to the sorrowful acknowledgment and perception of Christ's words? Are you conscious that you are in a distinct position from the present system of things in this "city of confusion," and that you are opposed to it in affections, desires, and pursuits? That your affections are carried away to Him who has departed: Him whom the world rejected - Him whom the world turned out, and left itself in the darkness which it loved? Are you conscious that the night is far spent? that the day, the glorious day of His appearing, is at hand?

We, brethren, are not of the night, nor of darkness. But are we walking as children of the light, and of the day? We know it is the night now, because the "Sun of righteousness" is absent. His glory is hid, and His beams are seen obscurely even by the keenest spiritual vision. But are our desires intensely, turned towards the returning light? Are we waiting for it "more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning"?

The question with our souls, brethren, is, whether there is this apprehension - this spiritual apprehension, of what the Lord Jesus is to the soul, so as to be sensible of our state at present, as living on an absent Lord? "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world," said Christ. Christ, our light, is not visible with us, but He is coming; the day-star may be hid till the day-dawn appears, but then shall "the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings."

This is what the believer is hastening towards; he is longing for the day - the night is not his joy - it is not his happiness. "They that sleep, sleep in the night"; but he is not of the night, and therefore can get no enjoyment from the things of the night. But he waits for the day-star - Him who, though He has hitherto refrained from openly manifesting Himself to the world, yet has revealed Himself in the hearts of His people, causing them to delight, to glory in, and to love, an absent Lord, more than all sensible and present objects, delights, and enjoyments. And in this position is the believer set at present, waiting for the glory, of which he has the earnest in his soul: "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself."

26 This great feast to which the Lord was going up was very memorable to the Jews from the several times of its celebration. At the time of the completion of Solomon's temple, when nothing more was wanting to finish it - at that same time was the feast of the seventh month - "a solemn assembly," in which the people were "joyful and glad of heart." Also, on the return of the captives from Babylon into their own land, they discovered by the book of the law that it was the exact period when this feast should be observed; and we find in Nehemiah 8, that it was celebrated with "very great gladness."

For the type to be fulfilled literally and spiritually we must look forward to that time when the spiritual temple will be completed; when every precious stone shall be placed therein, and when "he shall bring forth the head-stone with shoutings, Grace, grace unto it"; and also for that time, when there shall be nothing to keep us from our own home, and when our souls shall be filled with joy and gladness and thanksgiving on getting up out of the wilderness. But we are not yet there; and therefore the Lord has prepared, and wonderfully given, that which is to be the very comfort and stay of our souls while in this wilderness: "He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." Before this is set up in a believer, he has no refreshing perception of union with the living fountain. What refreshed the children of Israel during their long and toilsome marches through the wilderness? The command of God went forth to Moses, and upon striking the rock the waters flowed, "the rivers ran in dry places"; they found living waters even in the wilderness. This was to satisfy them until they came to the desired land. And so the Lord Jesus was smitten; and from that Rock flow all the living streams which are given for the refreshment and strengthening of His people while here.

Now however sad it is that our Lord is absent from you, still, while you are here resting on the smitten rock for support and comfort, your wants can always be supplied. Christ can cause you to overflow with the spiritual apprehension of His refreshing grace. He will make you so one with Himself, that the fountain, the inexhaustible fountain which He contains, shall be so indwelling in you, as to be ever flowing, ever streaming, even in the wilderness; not keeping in, but flowing out in joyful acknowledgments of spiritual refreshment. It was this that Christ promised He would give after His departure: "This spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified." It is thus that Jesus makes His people partakers of His fulness even here. It is true, they have not all the joy; but when the wilderness shall be left behind, then will they enter into all the joy of the Lord. In the meanwhile the Holy Spirit, who makes them conscious that they are still not in the land of rest, fills them with all that can compensate for its wants while here below, in causing, by His indwelling, "rivers of living water" to flow forth: this is the joy of the Holy Ghost.

27 In order that the presence of God the Holy Ghost should be thus experienced, Christ absented Himself for a time from His own. "It is expedient for you," said He, "that I go away; for If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you"; you knew Him when absent, but you shall shortly have Him dwelling in you, so as to cause you to flow forth in living water. This was the promise He gave on the last day of the feast - the promise of the Holy Ghost, which "they that believe on him should receive"; given now, as a witness to the ascension of Christ, after having accomplished redemption work (for it is said, "The Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified") after He had entered into His rest of eternal glory; which, though it has been confounded with that given at the new birth, is nevertheless perfectly distinct from it. For Paul clearly states this to the Galatians, when he says, "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts"; not to make, but because ye are sons already. Therefore, you should enjoy present fellowship with the Father and the Son in glory, by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, whose powerful presence would lead the soul to the enjoyment of the unseen realities of glory which He testifies within; leading, also, to the contemplation of the Person, work, and offices of the Lord Jesus, as undertaken for our redemption - as the bearer and confessor of, and atonement for, sin; as "the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person," which was given them after they had believed; "in whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise," which was given, not to believe, but as an "earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory."

28 This was consequent upon Jesus being glorified - "In whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise": and it was not an influence externally, but was within them, dwelling in them: "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you?" And His personality is also declared: "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed."

There is a distinct mention of this, as of something more than had hitherto been experienced, which in the words of the text is expressly said to have been "not yet given"; and the reason assigned - "because that Jesus was not yet glorified." It was to be given to those that believed. This gift then is the seal of the Spirit, attesting Christ's finished work - His resurrection, ascension, and glorification - causing us to enter into the apprehension of those heavenly things which He reveals to us. The blessed Comforter was given for our refreshment in the wilderness.

"Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us," to make known these great things by the indwelling of the Spirit in the hearts of us believers, enabling us to know Christ glorified; and, from His glory, sending down the Spirit of the Father in our hearts in attestation of it - who reveals all the glory from which He came. He comes as the gift of Christ from the Father, and gives us to know the fellowship and consolation of the Father's love, testifying our claim to this fellowship, in that we have been made sons. And though we know not here the extent of the blessedness that awaits us, yet we know that, when Christ "shall appear, we shall be like him"; when we shall obtain the glory that is reserved for us.

These are the things which the Spirit makes known, even in the wilderness; all consequent upon the Father's love. "Ye are no more servants, but sons"; and therefore hath He (the Father) "sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts." And, indeed, it is only in the position as sons that we can recognise anything of the love of the Father, or the union subsisting between us and Himself, as described in John 17, in the words of Jesus: "That the world may believe that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me." And again, "I have declared unto them thy name . . . that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them."

29 There is one great truth made known to us by the Spirit, that Christ was sent from the Father for the purpose, not only of saving sinners, of saving "the ungodly," but of bringing them into His Father's house, and unto the eternal favour of God - into the very blessedness with Himself in the Father's love - "joint-heirs" with Himself in the glory, and like Him. "We know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him." The consummation of this will be seen in that day, when we are brought into the blessedness of manifested union with Christ; partakers with Him in the conscious enjoyment of the Father's love, in the glory of Jesus - partakers of the same glory. "Father, I will," said Jesus, "that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am"; "and the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one." Everything that Christ has, except and only His essential Godhead, is His people's - all that glory and blessedness is theirs. And very blessedly does the Holy Ghost enable those whom He teaches to have in present apprehension that that glory is there for them.

What fills the soul of a Christian with bitterness is the practical experience that he is not yet come up out of the wilderness - that he is not yet in the glory. But, to refresh and comfort him, the Lord gives him within himself while here those "living waters," as in the wilderness of old; by virtue of their identity and oneness with Christ, who is the Rock, the waters necessarily flow from thence. "Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" - rivers of blessedness flowing from his soul, as being united to the living fountain.

Could your hearts contain the thousandth part of that love which the Spirit could impart, your gratitude would overflow exceedingly, in the apprehension that, even in the desert, you have constantly within you a witness of the overflowing fulness of Christ's love, the fulness of His fellowship, and the fulness of His joy.

30 But, brethren, when do we see any overflowing witness to the inward testimony of the fulness of Christ's joy? Where are those who should be a separated people unto the Lord, rejoicing in the Lord always? Where is the evidence that "we are not of the night, nor of darkness"? O let us testify that we are in a position of wondrous blessedness, even here, till that day comes when we shall know even as also we are known; and when not only Christ, as the first-fruits, shall enter into His glory, but, the harvest being past, the ingathering of all the saints shall be accomplished, and Christ's glory and joy will then be full; for He shall appear in the midst, and see of the "travail of his soul, and be satisfied"; for they shall all be there, and each will have entered "into the joy of his Lord." Until the reality shall come, in what way should they act who are the "temple of the Holy Ghost" - of Him who is shewing them what will then take place? What practical use should they make of the knowledge of Him, who was smitten for them, that "rivers of living water" should flow from them?

Brethren, I would ask you, Are you grieving the Spirit? Are the things that you are occupied with such as would find a place amidst these living waters? Are your associations and desires capable of being assimilated with these pure streams, and together to flow unruffled and untainted? Or are its operations restrained by your assimilation to what opposes it?

Brethren, I would ask, Is there this joy occasioned by the indwelling of the Spirit within you, even under the consciousness of the Lord's absence? And is the fountain within you flowing over at the contemplation of the near approach of your Lord? Or, sad to inquire, brethren, are you grieving the Spirit by indulging the flesh? Have you deprived yourselves of the comfortable perception of His overflowing fulness within you, by gratifying "the old man" - engaging in those things which the Spirit abhors - tempting Him to leave you low and barren? for where there is a cleaving to, and seeking of, the things of sense, it necessarily keeps us lifeless and languid, even sometimes as though there were no Spirit in us at all. Is there not, in some of you, a practical grieving of the Spirit? Are you conscious there is in you this fulness - this overflowing fulness - from the glorification of Christ? Why are you not conscious of it? Only because you are practically disowning Him. Hence the darkness, the deadness, nay, the very doubtings, whether you are in the faith or no; and all this, by following the things of this world, which lead to darkness and cannot bear the light.

31 The Spirit is overflowing like "rivers of living water" from the soul of him in whom He has entered, flowing on all around: it may be on the good soil, or on the barren sand; but still His nature and power is ever to flow forth. Oh! brethren, we are losing much of the joy and consolation of this divine Spirit, by our own inconsistencies, and love of what grieves Him.

It is a solemn truth, dear friends, that "if you have not the Spirit of Christ, you are none of his." And is it possible that, possessing Him, you can remain strangers to His mind, and not manifest your possession of this great gift? It is a sad and solemn but nevertheless a certain truth, that if you have not the Spirit, you are not manifestly Christ's, and are yet in your sins.

Be not deceived. Christ says that, except a man be born again, he can neither see nor enter into the kingdom of God. See to it then, that ye seek to be made partakers of this gift, which is the promise of the Father. It is madness for you to think of getting to happiness in any other way. "It is the Spirit that quickeneth"; and when He has given you power to believe, He will be in you, as "a well of water springing up into everlasting life," and rivers of living water ever flowing. Be persuaded, ere the day of the Lord's vengeance comes, and you be consigned, with the tares and the workers of wickedness, into everlasting destruction.

God Speaking from Heaven

Hebrews 12: 25

J. N. Darby.

<12004E> 32

Notes of Sermons

These first thirteen discourses were delivered without any thought of extending them beyond the immediate congregation to whom they were addressed. They were taken down by one of the congregation, and are now at the desire of a brother made public, with the permission, but without any revision of the preacher. Dublin, 1838.

[The Editor would say here, once for all, that the contents of this volume in general being mere notes, he has taken the liberty of correcting the more obvious slips, most of which are perhaps due to such a means of transmission. The author is not justly responsible save for the substance, though no doubt the words are often his own; if he corrected, he would assuredly do so much more freely than another would feel free to do.]

The apostle, in addressing this exhortation to the Hebrews, acted upon the ground of the character is which Christ spoke, and the consequences resulting therefrom. Observe: His character is specifically brought forward as speaking "from heaven," contrasted with His character as speaking on earth: "If they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth [that is, when He spake from mount Sinai, thundering out His righteous law], much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven"-speaketh from the right hand of God, in the midst of His glory.

Here is the contrast: Christ, as speaking now from heaven, and then on earth; an awful warning to transgressors, by the evidence of what then happened, to effect much more: "Whose voice then shook the earth." This having occurred sanctions the word spoken, which says, "Yet once more I shake not the earth only but also heaven; and this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made." And those things, dear friends, are what the saint is in now-not of them, but in them. Therefore is he, thus surrounded, warned not to turn away from Him "that speaketh from heaven."

This then is the ground on which he stands. On the one hand, he sees the full blessedness-the unqualified hope- which this voice, speaking from heaven, makes known to him; and, on the other hand, he sees there is nothing else to rest upon but the word of Jesus, which is perfectly stable in that it has been tried and proved. This cannot be removed or shaken; everything, no matter what, that is not in association with this, being liable to be shaken, shall be removed. When the voice speaks from heaven for the removal of all that opposes it, all that is not of this heavenly character must go.

This same speaking then implies the deep blessedness of the believer, and his not having anything else to rest on but Jesus; not merely to rest on Jesus in the way of righteousness, but for all things-for everything; for all else is in opposition to God, and when the time of this speaking closes, all that is not of grace goes. "He then shook the earth." Tremendous was the sight. The mount was all on fire, and there was a very great earthquake. This was calculated to inspire great terror. But here is manifested the blessedness of the child of God, he is not come to that: "For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest . . . but ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God," etc.

33 Here we have the character of the dispensation to which we, as believers, are called; it is spoken nominally of all the professing church, though only true of those who are alive to God. They have come to this; their warrant is, that this voice has spoken to them from heaven, and that they have heard it, and that it is the voice of Jesus. Thus He is presented, as having entered into His glory, and from thence speaking.

Thus then we learn from this word that this same Jesus who spake on earth is now speaking from heaven. "Who is he that ascended but he also that descended first into the lower parts of the earth?" The Lord Jesus is speaking specially, as having effected the entire accomplishment of all that His people failed in, and that could in any degree militate against their happiness. This voice tells us that it is the same Person, the same Christ who was humbled for our sins; who went through the world, weary and sorrowful; the same man who was crucified, dead, buried, raised, and ascended, that now speaks from heaven, as having passed through all these, and is now at the right hand of God, from whence He is inviting His people up thither.

This then is the joy of the child of God, when he hears this voice of Jesus addressing him from heaven, testifying of what He has done, and speaking as a witness of peace; speaking in the consciousness of having so overcome-so entirely to have borne the sin of His people as to set it aside for ever by the one sacrifice of Himself once offered. And in this position He speaks-I have set aside for ever the sin which kept you excluded from God; and I am entered into the rest and glory, as your representative, in the presence of the Father. When this voice is heard and known, we have peace.

When the Lord Jesus therefore speaks from heaven, He speaks of having accomplished all the work which the Father gave Him to do. He speaks in the consciousness of this; and He gives us the consciousness of the same in the power of the Spirit, when He visits us individually. He, the Redeemer-He who stood the bearer of sin-stood responsible for His people; and by His perfect satisfaction acquitted them entirely. Now He, having ascended, says, I have done; I tell you, as in the presence of the Father, the result of all the work I accomplished: I am now in the very glory to which I am about to bring you. Here is the voice with which He speaks; and if ever He speaks from heaven to any soul now, it is just thus. The voice may be heard very indistinctly indeed; but that is just what the voice declares-that is the story which Jesus brings to the soul.

34 It is a tale of mercy, of boundless, inconceivable mercy. It may indeed, poor trembling soul, begin with a tale of thy sin. This is calculated to originate deep thoughts-deep searchings of heart; but the beginning and end is for peace- blessed peace! The voice still continues to speak; to say, those sins are gone-utterly put away, no more to incur God's wrath; no further requirement to satisfy for them: Jesus has done that. You may indeed have sorrow still as to this world; for you are in the very midst of that world which crucified and rejected Christ, the Lord of glory. You are still in that world which displayed its utter and total enmity, even in rejecting the Author of all blessedness. That the world did, and He triumphed over it. He was crucified by the world, and He returned to the Father. What brought Him there, but the total rejection of Him by the world? There He is now, and speaks. And what does this voice declare? Why, that He has no part with the things of the world. He does not own it. The world would not own Him when He came in humiliation, and now He will not own it when seated at the right hand of God the Father.

Christ is now speaking from heaven with the witness of His rejection on earth, but with the full recognition of having passed through it, and triumphed over its most inveterate malice. This constitutes the blessedness of God's people here; for they see a full salvation. Christ now speaking from heaven, who once spoke on earth, brings with it the certain evidence of the full accomplishment of all He engaged for. Nay, more, by His thus speaking from heaven, we, as believers, are privileged to know all that we are come to, even here. For this voice says, "Ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; and to an innumerable company of angels, the general assembly; and to the church of the first-born, which are written in heaven; and to God the Judge of all; and to the spirits of just men made perfect; and to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant; and to the blood of sprinkling.

35 Here we have, not only the confidence of acceptance, but the entireness of deliverance; not only as having overcome, but the blessedness to which believers are privileged to come. Blessed indeed is the portion to which they are called! A salvation which is already finished for them-a present salvation! This voice speaks, not of something which occurred some time ago, or in a distant place; but, when brought with power into the soul, it shews the present realisation of these things. It brings the soul to say, I am come to these, because He is there. Thus faith brings near these things. This then is the conscious position of the believer when under the energy of the Holy Ghost-the total putting away of all that hindered and dissociated him from that intimate communion with God, to which he is united, and which it is his privilege to enjoy.

All this Jesus speaks from heaven, and therefore His voice is a voice of peace-peace under all circumstances. He speaks the same under all the variety of exercises and trials of this mortal life. We may be bowed down, and think hard things of ourselves: but there Jesus sits in the calmness of conscious victory, and His words are only words of peace. Persecution, affliction, and woe, may speak from earth; yet the voice from heaven speaks nothing but peace. The voice of the Lord Jesus is a voice of peace and conscious rest. Whatever conflicts with this peace is not in or from Jesus.

This position of the Christian is his perfect identity in spirit with Jesus as He now is: "Bone of his bones, and flesh of his flesh," and therefore He can well sympathise with us. We may be tempted, harassed, oppressed; but, notwithstanding that, we are really come to "the things which cannot be shaken." "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." This may indeed be but dimly seen here, but it is not less real, and it is known to be real, by the power of the Spirit dwelling in them that believe. They see the "old man," in their weaknesses which they have crucified, and now are raised, according to the power of the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Christ, our Saviour, is a risen and ascended Saviour; and He now speaks from heaven, as a pledge that He is in the very place to which He will bring us, and where we shall behold Him.

36 Moreover He so pleased the very mind of God, having performed all His will, that therefore He can say, It is done-it is accomplished-it is finished for ever. Thus He now speaks from heaven one whole testimony of peace; it must necessarily be the voice of peace, bringing in the blessedness of the results of that which brought peace. It is only of peace then that He speaks, whether it is heard or not. As Paul says, "and came and preached peace to them which were afar off, and to them that were nigh." Christ wrought sorrowfully, even to the death of the cross, to obtain this peace for His people; and now He proclaims it. Man knew not peace while at enmity with his Maker; and so the Lord Jesus undertook the whole responsibility attaching to His people, and has overcome all impediments to obtain their peace. And this is the only way true peace can be obtained-this is what Jesus died to obtain, and, having obtained, now testifies to the truth and certainty of it. See then that your eyes are fixed on Him that speaks from heaven: else you never can obtain peace; for, in very deed, it is the word of God.

Christ now sits in heaven proclaiming peace, which brings before us the unspeakable blessedness of the manifestation of the prerogative of God's love against the extent of man's sin, not only in His excelling greatness triumphing over it, but being made the sacrifice Himself, so putting it away. We come now to see the stability of God's promise, and the certainty of its accomplishment: "Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made." We have seen the association with Jesus into which we are brought, and are come to things spiritual, which, being stable, and resting on the security of God's word, cannot be removed when all else shall be shaken.

We will just see what they are: "Ye are come unto Mount Sion; and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." And shall that be shaken? No; the city of the living God rests on the living God, and can never be removed. "To an innumerable company of angels, the general assembly." Can they be shaken? No; there was one great shake in heaven, and the rebel angels were driven deep into darkness, there to remain; the rest are upheld by His power. "And to the church of the first-born, which are written in heaven; and to the spirits of just men made perfect." And can these be shaken? No; being made perfect by God, they must remain perfect; they cannot be shaken.

37 And ye are come "to God the Judge of all." He being the very security and support of all else that cannot be shaken, He must so stand. And ye are come to Jesus, who is where all these will be-that is, not on earth, but in glory; He was on this earth, and the men of the earth did not like Him, and therefore rejected Him. His voice once shook the earth, but now He is in heaven, and speaking from thence, He has promised, yet once more, to shake all that can be shaken.

In the word, "Yet once more," we have a remarkable expression, for it comes to us as a promise on the authority of God; it presses itself upon one's spirit, and bears witness to the truth in the power of the Holy Ghost; it comes to us as a promised truth. Now let us consider whether Jesus has so spoken to us from heaven, as to lead us to thank God that He has promised this from heaven-that in truth we believe the promise, and are looking for the accomplishment of it.

Have we understood this voice from heaven? and do we rejoice in knowing that everything which Satan, the world, and the flesh have set up in opposition and enmity to God shall be shaken terribly, even to their destruction? Can we say in faith, I understand the voice so speaking, and am looking forward with joy to its accomplishment, when all that offends Christ shall be done away with? But have I also heard the voice so speaking to me from heaven as to identify me with all and everything that cannot be shaken?

Well will it be for the saints when they see the removal of all that burdens and keeps them from the perfect realisation of their unspeakable privileges. They have nothing to fear from that terrible voice which shall "shake terribly the earth." They have heard, and are identified with that blessed voice which speaks to them nought but of love and mercy and peace, and they want no other.

Brethren, beloved of the Lord, what a contemplation is it to enter into, that of our being established-firmly established and settled in those things which cannot be shaken! The extent of that tremendous shake, which is full of woe to him who is fixed here-who is settled on any of those things liable to be shaken-is full of joy to him who is come to the things which cannot be shaken, and which shall therefore remain.

38 "There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth; for the powers of heaven shall be shaken." This shaking time will come; but it is your joy, that those things on which your mind and affections are set, and with which you are associated, cannot be shaken. And further, this voice to believers implies much more, wonderfully much more, than the removal of all things which cannot stand the shaking; it implies their whole blessedness; that they shall then be brought into the full perfectness of the joy of Jesus, resting alone on the stability of God. All things which are made shall be shaken. At that time, he who is associated with God, and he alone, shall stand the shake. For he is now come spiritually unto that to which he shall enter personally, where nothing defiling, nothing unstable, shall find an entrance.

The believer therefore rests on these two grounds: that the Lord Jesus Christ is thus speaking to him from heaven-speaking peace, and therefore taking away all fear, as regards himself, in the promised convulsion and upturning of all things, and also that the promise of God shall stand, in the setting aside of all that shall not participate in his present glory. Here we see the total dissociation of all and everything connected with an interest in the things of this world: that they are opposed to the things of God-they are quite distinct, and never can be united.

As soon as the season is past for the exercise of God's longsuffering and patience with a guilty world, then will the shaking commence: happy they who are in a way of grace then! Yet there is an admonition to them to watch: "What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!" and this watchfulness is to continue to the end, amidst all opposition, supported therein by the life-giving energy of the Holy Ghost. The believer's life is thus manifestly a life of watchfulness; but he rests not here, he looks forward. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable": but he sees beyond this life, he has come to perceive eternal things; and in the power of the Spirit to discern the unquestionable blessedness to which he is called-into the spiritual enjoyment of which, even here, there is no hindrance, not the least impediment, except as regards himself. Christ has done all that could be, all that was necessary to be done, in order to make the reconciliation perfect.

39 There is then no hindrance as regards Christ's work; it is a mark of complete perfectness. All things that could keep us from God have been overcome, set aside, triumphed over: and He is now in heaven, in the full consciousness of victory-altogether finished as regards our salvation; entered into heaven, in the presence of God for us, and continually speaking peace to us His people-the consciousness of which, on our part, is wrought in our souls by the eternal Spirit, who, testifying of the joy into which Jesus is entered, and the peace which He proclaims, makes us also full of joy and peace in believing, and looking to that glory into which we also shall be brought, "whither the forerunner is for us entered."

This is the only ground of peace which Christ promised, and it is the privilege of the believer to enjoy this peace, even in the midst of trials and conflicts and afflictions. He looks to Jesus where He now is; and, resting on Him who is now speaking from heaven, he has that peace which passes all understanding, arising from his union, his oneness, his identity with his Lord and Master. Have you thus known the Lord Jesus Christ, as speaking from heaven to you, and speaking peace? Has He told you that all is finished, and that you are privileged to have peace? Do you see your own personal iniquity put away?

I would ask you still further, dear friends, in how far you are associated with that which shall be removed? The voice from heaven has witnessed, has promised, the removal of all things which can be shaken. If you are associated in any way with those, oh, how sad, when Christ comes, to find you thus! They that are earthly do mind earthly things-that is their character: as the apostle says to the Philippians, "Whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things." The voice speaking from heaven proclaims the dissociation of Christ and His company from these-from all that is earthly.

I solemnly put it before you, dear friends, Are you thus engaged? or are your hearts, affections, and desires lifted up to Him that is higher than the heavens-to that which cannot be shaken, and can never be removed? Could you receive the shaking of all things, as the promise of God? He has promised, "Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven." Blessed, everlastingly blessed, are they who are established in Him who is higher than the heavens! They who are thus fixed are as secure as they will be when associated with Him in glory.

40 Let me again ask you, dear friends, If this shaking were to come now, where would it find you? Would you be found trembling under the consciousness of being mixed up with that which is to be removed? or borne in perfect peace upon the heart of Him who is to shake all things? May the Lord find you in the latter circumstances-happy in the consciousness of His love and power, ready to enter into the joy unspeakable, and glory of your Lord. Amen.

The Wheat and the Tares

Matthew 13

J. N. Darby.

<12005E> 41

Notes of Sermons

These first thirteen discourses were delivered without any thought of extending them beyond the immediate congregation to whom they were addressed. They were taken down by one of the congregation, and are now at the desire of a brother made public, with the permission, but without any revision of the preacher. Dublin, 1838.

[The Editor would say here, once for all, that the contents of this volume in general being mere notes, he has taken the liberty of correcting the more obvious slips, most of which are perhaps due to such a means of transmission. The author is not justly responsible save for the substance, though no doubt the words are often his own; if he corrected, he would assuredly do so much more freely than another would feel free to do.]

There is something wonderfully gracious in the way the Lord waits upon His people to instruct them: it is calculated to draw out the affections and the minds of believers in love and gratitude. But how often have they cause for shame, that the occupations of their minds and hearts render them insensible to the various ways, means, and methods in which a God of love teaches them!

God is blessing them all the way, and His mercy is exercised even in their wants. Do they feel and bewail their ingratitude and ignorance? Who teaches like God? His wisdom is the saint's portion. Are they bowed down under a consciousness of weakness and of bondage? "My strength is made perfect in weakness," and thus, in every way, He exactly suits Himself to their several necessities. He never withdraws His care; He never turns aside from them; still doing them good; and, though they may be fearful and fainting, His love is still manifested. Jesus is the fountain of all blessedness, sent to poor, weak, wretched sinners, that they may have abundance of comfort, of peace, and of enjoyment.

The knowledge of this knits and attaches the heart of the poor sinner to such a rich Saviour - makes him find that the way the Lord has led him has displayed to him the character of the God who thus instructs him, that his very sorrows and trials are a manifested proof of God's free love and favour, as succeeding circumstances display the riches of divine grace. The way in which He leads us, the particular circumstances in which we are placed, the situations we are in, are all so many methods and means of divine instruction planned by a God of love.

The believer longs for rest from all that now offends, but God leaves him here to teach him many lessons. This world, constituted as it is at present, is a means by which God teaches us what we could not learn in a world of glory: the believer is instructed in the long-suffering, patience, and love of God, in a way he never could have known elsewhere; his wants, his weakness, his barrenness, his deadness, display most touchingly the wonderful patience of God. And here too he learns the astonishing proofs of God's love in Christ; giving Him for such sinners that they may be pardoned and freed; learning what God is, in the Person of Jesus Christ, through all the particular circumstances in which they are placed, notwithstanding all our weakness, short-comings, and misdeeds. There is no feeling of hostility in God's mind toward us - not even an impatient word or look; all is love.

42 It is in the weakness and wants of His children that God's manner of love is even more drawn out, as the Father of a family: the affections of a parent are the same for all his children, but under different circumstances is differently manifested: the long and weak childhood of a child calls forth all the tender sympathy and watchful care of a parent, and knits the affections of a child to him. So the Lord, amidst our weakness and infantine helplessness, guards us, watches over us; and thus we come to learn the manner of God's love. Then, as we advance under the watchful care and training, and arrive towards maturity, we learn the blessedness of His love, and we come to discern how the Lord opens out the knowledge of Himself, putting us into a position of wondrous blessedness. "Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you."

This is the manner and blessedness of God's love to us; and if the believer is insensible to this, he is in a sadly low state; for nothing so much evidences the soul's not being in a healthful state, as to be insensible to the manner of God's love toward us, to be engrossed with what is about us here, and not to be sensible that we are nearer to God than we are even to the circumstances in which we are placed. How wondrous to behold God taking pleasure in opening out His mind and His plans to man! which we see evidenced in this thirteenth chapter of Matthew, as in the explanation to His disciples of the parables spoken to the multitude.

We find here seven parables, which have been before noticed, but the order of which it would be well to remark again. The first parable is not a comparison or likeness of the kingdom of heaven, as the others, but a declaration of the agency of the kingdom, and of its particular results - the act described as being incidental to the Son of man before His ascension, and its results also, such as might be exhibited in individuals before as well as after it. The kingdom of heaven was subsequent to this, and consequent on Christ's resurrection, when a new system of things was about to be established.

43 The other six parables were not spoken at the same time: three were addressed to the multitude, and three to the disciples alone. Of these the first three exhibit the public character and result of this kingdom in the world; and the last three symbolised its intrinsic value, and the full development and results in God's hands. The former fully developed its ostensible and visible manifestation as seen in the world, and the latter, the real value of the thing itself as known in the mind of God. This expression, "kingdom of heaven," as well as "the kingdom of your Father," is peculiar to the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel more especially of dispensation and prophetic testimony.

In what situation then is the believer while here? Holding communion with an absent Lord in heaven - brought into His family here - into His kingdom, and taught, not to look for blessings simply upon earth during his Lord's absence, but to look for a time when His saints shall know Him even as they are known, and shall never be absent from Him. That is what they are looking for, and into that situation they have been brought as the "good seed," partakers of the grace of that "corn of wheat," which fell into the ground and died, that they might live.

"The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that sowed good seed in his field." And from verses 24-30 and 36-45, we have the parable and its signification, as explained by the Lord Himself. These things speak their own meaning: therefore they are simply brought before us as matters of fact. He says, as putting any other construction aside, "The field is the world." In these parabolical expressions there is a perfect harmony and conformity of meaning: if we can clearly ascertain the meaning by scripture light in one, we can readily imagine the same meaning of the same word in any other place.

Now our Saviour said expressly, "The field is the world": this is its meaning, and no other, which brings before us the theatre or the scene where the transaction recorded here takes place - "the world." It presents us with the view of a person sowing good seed in his field; he that sowed the good seed is the Son of man, the Lord Jesus Christ. He sowed it. It was good seed He sowed, and He sowed it in His field; and this is the world. He was entitled to this field; it belonged to Him. This then is the simple fact: the world was the field; the field belonged to Jesus, and He sowed good seed in it - something that had not previously been in it - a something planted which was not indigenous to the soil. Manifestly then it could not be the Jewish nation or system, for that was placed previous to the period, here alluded to, of the work of the Son of man. The world which is here mentioned is spoken of as a place, not where the seed had been sown and grown up, but where good seed, not yet planted, was now to be put in; and this then is in the world.

44 Let the child of God now look around him, and see whether (with the exception of those who have been manifestly brought into this new system) he sees anything of this good seed in the world; does it look like a field sown with good seed? In how far it resembles it, those who know the character of such as now possess the world can best tell. The world then is His - the Son of man's field. Thus this baffles the wisdom and power of those who pretend to claim any portion of it as their own, and who seek to have it all, and are described as saying, "This is the heir: come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours." It is not theirs - it is Christ's: His by an indefeasible right - by an indisputable title His.

This indeed, when once established, is calculated to overthrow the pride of vain man, who puts in his pretensions for a share; who calls the world his own; but it is not, it is Christ's; and every one who takes it as his own individual right is meddling with things which belong not to him, and of which he must give an account to the rightful owner. The world then is this field, and the field is Christ's. "While men slept, his enemy came, and sowed tares among the wheat." Here we have the character and circumstances under which this change came about; these men - these field labourers - were put in trust, and the enemy brought in the evil seed while these men slept.

Oh, how little are men aware of the indefatigable perseverance of the enemy of souls! it is while men sleep he does the mischief. It may not for a time be manifested; but he has sown it, and it will soon spring up. Satan is not hindered even by the good seed being there: "for when the blade sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also." God does certainly overrule it for His people's good; but the fact is there, that tares have been sown and spring up. They may not be seen immediately; but still they are in the ground, and much of it is occupied by them. The men slept; the enemy entered unperceived, sowed the tares among the wheat, and then went his way, having done the mischief. And the man who cannot see that these tares are now occupying the ground, and springing up, must be wanting indeed in spiritual discernment.

45 And what need have we of continual jealous watchfulness, that the ground be not more overrun with them! what need to be awake, to be sensible of the position we are in! that there is a positive separation between the wheat and the tares! that there is a wall of everlasting demarcation between them, and that we are not sensible enough of this! Does not sad and bitter experience testify that there is much moral evil countenanced? that there is a very bad and low state tolerated among believers? that there is a mixing up of the world with the things of God, an apparent shrinking and withdrawing from the Lord's work? Do we look for the cause? We find the whole of it here: the men slept, and let in the enemy; but it was His enemy, as the Psalmist says, "Remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily."

The Lord makes His cause and His people's one; they are His, and therefore their enemy is His. He calls them "brethren": "I will declare thy name unto my brethren." The saints of God get much courage from this declaration, when they know that the battle is in the Lord's hand. The saints look on this little word, "His enemy," with great delight. If sensible of our deficiencies and failings, and conscious that, while we slept, the enemy came in, yet let us look to the Lord; even though filled with shame in ourselves, yet let us look to the remedy, and we shall learn here, by this one little word, that it is His enemy, and, consequently, we have the strength of Christ against him.

"When the blade sprung up, then appeared the tares." This was the successful result of the enemy's work; they sprung up together. There was not at first any outward distinction; they were all mixed up together. There was no remedy for that, as regarded the present state of things; instantly to set the world right was not in the mind of God. Man was found a faithless steward; he had been negligent, and let in the enemy, and the field was found overrun with tares; but God's plans were not frustrated by it.

46 The servants come and say, "Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?" He said, "An enemy hath done this." The Son of God looked down at His field which He had sowed with good seed, and found it filled with tares: but, though in that position, we find it is not the wisdom of God to set the world to rights by plucking up the tares. The servants said, "Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?" This is according to man's wisdom, who would set the world to rights again by plucking up and rooting out heretics, and purging out the wickedness according to their own desire. "Nay," said the Lord, there are circumstances existing at present which made this proposal impossible to be acceded to; they are now together, and let them both grow together. If I were to give you power now to pluck up the tares, you might unconsciously root up the wheat with them, which cannot be; "let both grow together until the harvest."

The Lord has graciously explained the meaning of the word in verse 39: "The harvest is the end of the world." The term "world" here is not the same word as that used previously, where it is said, "the field is the world." This unquestionably is (as the literal translation signifies) the age, or dispensation, and should be read, "the harvest is the end of the age." In the first instance where it is used, it renders the meaning simply "the world," which is the scene of this great transaction. It is quite unconnected with the idea of peace, and conveys the time when it was to be thus manifested - at the end of the age or dispensation, and "at the time of the harvest." Says the Lord, "I will say to the reapers [that is, after both are grown up, fit for the operation], Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn."

Now this presents us first with the view of the gathering together of the tares in bundles for the purpose of being burnt, and then the gathering of the wheat into the barn. After this is the destruction of the tares, as explained by our Lord: "As, therefore, the tares are gathered together and burnt in the fire, so shall it be at the end of this age: the Son of man shall send forth his angels [His messengers, ministers, and ambassadors of His purposes in providence], and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire." And, after that (that is, after the burning of the tares), "then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."

47 Here is the order: The tares are gathered in bundles to be burned; the wheat is lodged in the barn; the destruction of the tares, or their entire consumption, then takes place; and, finally, after their destruction, "then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."

In the third parable, spoken to His disciples alone, we find the Lord using terms analogous to these: The angels dividing the two parties which were hitherto mixed up together, gathering the good into vessels, and casting the bad away and destroying them; and then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. This brings before us the unhindered blessedness of the children of God - of those who are alive to God. That time is coming; and it is a thing greatly longed for by the saints. The present position of the world makes it known to them. They see that the tares are ripening fast in iniquity, ready for the destruction; and they see the ripening of the saints of God; and, though now apparently and sadly undistinguished, the Lord is ripening them for the harvest and will gather them in.

The tares are making their progress, being brought together ripe for destruction. Though they may think it is well, and no fear is to overtake them, yet certain and sudden vengeance awaits them. They say, and act on it, that it will not come; but God is true, and His word shall come to pass. Read Rev. 14: 14-20. There are the tares then ripening, thinking no harm shall happen unto them; strengthening themselves in their iniquity, and counting the very providence of God (their being bound together in bundles) the very occasion of their strength and power, which is to prove their utter destruction. "The heathen are sunk down in the pit which they made." "Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished." The wheat are not left in the world in the great day; they are gathered into the barn; they are taken out of the way, "caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air." They witness the destruction of the Lord's enemies; and "then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."

Here we behold the blessedness of the child of God, and the perfect character of that blessedness which the future results of God's love will evidence. Just remember that everything that offends has been cast out; all iniquity burnt up, destroyed; the saints safely housed in the barn; and then shall they shine - observe, "then shall the righteous shine" - they are the righteous. But who are the righteous? Those who are one with Christ: His character is brought forward as "the Lord our righteousness," and "the Sun of righteousness." "He shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth, by clear shining after rain." 2 Sam. 23: 4. And in these last words of David we have, along with the description of the glory of the Lord at His coming, a view of the destruction of the wicked: it is a similar passage to the one in the text, and refers to the same event. "But the sons of Belial [that is, the children of the wicked one] shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands" - that is, they cannot be drawn by the teaching and beseeching of man to come to the right. "But the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron and the staff of a spear; and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place" (v. 6, 7), that is, in the same place where they are, similar to the burning of the tares.

48 Christ is the Sun of righteousness, and therefore they are righteousness; He is the Sun, and therefore they shine as the sun: "When he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is," and we shall be made like unto Him. This blessedness was contemplated and spoken of by God's saints of old. We have it in the words of David: "As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." That was what he was looking forward to - to shine as the sun, as the righteous; to see God's honour vindicated, Satan and his powers cast out, and all God's enemies destroyed, and he himself bearing Christ's likeness; then he would be satisfied. And Paul also expresses himself strongly: "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection from the dead"; when I shall see Christ as He is, and be like Him, shining as the sun, as the Sun of righteousness. That is what I now see in Spirit, and that is what I now believe in faith, and that is what I am just looking for, to be like Jesus in His kingdom.

Is there in you, dear brethren, this earnest breathing after this glory? this sensibility of enjoying these things? Oh, they are calculated to bring much joy - very real and deep comfort - to know that we shall shine as the sun, when the clouds of vengeance, which now threaten an ungodly world, shall have been discharged in just judgment on them: when these clouds shall then be carried away and dispersed, and all iniquity cast out, then shall the righteous flourish; then comes his time of much delight!

49 Brethren, are not these things calculated to rejoice the heart of the believer? Further remark that it is said, "In the kingdom of their Father." Here is great blessedness to the child of God in this appropriating word of happiness. It shews the position in which the Lord Jesus has placed them - associated with God as their Father, in His kingdom. We see the mighty result; not only that they shall be righteous - shall shine as the Sun of righteousness, but be brought into their Father's house. "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you; I go to prepare a place for you." He unites Himself to them as one calling them brethren, calling them to look up to God as their Father: "I will declare thy name unto my brethren"; and again, "I go to my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God.

There are two things which in anticipation minister great comfort to all believers; they shall see the Saviour whom here they loved, and they shall be found in Him, participating in His glory, and like Him. This is what they should be rejoicing in, pressing towards, and looking for. If then indeed ye are children of God, what is grieving you? Think of your high privileges: "We shall see him as he is," "be like him," in the presence of the Father, in His house, in the kingdom of our Father, having fellowship with Him everlastingly.

This is the portion of the child of God, a portion we are called on to rejoice in, even here, for it is ours; it is an inheritance reserved for us, and we are reserved to shine as the sun in the kingdom of our Father.

The Church will not always have to mourn an absent Lord. He will come to claim His bride - to take her to Himself, that where He is, she may be also: so He prays, "Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am": and in Him she is complete; for the Father gave Him to be "head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." Here then is the position of the church with Christ; one body, one mind, one in all things, one in tastes, one in desires.

50 Believers thus taste the Father's love most blessedly by beholding the Lord so sacrificing Himself as to bring this love to them, purchased for their enjoyment and inheritance. They feel the Father's love: "I say not unto you, I will pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loveth you." If we are believers, let us raise our thoughts to the bliss that awaits us, and not be sinking to the bottom, or floating on the surface of spiritual enjoyment.

It is no matter what are your circumstances here, what are your cares or your conflicts; it is but for a moment; the portion of the saints is to rejoice. But what is it that you are bowed down for? Is it a feeling of your own weakness? Why, the very "joy of the Lord is your strength." Why are you in affliction? What is it that keeps you down? Is it the world of sin? That is your enemy; and that it is your enemy is the cause of the greatest rejoicing: this is your confidence, and should be your delight, that it is a conquered enemy. If you feel it is your enemy, you know it is His enemy, and then you are brought into the same position with the Lord Jesus; on one side with Him, fighting one common enemy. Jesus warned His disciples of this trouble, but promised them His peace - promised to be with them by the Spirit, and testified to them the result of all the work He was doing for them: "I have overcome the world." Think, if you be of them who are thus loved and thus made happy here, what happiness yet awaits you when you shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of your Father! Blessed indeed shall we be in that day, when "we shall see him as he is"; first, "be like him," and then "see him as he is." Oh, the blessedness! when, after all troubles and conflicts are over, we shall "awake in his likeness."

Believers, is there nothing in this to quicken your joy in meeting Jesus? Is there nothing in this to throw contempt upon the world, and its unmeaning joys? The soul that loves Jesus loves one who has conquered all his enemies; "He that ascended far above all heavens, that he might fill all things." In this is the Son of God's love manifested, in that He humbled Himself to descend to the children of men, to bear their iniquity, to carry their sorrows and troubles, to minister to their joys and comforts, and to bear away sin from them for ever! And their joy and confidence is, that the same Lord has ascended on high, having "led captivity captive" - having destroyed His and their enemy: "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

51 Is it any comfort to you, that the wisdom of God will soon be seen in the world, to the destruction of all that oppose it? Would you like to have the world thus sifted, and all iniquity purged out? Would it rejoice your heart to hear that Jesus was now coming? In fact, would you like Him to come now? Oh! how sad, how very sad is it, that, when He is just about to come, and His saints about to be made entirely like Him, they should be mixed up in any way with the workers of iniquity, practising their habits, pursuits, or satisfactions!

Pray, brethren, that you may be led to a more simple and entire conformity to the image of your Saviour; that you may be cleansed from the unsatisfying and unsanctifying desires of the world, so that you may be ready to meet your Lord at His appearing.

Adam and Christ

Romans 5: 14-21

J. N. Darby.

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Notes of Sermons

These first thirteen discourses were delivered without any thought of extending them beyond the immediate congregation to whom they were addressed. They were taken down by one of the congregation, and are now at the desire of a brother made public, with the permission, but without any revision of the preacher. Dublin, 1838.

[The Editor would say here, once for all, that the contents of this volume in general being mere notes, he has taken the liberty of correcting the more obvious slips, most of which are perhaps due to such a means of transmission. The author is not justly responsible save for the substance, though no doubt the words are often his own; if he corrected, he would assuredly do so much more freely than another would feel free to do.]

In the latter part of this chapter is exhibited strikingly the sin, and the consequences of that sin, wrought and incurred by Adam; and the grace that is manifested in Jesus Christ, as contrasted the one with the other.

This is a very important position, as displaying the character and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, contrasted with the first Adam, of whom, in his innocence, the latter was a type and figure; the one as the head of all grace and truth, the representative of all believers; and the other as the head of all sin and misery, a representative of all sinners by nature. This distinction is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15: "The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven"; and here, verse 14, he is said to be "the figure of him that was to come."

The over-abundant love and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is testified of in the next verse: "For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many." And the contrast is very striking as we continue: "And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift; for the judgment was by one to condemnation; but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. Therefore, as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by one righteousness the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life."

Here we have, in a perspective view, the effect of Adam's sin, and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We see here the way in which He met the whole question of the controversy between God and man.

In the Psalms we have an exhibition of the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ, under sufferings, trials, temptations, and afflictions; and throughout the Scriptures we have the facts of the life, thoughts, feelings, and character of Adam and Christ. We have in Adam the head and root of a sinful world, lying in wickedness and misery; and in Christ the head and root of a world of blessedness, reigning in life, opening a "new and living way," prevailing over man's sin and ruin. Not merely the saving of souls to God, but positively triumphing over man's evil, over the utmost evil man could do. Not only undoing what man had done, but over-abounding in blessedness the ruin man had brought on himself. Not only setting aside the work done by man, but manifesting the riches of divine love over evil, sin, ruin, and misery, allowed for the purpose of displaying more astonishingly the greatness of God's love, and His direct contrast in all things to man.

53 Now this is what we are to look for in Christ; a remedy adequate to the evil sin had wrought; a remedy that should meet and overbalance the weight of iniquity: and we have it in Christ, in the exceeding riches of His grace. The way and means were of His own devising and His own executing, to display His goodness to us in Christ Jesus, that He should be the substance of the joy of His people, the rest of their souls, the object of their hopes, the desire of their affections. And such He is. Evil has abounded, and sin has taken its free, full course. We shall trace its root, rise, and progress in the first Adam, in whose sin we have the complete and entire alienation of man's heart from God: the virtual denial and rejection of God as a God over him, and the practical consequences of that denial - the taking of Satan as a god in preference, and trusting and confiding in him rather than in God.

Now, I say, this is just the position the world is in at present. They have practically and decidedly taken Satan for god, to the rejection of the Lord; they have lost all hopes of favour; they have forfeited all claim to any blessing God can confer. All the world has done this positively and willingly; and every individual is doing so, until Christ calls him out of the world in principle, desire, and soul; brings him to rest on Him for all things; just undoes in his soul what the sin of the first Adam (and he himself springing from that root) has done; makes him an heir of God; puts into his heart the Spirit, crying, "Abba, Father"; and enables him to know and understand the association of principle, feeling, and actual position in which he stands with Christ, when exclaiming, "My Father and your Father, my God and your God." From thence is all our hope and happiness; we are brought over to trust Him, to live in His life, and no longer to live under the dominion of the devil, who "worketh in the children of disobedience." We actually "become sons of God," are delivered from the offences of the first Adam, and are no longer in the position of the world.

54 The sin of Adam induced the wrath of heaven's offended majesty; and we shall see that the work of the Lord Jesus Christ just met, in every circumstance and in every position, this situation; as a man, presenting the very opposite of what Adam was after his transgression. Let us view Adam first in his creation, as he came out of the hands of God - the image of God - in His own likeness; we see him a type of Him in whom dwells the fulness of the Godhead bodily: everything subordinate to him, put in authority under him; all the animals -  everything of animate and inanimate nature in subserviency to him; all brought to him to give them names: "And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof."

Psalm 8 evidently refers to this, from verse 4. But in connection with Hebrews 2, where it is quoted, we find it was typical of the Lord Jesus Christ: "Thou madest him a little lower than the angels" (in His humiliation). "We see not yet all things put under him" (but that we shall see at His coming). "But," says the apostle, "we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man." Here He became practically the head and root of a new creation, manifested so at His resurrection. The Lord was doing for His people, in His humiliation, all that was necessary to put away sin - suffered what was due to sin, and suffered unto death. Being then quickened according to the Spirit of holiness as a risen Saviour, He becomes the Head of a new creation, as Adam was of the old.

View Adam in the garden, and we shall discern in his conduct that he had everything that qualified him to be the head and root of a sinful world. So Christ (as manifesting the very opposite conduct, under the most difficult circumstances) is eminently qualified to be the Head of His people. Adam was placed in an innocent world, surrounded by every blessing, and with every holy and righteous feeling which could call forth his love and gratitude to the great Giver, and which ought to have led him to confidence in Him. God had placed trust in him: He put him as a steward over His goods. He reflected His own image on him, and made him capable of holding converse with Himself: he was the link, as it were, between God and this world.

55 Being thus trusted of God, put into this highly honourable situation, everything made for him, God delighting in him, as in Proverbs 8: "Rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth, and my delights were with the sons of men": in this situation of trust, confidence, and delight, what followed? How did Adam comport himself and sustain his integrity? The enemy of souls approached. With subtility he inquires, "Hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" and, on hearing God's authoritative threatening in case of delinquency, adds, "Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." At the first outset he impugns the truth of God's word, and endeavours to make Him a liar.

Now the man was in full recognition of God's command - "Thou shalt not eat of the tree." He knew it was a pledge of his obedience; that God, as supreme Sovereign, should have the satisfaction of being obeyed: he knew the Lord had a right to this obedience, and fully understood that He had threatened punishment in case of disobedience; he knew the Lord had said, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Here we see three things in which the devil desired the man should dishonour God: first, as to His grace: secondly, as to His truth: and, thirdly, as to the majesty of His Godhead. On this suggestion we find man really acted, and did so dishonour God.

We shall behold, in this transaction, the first Adam denying virtually God's grace, truth, and majesty; and in the second Man we are to see them vindicated and honoured; for "grace and truth came by Jesus Christ," the majesty of Jehovah being also manifested in Him. Let us now see how Satan and man dealt with God's truth, love, and majesty. God, as it has been observed, bestowed all favours on this man, made him an example to all the universe of His manifested love, and gave him just one command, that man might have the opportunity of shewing his sense of the favours of God by an easy observance of it. Satan comes and says to this effect: Did God say so and so? Do not you believe Him; He did not tell you the truth. God knows He has kept the only good away from you; do not trust Him. He does not mean it for your good; He means a lie; He means to deceive you. He is only keeping it from you because He knows well that if you eat of it, you will be as God, "knowing good and evil." Here then was the temptation to distrust God, to doubt His love, and to assume the privileges of God Himself: "Ye shall be as gods."

56 Now in this is included every principle in which God could be dishonoured by man in the position in which Adam then stood. And how did he act? When he saw (or she saw, which is the same for our purpose) "that the tree was good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise," he did eat it, in positive and known disobedience to God's command; he acted on the present enjoyment, without any regard to consequences; and the world has ever since acted precisely on the same principles, and precisely on the same grounds: are they condemned?

Many endeavour to screen themselves by this: I have done no harm to my neighbour; I am not guilty of dishonesty, of thieving, murder, and such like. No more was Adam; he did no harm to his neighbour (except as his conduct involved all in his guilt); but this was just his condemnation, in not recognising and acting on the truth, love, and majesty of God; in acting on the devil's suggestions rather than God's, and so making God a liar. God says, "Ye shall die"; the devil says, "Ye shall not": and there is just the question between them. Which will man believe? The devil puts the present pleasantness of the thing before the man, and he cares not for the consequences; let those come on the man himself, so that he can lure him to his ruin. He never tells him "the wages of sin is death"; and man, with the present enjoyments in view, cares not for it either. "The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life," have present enjoyment connected with them: so he embraces them and runs after them; though in so doing, he denies the truth of God, rejects His authority, and assumes His power.

This is really what Adam did; and in the consequences we are all naturally involved. He believed the devil rather than God; he thought the devil truer than God; he looked upon him as a better friend than God; just as we should rely on the promise and word of one whom we esteem our best friend. He put the devil's word in place of the law of God; he looked upon God as an austere judge, and grudging; one who had a good thing to give him, and yet denied it to him, because He did not wish to make him as Himself, but rather was gratified in keeping it from him. This was the opinion man had of God, when he willingly subjected himself to the dominion of Satan.

57 Now let us view his conduct after he had sinned. What do we find him doing? Hiding himself. What else could he do? He would have been well pleased had there been no God to spy out his sin. But it was not so, and he was now confronted. The voice of God called aloud, "Adam, where art thou?" He whom He had entrusted with so many blessings now runs away from Him, and hides himself: he had disputed the authority of God, and sold himself to the devil, and withal involved all his posterity in the guilt of rejecting God as a sovereign, and taking the devil as a god, bowing down in submission to his will. And in this position is the world at present, in which we are now living, the only living instance of unpunished apostasy: the consequences are to come.

But man is the only intelligent being who is still alive in successful apostasy. What do we find in the case of the fallen angels? Their sin brought its immediate and irremediable punishment. Man - man alone is abiding in unbelief; condemned indeed, but still the sentence of execution is suspended. God came down to this man who had thus cast off His allegiance; He came to one who had been His former associate and companion: God brings him out of his hiding-place. What then is man's first act? To excuse himself: and here again the world most accurately follows his example. They sin, and then plead, as an excuse or extenuation of their guilt, temptation, natural desire, expediency, etc. But we rest on God's truth when we declare there is no excuse that man makes, which is not, in fact, the very ground of his condemnation, yea, the very reason for it.

One instance from Scripture in passing. In the parable of the marriage supper, the excuse one who was invited gave for not attending was, "I have bought a piece of ground, and must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused." Where was the "needs be"? Only just this, that he preferred his own gratification to the reception of the Lord's invitation Just so Adam; his excuse was, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the fruit, and I did eat." The very excuse he brings is the very ground on which God condemns him: "Because thou hast hearkened unto thy wife . . . cursed is the ground for thy sake." Thus out of his own mouth was he judged!

58 Now we pass to the Second Man - the character and work of the Lord Jesus Christ; and we shall see exactly the opposite of this in every particular. We shall see how in thought, word, and deed, He perfectly vindicated the truth, love, and majesty of the great God of heaven, which man had thus shamefully and wilfully dishonoured. How did he vindicate the truth of God? The Lord had said, "Thou shalt surely die." Christ came as the great witness to His people, that "the wages of sin is death"; and that by imputation only, for He was perfectly and entirely holy. But He took our sins; He bore our iniquities. He was willing to be looked upon as the guilty, and to bear the penalty God had annexed to sin, "Thou shalt surely die," in order to vindicate the truth of God.

If any on earth could be spared the threatened punishment, it was Jesus. Holy in all respects abstractedly of His divinity; entirely free from sin or approximation to it; without the slightest shadow of evil as it regarded Himself, and yet by imputation, willing imputation, His: if any could be spared, it was He. But no; God had said it, and Christ came to bear witness to the truth of God's word. If we would see the bitterness of sin, the tremendous consequences of it, and its utter hatefulness in the sight of God, where shall we see it but in the death of Christ, God's fellow, His well-beloved Son? "He spared not his Son"; He delivered Him up to the death of the cross!

We see again how He fully vindicated the love of God. That God, whom man looked upon as a grudging God, keeping back from him that which was desirable - that God gave His only begotten Son for man's transgression! How eminently conspicuous is God's love here, in the sufferings and death of Jesus! The more righteous and holy Jesus was, the more God's love was displayed in giving Him for sin. He needed not to die for His own offences, for He had committed none; nor for His own sins, for He "knew no sin." He was brought nevertheless to the extremity of suffering and shame, and yet trusted and confided in God, in circumstances all opposite to those in which Adam was placed.

Adam was surrounded with every blessing and comfort: Christ was in the midst of poverty, degradation, and woe; so that He could say, "Reproach hath broken my heart; I am full of heaviness": "My soul is exceeding sorrowful": "My heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels": "Dogs have compassed me"; "bulls of Bashan have beset me round": "I am poured out like water."

59 Adam was blessed with the full enjoyment of God's countenance up to the moment that he apostatised from God. Christ, under the very dread of this even in prospect, could look upon all other things as light in comparison; as in Psalm 22, when enumerating some of the indignities He was to receive, He says, "They parted my garments . . . they gaped upon me"; but He adds, "but be not thou far from me, O Lord." And still, in the very moment when God was to visit on His soul the most awful effects of His people's delinquency - when, for their sins and the salvation of their souls, and that they might everlastingly enjoy the presence of God's countenance, He was to withhold the comfortable perception of it from His expiring Son; when, at the extent and summit of such dreadful agony, the exclamation was drawn from His holy soul, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" yet is the language of His soul, "But thou continuest holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel": even in the moment of extremest sufferings a doubt of God's faithfulness never passed His holy mind.

"Ye shall be as gods" was the bait the tempter threw out, which succeeded in drawing man from his allegiance to God. Now, how did Christ act as opposed to this? In Psalm 22 again He says, "I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people." And we know that, though God Himself, and equal with God, "He made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Man aspired to be God, and fell; and the Lord Jesus Christ, though very God, humbled Himself to "the dust of death," thus vindicating in His own Person the majesty of the eternal God.

Thus we see that Christ met all the sin and guilt which devolved upon His people, in consequence of Adam's transgression. He did not endeavour to screen the sin, to hide it from God's sight, to excuse that with which He was laden. No, He hung between heaven and earth - "lifted up" - bearing the iniquity of His people in His own body on the tree. Far from denying or concealing it, He desires to open all His soul to God: "All my desires are before thee": "My groaning is not hid from thee." He feels its bitterness: "My soul is exceeding sorrowful." Why thus? "He knew no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth"; yet He says, "My sins are not hid from thee: shame hath covered my face." What is He then confessing, but His people's sins? He had none to confess of His own; He therefore takes and holds up and confessed theirs, submitting to the consequences of them.

60 Now that is just our blessing; that is just what constitutes our peace and comfort, when by faith we can see Him making these sins of ours His own bearing them and their deserved punishment; not only lifting them up to God, but owning them, and bearing them away for ever! presenting Himself as the victim, to atone for sins which were committed against the truth, majesty, and love of God. Thus He vindicated God's glory, while He was well qualified to become the head of His people.

As a man He was well qualified, as the transgression came by a man; while His Godhead rendered His obedience meritorious and transferable. And when by faith it is received, it brings the full tide of personal comfort to the believer, just shewing him what he is in the first Adam, and what he is brought to in the Second. He sees Christ as the great High Priest on the day of atonement, bringing in the blood, sprinkling it within the veil, confessing and owning the sins of His people (as in Psalm 40), laying them on the head of the victim, carrying them into the grave of forgetfulness, as the great confessor of the saints, bearing up their sins before the face of God His Father, while in His body and soul He is bearing the consequences, enduring the penalty and doing it away for ever! Remember too, all this, in a way of entire perfectness of intention and obedience; not deterred from it when in prospect, nor refusing it when offered. Witness the garden of Gethsemane - the bitterness of the cup which the Father gave Him to drink! What perfectness of blessing for His chosen ones in that He did not put it away from Him! and, though He prayed, "Be not thou far from me, O Lord," under a sense of affliction and sorrow, still perfect in suffering, thus becoming the author of salvation to all who shall believe on Him.

Believers, can you then love that world which inflicted such woes on the Lord Jesus? Do you not see the total distinction and opposition in all things between the world and the brethren of the Lord Jesus? Are we then walking in the inheritance of the first or the second Adam? Are we practically assimilated, in thought, feeling, deportment, or pursuit, with that world which rejected Christ? Or are our associations with the Lord? Does this association lead us to say and to feel, Christ is not ashamed to call us brethren? All mankind are naturally and truly associated with the first Adam, and all Christ's people are as naturally associated with Him; "complete in him." As all are heirs of sin and shame by the first Adam, so shall every one that believes be (nay they are so now) heirs with Christ in all things, united to Him in a vital and indissoluble union. They are one with Him in privilege, interest, blessing, and are heirs of all the glory He possesses: "Him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne; even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne." Whatever belongs to Him of blessing or glory, He has for His own: "All things are yours," says the apostle, "for ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."

61 Such being God's truth, let us, brethren, seek renewed knowledge of our personal interest and fellowship with Him. Seek to receive more from Him: the more He gives, the more He is glorified. As certainly as we are by nature united to the first Adam, and bearing his likeness and image, so surely, if we are believers, are we associated with Christ in everything, "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ."

Now we see our glorious Head by faith alone; but soon shall we see Him as He is, in all His glory, and be changed into that same glory. In the meantime, "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." May we, then, be filled with the fulness of Christ! The Scriptures open out all the blessings that are in Him: all fulness dwells in Christ; and we, brethren of the Lord, are interested in it, by a union commenced in time, to be consummated in a never-ending and blissful eternity!

Life in Resurrection

Colossians 3: 1-4

J. N. Darby.

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Notes of Sermons

These first thirteen discourses were delivered without any thought of extending them beyond the immediate congregation to whom they were addressed. They were taken down by one of the congregation, and are now at the desire of a brother made public, with the permission, but without any revision of the preacher. Dublin, 1838.

[The Editor would say here, once for all, that the contents of this volume in general being mere notes, he has taken the liberty of correcting the more obvious slips, most of which are perhaps due to such a means of transmission. The author is not justly responsible save for the substance, though no doubt the words are often his own; if he corrected, he would assuredly do so much more freely than another would feel free to do.]

The great principle upon which a Christian stands is as to what is his life, and from whence it flows. The Christian is said to be raised from the dead - to have risen with Christ; and whatever is not thus quickened and risen is not of Christ. "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." All blessing and comfort is associated with this life in resurrection. There is the entering on a new position, and the setting aside for ever all previous and natural situation.

The apostle alludes to this in the preceding chapter where he says, "And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses." And again, in chapter 3: 1: "If ye then be risen with Christ." The principle of life flows then from this: that he is dead, dead with Christ, quickened with Christ, risen with Christ; thus manifesting his practical identification with Christ in all things.

In Ephesians 2 it is said, "You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins," to manifest "what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead." The same power which wrought in Christ's resurrection is effectual for the spiritual resurrection of His people. "God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ . . . and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."

The Christian then, being quickened with Christ, has the resurrection-life of Christ, and is privileged to sit in Him in heavenly places, unto eternal life, as Christ is now sitting at the right hand of God; and the consequence of this position, when made known to the soul, is to bring in a rich revenue of joy and comfort, even "joy and peace in believing."

Now, where an individual is not in this position, it is just to be under all his trespasses and sins - to have them upon himself. He is a sinner, as all are; but he is nothing else than a sinner in thought, principle, affection, and standing; all that he is, and he is nothing else. Perhaps he may not outwardly have manifested as much sin as others. He may have been restrained by regard to decorum; he may not have been placed in such circumstances as to draw it out equally with others. He may not have had the opportunity as others of appearing as great a sinner, but still he is a sinner, and nothing else. If he has committed, in thought, word, or act, one sin that is the evidence that he is a sinner, as one bad fruit evidences the unsoundness of the tree. Where did he get the inclination to transgress? No union of outward circumstances could have brought forth what was not within.

63 Now there is no association of principle with God as long as man remains in that state; but it decidedly manifests his departure from God. It was that which caused Adam to be driven out from the presence of God; actual transgression, arising from dissociation of principle from God; and all Adam's responsible posterity have actually transgressed; and so their natural position is, alienation from God: and except those who have received the new life, being dead with Christ and risen with Him - that is just the position and standing of every individual. There is no difference of their being driven out - all were driven out in Adam. As it says in Romans, "There is no difference, for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God."

There is one grand sin which leads men to the commission of all others - the desire to please themselves. If this has once been acted on, it constitutes that man a sinner; just as the breach of one law of the land stamps a man a criminal. We do not require him to run through the transgression of every law in the statute book in order to bring him in guilty; his having broken one is the evidence of his guilt. we need no further proof. While acting then on this as a principle, we are spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. There is no life, no love, in us; as our Saviour said to those by whom He was surrounded: "I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you" Now this is the real fact, that there is no assimilation to God in man's natural state; but the contrary principle - hatred, enmity.

Now this is the position of every individual of the human race, until called out of the general mass by divine grace He is sprung from Adam, associated with him in his sin, as to its guilt and condemnation, belongs to that world which has the guilt not only of leaving God but of positively rejecting Him. That is the world he loves, belongs to, and forms a part of; and whether his transgressions are few or great, he is doomed to destruction, if he continue so to the end. Just as in the case of the flood: doubtless there was a wide difference in the amount of actual transgressions among the sinful inhabitants of the world at that time; but none were saved but Noah. Many might even have bid fair to be saved, so as to be near the ark, but none were saved except such as were in the ark. So in Sodom: many had not so openly exhibited their enmity to God as others, and yet, in the general conflagration, Lot alone escaped; and why? Just because all the others, without distinction, were opposed to God - were quite opposite to Him in every principle, and consequently had come to that state of exclusion from God's presence.

64 If so, we are at present without God in the world; and to be for ever without Him is perfect misery. And is not this really the present position of the world, though they are unconscious of it? There is a veil cast on futurity, as it regards them. They are occupied in the pleasures, amusements, profits, and pursuits of a Christ-rejecting world. But when the veil is raised, then will their position be disclosed. And whosoever is of Christ will have Christ's portion; they will enter on the enjoyment of that portion, which by faith they now see is prepared for them.

By faith alone have we any of these exceeding great promises now. Now is the time for us to ascertain by faith our personal identification with Christ. Now are we to know our interest in Him. The time is coming, yea, swiftly coming, when we shall know even as we are known; and as we are now quickened, raised, brought forth, what should be the effects but to manifest our identification with Christ, in a union so close and abiding that Paul says, "We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones"?

Christ went down into death for our transgressions, though holy, yet accounted guilty. He did suffer the penalty of sin, and was brought "into the dust of death." He became dead. Having thus put away sin, He rose again - He is a risen Christ. A risen Christ is one that was dead; and it is with a risen Christ that we have now to do. This state of blessedness He reveals to the soul by the Spirit of truth. He reveals what He had done in man's estate for man: as having borne our sins, and thus evidencing that "the wages of sin is death." The believer then knows experimentally what Christ was doing here. He was bearing sin on the cross, and making sacrifice of Himself to the justice of God; "It pleased Jehovah to bruise him."

65 Now there is the point on which the Christian rests: the power of the recognition of God's pleasure and God's approbation in the sufferings and sacrifice of Christ; the point at which we feel the woes of Jesus inflicted: not the external perception, irrespective of a personal interest in His unexampled afflictions, such as the daughters of Jerusalem felt, when they bewailed and lamented Him. "Daughters of Jerusalem," said He, "weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children."

To weep in tender sympathy for human sufferings and woe does not testify a union of sentiment with God; but the recognition of the wherefore "it pleased Jehovah to bruise him," leading us to sorrow for those sins, and to rejoice at the Lord's approbation of their removal. This is a godly affection; this brings to the soul a perception of Christ's woes, when He says, "Thou hast brought me into the dust of death." When the cup of suffering was presented to Him, mixed up with the bitterness of our sins - holy, yet agonised - sinless, yet bruised: does not this present us with the view God must take of sin? When we see, not the perpetrator, but the bearer of sin only, exposed to such unexampled sufferings; and yet where, in what position, can we perceive so clearly and completely the riches of divine grace, and love, and mercy, as here? - " He spared not his own Son."

It is not merely the fact that He was left as it were to the unmitigated rage of man; it was not merely that Adam's sinful race were permitted to "persecute and take him"; but God Himself withdrew the comfortable perception of the light of His countenance, which extorted from Him that bitter cry, "My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" The prophet, in the prospect of this event, declares in Isaiah 53. "He had done no violence, neither was deceit found in his mouth: yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him" - and why?

There must have been some great concern passing between heaven and earth; some wonderful transaction pending between God and man; some immense negotiation which was now to be decided, sufficient to awaken the world, and into which the very "angels desire to look." There must have been a something great and tremendous to have had such consequences attached to it; to have seen Him of whom the Father's testimony was, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"; and yet "pleased to bruise him!"

66 When this great mystery is understood (and none but a believer can enter into the spiritual perception of it), the soul is brought out of a state of death and darkness, and is translated into life and light. It then sees and feels what it was that caused the Father to bruise Him, and the Son willing to be bound. When the believer sees Christ reduced to that state of suffering as to cry, "Now is my soul troubled," then the believer himself experiences something of this soul-trouble; when he hears Him exclaim, "The waters are come in, even unto my soul!" and sees Christ "sore amazed, and very heavy," then he participates in spirit in it; he sees, feels, believes it; and, seeing in it the evidence of the love of Christ, is glad, and rejoices.

And now, what were all these sufferings about? Sin, sin was the cause of all, and such sin as to draw down such fearful consequences on the bearer of it - how tremendous! Now, if we are not such wrath-deserving sinners, for whom was it undertaken? Assuredly not for us. If we have not come to the consciousness that our individual sins were so aggravated that in full justice they deserved what was laid on Jesus; that as He was bearing our sin, so was He bearing the penalty of it; if we are not brought to see these sins as ours, and the guilt of them ours, we have no consciousness of assimilation or union with Christ. If any of you can say, I know nothing of this soul-trouble, this does not describe my feelings and state, then what have you to do with the promises of eternal life to the miserable, wretched, sinful? If you can say, It is not so with me; I do not think myself so bad as to draw down such heavy judgments upon me individually; I am not worse than others, and sin is not such a grief to me; then assuredly all these sufferings and agony and woe cannot be manifestly about you.

If the consciousness of it has not been to make you "sore amazed and very heavy," troubled and oppressed, then is Christ crucified no concern as yet of yours. But if we have seen and received the truth, that the death of Christ was the wages of our sins; if we have seen and understood the meaning and sense of His sufferings and death, and by appropriation can lay claim to them as ours, then the resurrection comes home to our souls with a quickening and revivifying power.

67 If we have seen Him really bearing the consequences of our sins, brought into the dust of death for us; if we can experimentally understand Christ on the tree, bearing the heavy burden of His people's sins - so heavy, that they bore Him to the very dust of death and brought Him low, even to the grave; if we can see Him rising without them, having put them away by His precious blood; then are we in a state to enter into the perception of that glorious privilege, "having forgiven you all trespasses." Though our sins brought Him down to the grave, yet they could not hold Him there, "because it was not possible that he should be holden of it." He rose, having triumphed over sin; He left sin no longer on His people or Himself, but washed it all away, never to appear against them, never again to draw down heaven's wrath.

The grave then has borne witness with us that He was dead; that He put away sin, rose above it and every enemy: the full tide of His people's iniquity was here expiated, and for ever! Eternal justice poured down the punishment which sin deserved, until sin was no more. Christ, having risen from the dead, became the living witness that the justice and truth of God were for ever satisfied. Had there been one sin unatoned for, there the surety must have remained. "Thou shalt not depart thence till thou hast paid the very last mite": that is what the law exacts, but the penalty was paid in all its demands, and eternal justice perfectly satisfied.

There was no more required, nothing more demanded; and all this in perfect accordance with the purpose, counsel, and determination of God. The sins were owned, were confessed in penitence and shame, were mourned over, and the bearer held up to heaven, on which were to be inflicted the terrible effects of God's wrath. That wrath He met, and thus for ever settled the question between God and sin.

There is no more suffering for sin; the controversy is now at an end for ever. Now the believer has done with sin, as regards God's anger and condemnation; he also is risen, risen with Christ - has recognised it as his sin which is put away by the Redeemer - that He was accounted the guilty one. Seeing this, he sees his sin put away; if he did not, it would be to suppose that the sufferings were not commensurate to the extent of sin; that the death of the victim has not expiated all; that it is not all done away with; but the believer, who is conscious of having risen with Christ, sees sin gone, forgotten, no more to be remembered. It is actually gone as regards us (believers); and in that position we are actually standing in the presence of God, justified from all things, risen with Him without sin unto salvation, brought up before God in a justified state.

68 Who then can (or shall) lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God Himself that justifieth; it is Christ Himself that died, yea rather, that is risen; nay in Him His people are complete, and made one by virtue of union with Him here. How solid is the ground for peace, and an occasion for great rejoicing, "He was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification." Now we see that this mighty transaction was all about us, and that we are the persons interested in it. Now indeed we see why Christ became incarnate, suffered, and died: it was for us, and for us too He rose again. The moment we can, by faith, see our personal interest in the sinless sufferings of Christ, that moment we have the certainty of our redemption; we taste of the cup which He drank, and are associated with Him in all He did and suffered.

Having seen what we belonged to as heirs of the first Adam, "by nature children of wrath, even as others," we now see our entrance on another position, as heirs of the second Adam; we see that, as we did belong to that system of whose members it is said, "They have all gone out of the way"; and that "there is none good, no, not one"; and that "they drink in iniquity like water"; believers can say, "Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all"; they are now translated into another state, another system of things; they are "risen with him through the faith of the operation of God"; they have heard the voice of the Son of God, and live; they live the life of Christ; and though this life is not fully exhibited in this present dispensation, yet it is a real true life.

There is more truth in God's life than in man's life: it is not a name, a voice, a notion, but eternal life, that very life which Christ has now, that very life which is without end, that we have. "He that hath the Son hath life"; he has it now: there is no such thing as shall, as regards our possession of it. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life"; and is not the believer called upon, by these wonderful mercies, by this stupendous grace, to exhibit his possession of this eternal life? He is. And how? The apostle says, "Seek those things which are above," Col. 3: 3.

69 Now, brethren in the Lord Jesus, are you doing so? Are you dead now to all that you were conscious of being alive to before? It is true, your life is hid now to sight, you see it not; but "blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." It is, nevertheless, a certain life; and when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall they who have been quickened by the life-giving power of the Son of God appear with Him; then will it be seen that there is, and there can be, "no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus." Of this they are now conscious, for "he that believeth hath the witness in himself." Yes, they have the eternal Spirit testifying to the believer of the truth of God, making known to him his personal identification with Christ, his oneness with Him, as well as his perfect acceptance and justification in consequence of His work.

In the sensible enjoyment of this the believer lives, and walks accordingly. He lives, subject to this new life which he derives from Christ; it has its desires, affections, and objects of delight. Your natural life has its likings and attractions, "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life"; and so has the life of God - Christ in glory, having triumphed over every enemy, and holiness and happiness with Him in heaven: these are our objects, our desires - the affections tend upwards to them.

Suppose a person now alive with Christ in glory, what would be his desires, feelings, and pursuits? Just similar, then, should be that of those who are alive with Him with that life which Christ gives. The glory of God should be their one end and aim. They have not merely the forfeited life which Adam lost, but eternal life.

The peculiar joy of the believer is the consciousness that he stands before God as Jesus stands; that he is a partaker of that love which God has for Jesus. So prayed Christ, "that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." Where can we know anything of this love but in Jesus? The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He alone declares it. He brings it to our souls as one that knows it Himself, and tells us that God has loved us as He loves Him.

70 Here then is the position of the Christian, and it is a position of deep blessedness, everlasting blessedness, to stand as Christ stands before God, without the shadow or imputation of sin, perfectly justified, to be loved with the same love. This is wondrous blessing; and this is Christ's joy and delight, to bring them into the same blessedness with Himself, as happy as Himself. It is His very rejoicing to come and make known to the soul these great and inestimable privileges, to reveal Himself and the Father by the eternal Comforter; and, notwithstanding the weariness of the flesh, the body of corruption, and the many, many hindrances to the enjoyment of this privileged spiritual existence, yet doth grace triumph over all in the soul of the believer, enabling him in faith to enter into the appropriation of Christ's declaration: "My Father and your Father, my God and your God." Standing as in the presence of God, free from all condemnation, resulting from what Christ has done and suffered, having made reconciliation for iniquity and brought in everlasting righteousness. Now faith realises this; it recognises the justice of God satisfied, and His love well pleased; it rests on this, and lives in the enjoyment of it.

Now do you believe this? If you do, what practical effects has it led to? Are you dead to the world? Would you like to be dead? Would you feel it painful to be as dead to the world as Christ is now? There can be no assimilation to heaven in the things, desires, and pursuits of this world. The world does not like heaven, nor anything belonging to heaven: such is the judgment that was passed on it; it was proved when the Lord came down from heaven, and they turned Him out of the world. God had one Son; there was just one thing in heaven with which God would try man; "I have yet one Son, it may be they will reverence him." But no; they would not let Christ have the world, neither would they have Him. Men did not like Him; He was not the portion they wanted, and therefore they got rid of Him.

Now we must either have the portion of the world, or Christ's portion. Happy they who have the Lord for their portion! Happy they who are dead to all the little gilded toys of the world, which Satan has scattered around in order to entrap us! All the blessings and fulness of the Father's love are in Christ's portion; but then He is a Saviour that is dead to every other portion; soon will this be, not a hidden treasure, but a manifested one. He is now gathering out of the world His own, picking them out from among all nations, testifying His unwearied patience and forbearance towards still unpunished sinners; but when the last saint has been brought into the church, Christ Himself will then appear, to the joy of those who have confessed His name here and borne testimony to His truth, who have been content to give up all for Him. It will be then quite another scene from what the world anticipates, quite another dispensation; and what the saints have been waiting for will then be accomplished - "the manifestation of the sons of God."

71 Have you believed this? If you have, do you act on it? Are you looking for, and hastening towards, the appearing of the glory of the Lord? Are you conscious of being dead to that world which crucified Christ? When you say, We are "risen with Christ," are you conscious of a distaste to, a dissociation from, those things that crucified Him? or are you alive to a judged world? are you favouring that world?

If you are, then are you fit assessors over it? for the word of God declares, "the saints shall judge the world." "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts." "If we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him." "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth."

If you are one with Christ, walk in the privileges of that union, and "when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory."

Washing the Disciple's Feet

John 13: 1-11

J. N. Darby.

<12008E> 72

Notes of Sermons

These first thirteen discourses were delivered without any thought of extending them beyond the immediate congregation to whom they were addressed. They were taken down by one of the congregation, and are now at the desire of a brother made public, with the permission, but without any revision of the preacher. Dublin, 1838.

[The Editor would say here, once for all, that the contents of this volume in general being mere notes, he has taken the liberty of correcting the more obvious slips, most of which are perhaps due to such a means of transmission. The author is not justly responsible save for the substance, though no doubt the words are often his own; if he corrected, he would assuredly do so much more freely than another would feel free to do.]

Two of these verses claim particular attention in commencing our subject. The first is, "Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end"; and verse 3: "Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God": for these reasons He arose from supper, and prepared to wash His disciples' feet. Observe, dear friends, His knowledge that the hour was come when He should depart out of this world unto the Father, and loving His own which were in the world unto the end, was one reason why our Lord washed the feet of His disciples; and knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God, was another reason why He washed their feet.

This demands our attentive consideration: why His leaving the world, and the love which He had to His own which were in the world, and His knowledge of the power over all things which was given Him by the Father, His coming from God and now going to Him, should be the reasons why our Lord (as related in this chapter) laid aside His garments, and took a towel, and girded Himself. He did this because His hour was come that He should depart out of this world, and because He loved His disciples unto the end. The reason is explained by what passed between our Lord and Peter: "Then cometh he to Simon Peter; and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter. Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me. Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head."

Here, dear friends, we see the reason why our Lord's leaving the world, loving His own which were in the world, and an apprehension of His future glory, led Him to wash His disciples' feet. All is explained by His saying, "If I wash thee not thou hast no part with me." What do we learn from this? That all His people have a part with Him; they partake of all the benefits of His life and death; they are loved of the Father as Christ Himself is loved by Him; they have a part with Him in His future glory; they are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ; they shall reign for ever with Christ, sitting with Him on His throne. In all things they are one with Him, and hence they are assured, "All things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." I say then, dear friends, it was because His own had a part with Him that He washed their feet, when He knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father; it was "because he loved them unto the end, and was come from God, and went to God." Before He left the world, He thus declared why He had come into the world, that His people should have a part with Him, as I have already noticed. By washing their feet, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, He declared that the love which He had for His disciples, while He was with them in the world, would continue after He had left them, and went to God and the glory that He had with Him before the world was. Washing their feet, with a perfect view of this glory, and a consciousness that He would soon enjoy it, also signified that when in this glory He would continue to wash their feet, according to what He said to Peter: "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me": and "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet"; which we shall afterwards consider.

73 Dear friends, I now direct your attention to the love of Christ for all who have a part with Him. He shewed this love in coming into the world to save them. While in this world, how great was the love He manifested for His disciples! No afflictions, toils, or sufferings that He endured, ever prevented the exercise of this love; neither did their errors, weaknesses, or defects. One denying, all forsaking Him, did not abate it; it overcame, it continued through all. His hour was now come that He should depart out of this world: death - that death which He had undertaken to endure, that they might live for ever with Him in glory - was before Him, and He viewed it with a full comprehension of its sufferings. Did this present any obstacle to the exercise of His love? No: His was a love stronger than death; and therefore we read in Luke 9: 51 "And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up [as we read in another place, 'knowing all things that should come upon him'], he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem." He knew that He had there to contend with the powers of darkness, followed by His sufferings, death, and the grave; yet, with a full prospect of all, He stedfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. Why? Love urged Him onwards - love for His disciples, for all who have a part with Him. It was His Father's appointment; and therefore He said, "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" It was His own free engagement, expressed in verse 6 of Psalm 40: "Mine ears hast thou opened": better translated, and as you read it in the margin of some Bibles, "Thou hast digged ears for me." God the Father digged ears for Christ. What does this signify? That the Father appointed and prepared Christ to hear and obey His will in saving His people in the type of His service for ever.

74 There is a shade of difference in the case of a Hebrew who preferred serving his master to his liberty, as we read in Exodus 21: a Hebrew servant who had served his master for seven years was then entitled to liberty. The terms of servitude and its termination are there related: if he came in by himself, without wife or children, he should go out by himself; if he was married, then his wife should go out with him; if his master gave him a wife, and she had borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children should be his master's; but if the servant, who may have his liberty and go out by himself, should plainly say, "I love my master, I love my wife and my children, I will not go out free," then his master should bore his ear to the door-post, to signify that he was to serve him for ever.

Here, dear friends, is an exact representation of Christ's love for the church. He might have been for ever free from servitude and go out by Himself; He was not bound (I now speak of Him as God) to suffer and die for sinners; but His Father had given Him a wife and children. You know, that in Scripture the church is described as the wife of Christ, and its members as the children. In Ephesians 5, speaking of marriage, the apostle declares, "This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church"; and in Hebrews 2, Christ is represented as saying, "Behold, I and the children which God hath given me." And, as in the case of the Hebrew servant, who so loved his master and his wife and children that he preferred serving his master to his liberty, from love to his master, to his wife, and children; so did Christ plainly declare to His Father, I will not go out free; I love my Father, I love the church, I love the children; mine ear shall be bored; I will bind myself to that the Father has given me to do and to suffer for their salvation, having taken upon me the form of a servant, assumed their nature, descended into their world, and endured all that is needful to raise them to fellowship with the Father and myself in heavenly glory. This, dear brethren, was the reason that death, and a full apprehension of its sufferings, could not prevent the exercise of Christ's love for His people. I say, He stedfastly beheld it, yet never turned aside from it: floods of anguish overwhelmed Him; they compelled Him to cry out, as we read in Psalm [6]9: "Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in the deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying." Did this abate the love which was needed to endure it? Did it here fail? Did He turn aside from the bitter cup? No: these many waters could not drown His love; He drank up the dreadful flood, that His people might be delivered from it: He took their place in suffering, that they might take His place in glory! I say, dear friends, it was in the exercise of this love, and in the prospect of the continuance after He had entered into His glory, that our Head when He knew that He should depart out of this world, girded Himself, and washed His disciples' feet; and this brings us to a particular consideration of what is signified. As I have already said, It was because they had a part with Him that He washed their feet.

75 He certainly intended it as a proof and example of humility and condescension. But observe, while He washed their feet, He said unto Peter, "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." This proves that by it our Lord signified another washing, also evident from Peter's saying unto Him, "Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head." This washing is not the cleansing of their persons, or the pardon of all their sins; as declared by our Lord saying to Peter, "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit." Here the entire cleansing of His people is described; they are compared to him who has just left the bath, and is perfectly clean; but we know that his feet might become that moment defiled; and this, dear friends, is precisely our case. I now speak of believers; Christ appears in the presence of God for us. This proves that He has for ever removed all our sins; for this He came into our world and lay in the grave. His resurrection, and now appearing in the presence of God is, I say, a sufficient proof that He has for ever removed from God's sight all our sins; His blood is in their place; they are washed, born of water and of the Spirit, through which they are clean every whit: but, dear friends, our feet are continually defiled; we live in a defiling world, our earthly nature continues, Satan and the world act on it: what is the consequence? Our mind and conscience are perpetually defiled; not that the guilt of our sins ever returns to the view of God. This cannot be; Christ is ever before Him for us, and His blood is now in the place where our sins were seen. But I say our sin and its guilt defile our mind and conscience; it troubles us, it obscures the glory to which we are called, it interrupts our communion with God and the blessedness of fellowship with Christ and the Father.

76 Here is the defilement of our feet, from which we need continual washing; but because we have a part with Christ, though now in His glory, He never ceases to wash our feet. How does He wash them? By removing from our mind and conscience everything that interrupts our communion with God, and its glory and blessedness. We believe that we are admitted to this; but, through the influence of nature and a defiling world, we cannot always enjoy it: everything in our nature, everything in the world, interrupts our fellowship with Christ and the Father, and mars our enjoyment of it. We still believe, we look up, but if the least guilt remains on the conscience we are dazzled, and perplexed; the glory appears too high for us to reach or enjoy. Then how does Christ wash our feet? I say, by delivering us from the consciousness of guilt and its influence: He restores to us a sense of complete pardon; He delivers us from the power of nature and the world; He brings us into unhindered communion with Himself and the Father, and the enjoyment of its glory and blessedness. He again brings down to our apprehension what we are as seen in Him, and enables us to rejoice in it; and thus does He ever continue to wash our feet.

77 Dear friends, you now see the reason why Christ acted as a servant to His disciples when He was departing out of this world: "He loved them unto the end"; the end, not only of His life on earth, but during His eternal reign in glory. To them, to all who have a part with Him, He is a servant still; He washes their feet, as I have noticed, and in all His feelings towards them is precisely the same as He was when on earth; no change, no alteration whatever. Did His love for His disciples triumph over every obstacle to its exercise, over all their errors and defects, their defect in attachment to Himself? Such is His present love for all who have a part with Him. Did He bear with all the ignorance, errors, and weaknesses of His disciples, and only notice them to pardon and restore? Thus does He bear with His people now, equally compassionate and ready to supply all their wants. Did He say, "I am among you as he that serveth"? did He actually serve them, pouring water into a basin, and washing their feet, and wiping them with the towel wherewith He was girded? He is the servant of His people still: He washes their feet with the same condescension and love that He felt for His disciples when He was leaving them to depart out of this world. Dear friends, let us ever remember that Christ, though now in His glory, is in all things precisely the same as He was when on earth; present with us at all times to render us the same services. We are one with Him, and He with us; no distinction, no separation, as it respects His sympathy in all that concerns us: "In all their affliction he was afflicted"; "we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." Hence, after He had ascended and entered into His glory, when Paul persecuted His people, He said unto him, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" He will say, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." In serving His people He considers nothing that affects them unworthy of His notice. He said unto Ananias, "Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus": He knows the street and house where His people dwell, that He might there render them all needful services; for this He numbers the hairs of their heads.

Knowing that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, and that He would continue to love and serve His people, it was for this reason Jesus washed His disciples' feet. But why is it said, that when Jesus knew that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, and that the Father had given all things into His hands, He arose from supper and washed the disciples' feet? I say, why did He do this at the prospect of His eternal fellowship with the Father, and His dominion over all things that the Father had given into His hands? Because He knew that in that glory, and possessing power over all things, He would be the servant of His people for ever. How is He to serve them when they are with Him in His heavenly kingdom? By ministering to their happiness and enjoyment. This He Himself declares, as we read in Luke 12. After exhorting His disciples to watch for His coming, He said, "Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily, I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them."

78 Dear friends, here we perceive that Christ will ever be the servant of His people; when they are with Him in His glory He will be unto them all that He was when on earth, so far as they need His services: they will need them only for their enjoyment; and for this, I say, He will always serve His people with the same love and compassion that He felt for His disciples when He washed their feet. His fellowship with the Father, His power over all things that the Father has put into His hands, He will ever use for making His people perfectly happy. Now He washes their feet by removing from them everything that hinders their enjoyment of fellowship with Himself and the Father; because our earthly nature and all contact with a defiling world continually interrupt this enjoyment. But when we are with Him in His heavenly glory, we shall enjoy unhindered communion with God, and its full and perfect blessedness: to secure it Christ will still serve us. Is it not said, "He shall gird himself and make them sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them"? Yes, He will do this by revealing and imparting unto them all that is needful for their perfect happiness. They shall feast with Him; and in this feast He will serve them, they the guests, and He ministering to their enjoyment. And what a feast will that be! how great the delight which it will afford, when He who is Lord of all supplies, serves, and entertains every one who is admitted into it!

79 Now, dear friends, you see the reason why Jesus washed His disciples' feet, when He knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, and that the Father had given all things into His hands. He then began the service which, in another manner, He will fulfil for ever. Now, I say, He washes our feet by removing from us all that defiles our mind and conscience, and hinders our enjoyment of the glory to which He has raised us. Yes; we have fellowship with Him in His present glory, but a defiled mind and conscience interrupt its comfort and blessedness. "God," says the apostle in Ephesians 2, "hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." I say we now live with Christ in His glory; but our earthly nature is still in a defiling world. We resemble the priests who served in the court of the temple, and had free admittance to the holy place. They were never removed from their service - why? Because their persons had been washed and arrayed to prepare them for it. No need to repeat this, no renewal of their title to their sacred office. But their hands and feet were continually defiled by the blood of the sacrifices.

Then what must they do? Not depart from their place and office; provision was made for cleansing them. The laver was placed between the brazen altar and the holy place, in which they washed their hands and feet, and then they served in the tabernacle. This, dear brethren, is precisely our case. We are priests, and now dwell with Christ in spirit; for God has raised us together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and He has made us kings and priests unto God and His Father. No alteration in our place and title, no removal from it. Christ has washed us, and we are clean every whit, and therefore we dwell with Him in heaven itself; we are admitted to unhindered communion with Him who is our sacrifice, our altar of incense, our table of shew-bread, our ark of the covenant - all that was in the temple; our hands and feet are continually defiled. What must we do? Precisely what they did - feel that our place with Christ and our title as priests are never altered; for these we have been cleansed and arrayed, and, like the priests in the temple, we have only to wash our feet meanwhile. Christ, I say, dear friends, continues to render us this service. The world and Satan act on our earthly nature. We cannot in any degree come in contact with the world without defilement; for who can touch pitch and not be defiled? But these never move us from our heavenly place in Christ, nor alter our title as priests unto God and His Father. Christ washes our feet, removes defilement from our minds and conscience, delivers us from the power of these things which cause its defilement; and again we enjoy full fellowship with Him in the holy place into which God has raised us and made us to sit together in Christ Jesus.

80 Thus, dear friends, have I endeavoured to shew you why our Lord washed the feet of His disciples, knowing that the Father had given all things in His hands. Let us consider the obligation which this presents to His people, according to what we read in the chapter before us. "So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master and Lord; and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet." How are we to fulfil this? As Christ does in His heavenly glory. I noticed the way in which Christ washed His disciples' feet, when He was with them in the world. He patiently endured all their infirmities, errors, and defects, that He might intercede for them, and remove from their hearts and minds everything that defiled them. And so in His glory Christ is ever engaged in thus serving His people. And He truly declared, "Ye also ought to wash one another's feet"; as I said, in the same manner, patiently enduring their ignorance, errors, weaknesses, defects, any defilement that cleaves to them - patiently enduring it, I say, that we might be the means of removing it. The servant is not greater than his Lord. If Christ, now in His glory, is thus engaged, we should think it an honour to resemble Him. How are we to resemble Christ in washing one another's feet? By endeavouring to remove from our Christian brethren everything that defiles their mind and consciences, and hinders the blessedness of their fellowship with Christ and the Father; bearing their burdens, comforting them in their afflictions, and restoring them to a right mind by affectionate reproof; also, by praying for them. Yes, we should resemble Christ, who is their High Priest, ever restoring, ever interceding for them; by endeavouring, I say, to deliver them from their defilement, to remove their sorrows, and to disengage them from nature and the world by a faithful testimony of their error. We should also pray for them, pray for their deliverance from everything that defiles and troubles them; like our Lord and Master, ever meek, patient, compassionate, and tender in our conduct towards them. This is recommended in Philippians 2: "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." The example of Christ is there proposed to us: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant . . . and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."

81 Dear friends, when we consider how little we resemble Christ in His humility, and in all that He did and is now doing as the servant of His people, we cannot wonder that the apostle said, "I have no man like-minded, who will naturally care for your state; for all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's." Why are we disinclined to resemble Christ in His services to His disciples? Because we so faintly apprehend the glory in which He now reigns. Observe, dear friends, the prospect of His soon enjoying this glory is said to be the reason that Christ girded Himself and washed His disciples' feet; He knew that when in this glory He would continue what He meant by the service. He rejoiced at it; it was part of the joy set before Him; and therefore, I say, He washed the disciples' feet. We see but little of the glory of Christ, and of our glory in having a part with Him; and for this reason we are not inclined to imitate and obey our Lord and Master in washing one another's feet. As we behold this glory, and enjoy it, so will be our inclination and pleasure to fulfil the lowest service for His disciples. For in truth, the services that I mean are the highest; because they make us like Him who washed His disciples' feet, who now serves them in all which it signified, and will be their servant for ever. Observe, then, dear friends, our Lord's declaration: "If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet." The Lord bless His word, and enable us all to obey Him.

Before I conclude, let me say a word to those who may not yet have experienced any of the services of Christ. To you, dear friends, I present Him as a Saviour; if you see and feel your separation from God, because your sins interpose between you and Him, believe in Christ, and your sins will be removed from the sight of God, and then you will enjoy all the present and future glory and blessedness of those who have a part with Christ. Your sins, whatever they may be, are no obstacle to your enjoyment of this glory. If all the sins that ever were committed in the world were congregated in your persons and were your own act, this need not prevent your believing in Christ, and coming unto God through Him. Christ bore in His own body on the tree the sins of all who believe in Him; and now lives in the presence of God for them. I say, whatever be their sins, though great as the sin of His murderers, for even these He pardoned. Believe in Him, dear friends, and you will enjoy all His services, and reign with Him in His glory. The Lord bless what has been said to all who hear me, and to Him be all praise. Amen.

God for us

Romans 8: 31

J. N. Darby.

<12009E> 83

Notes of Sermons

These first thirteen discourses were delivered without any thought of extending them beyond the immediate congregation to whom they were addressed. They were taken down by one of the congregation, and are now at the desire of a brother made public, with the permission, but without any revision of the preacher. Dublin, 1838.

[The Editor would say here, once for all, that the contents of this volume in general being mere notes, he has taken the liberty of correcting the more obvious slips, most of which are perhaps due to such a means of transmission. The author is not justly responsible save for the substance, though no doubt the words are often his own; if he corrected, he would assuredly do so much more freely than another would feel free to do.]

There is much to weary us, dear brethren, much to draw out our anxiety as to present circumstances here; and there is much as regards the natural mind which shrinks at meeting God. The natural conscience of a man, even while he is engaged in the things of this life, often testifies to him that all is not right: he may not always, perhaps not often, feel this silent monitor; business, pleasure, gratification, may dissipate the thought that there is something coming which he is not prepared for. But though unwelcome, the thought will obtrude, and weary him, and make him uneasy, particularly if he is externally seeking righteousness; he will be very weary to find he has not courage to meet what he knows he cannot avoid. Nay, even he who disclaims all outward regard to what is right, who is on the broad road of sin and ruin, delighting himself in abounding iniquity, even in his very heyday of enjoyment and sport, an uneasy thought will at some time or another be felt which tells him, This won't do, this is not the end for which I was made; there is something coming. Perhaps he may not experience this while in the very act of his jovial pleasures; but when alone, a word that has been dropped, either in a discourse or a conversation, or something he has read, or a passing circumstance, will force him to acknowledge, Well, after all, that is the truth, whether I believe it or not; this short life must end in a coming judgment, and I am not prepared for it.

This feeling of uneasiness and alarm will obtrude on the mind, whether we view the individual as seeking to justify himself at the approaching day of account, or whether we see him as delighting in the manifested wickedness of his heart. In the one case, he feels his wants, but is looking for strength where it cannot be found, and, making no progress, is very uneasy; and in the other, the very thought of a God who hates the things he is doing every hour in the day, is a thought fraught with alarm. Now I suppose there is no person who has heard the gospel preached, who has not, at one time or another, been made thus uneasy, whether he is seeking what he looks upon as a means of justification from himself, or whether he is seeking for what he esteems its own present value, present enjoyment in sin. This leads him to the consideration of one great thing which in some moment of time he experiences: Well, perhaps after all, God may be against me. It is this that makes the sinner alarmed; and he whose conscience is greatly troubled, who feels his weakness, and finds the difficulty by which he is surrounded, his secret feeling is, God is not at peace with me - He is against me. There is the great truth, the great cause of controversy in the conscience, there is no peace. No matter what are his circumstances, they may vary and change, but will make no change in what makes him thus uneasy: for it is the same calm unchanging God he has to meet, and he is conscious that that God is not at peace with him, and he cannot say, I know, come what will, God is for me.

84 It is this that makes the natural conscience tremble and feel uneasy. There are many under similar experience, even by the teaching of God's Spirit, and are deeply conscious of their not being at peace with God, and continue thus in suffering till God reveals Himself. But I am not now speaking of them, but of those whose natural conscience leads them to know that God is not for them. The Scripture tells us, and the conscience when once enlightened sees, that God met all this in a manner peculiar to Himself - that He met all that a man's conscience can make out against himself, and met it in such a way as to make a man conscious of possessing peace in the Lord Jesus Christ: and it is really wonderful - wonderful beyond our utmost limits of comprehension - when, amidst all our misery, degradation, sinfulness, and weakness, God is found to be for us.

"What shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? "When a man sees God thus settling the question between them, suiting Himself to his peculiar circumstances, and proving Himself to be for him, he has a more realising sense of God's love, and of God's favour towards him, than the angels in heaven who never sinned. When a man is brought to see God for him, there is a breaking down of all that before opposed itself to God: pride, the poor pride of man, is brought down, when once he is brought to the conscious acknowledgment, "God is for us." The soul then sees how completely everything is for him, if God is thus for us. The comfort of the soul consists in this, that God is for it, and that it is for God: then it begins to be conscious of other wants, of which before it knew nothing; it wants to know more of God, it wants to see Him as He is, it wants the glory. It is a comfort to know that that is what it wants. The soul is led to ask now, Why should God be for us? have we been for God? have we rendered God any service? have we acted by His mind? We have not. Why then should we plead, God is for us? It is for nothing in ourselves, for we have slighted His promises, despised His grace, lightly esteemed the more than ten thousand mercies of His daily favour.

85 We have been like the prodigal son, who wasted his very common blessings in riotous living. In all our circumstances we have forgotten Him, in our intercourse with the world we have been acting without Him, loving our ungodly companions rather than Him. O, the wonder, if after all this we should find God was for us! Look at the state man is really in, as regards the trust he puts in man rather than God. If his neighbour should ask him to do anything, though his conscience may tell him God hates what his neighbour wants him to do, still, rather than disoblige his companion, he will sin against God. It would distress him more to refuse him, either in going to ungodly places of amusement, or gratification, or indulging in known sin. Sin was the cause of the rejection of Christ; and therefore every sin has this stamped upon it - the rejection of the Son of God. Our own conscience tells us that sin is against God, and there are few so hardy as to confess that they were for God by the commission of it; and yet, we may say, there is scarcely one among us who is not conscious of this sin, of (rather than refusing our friend or companion) doing what we know is against God. Seeing such to be the case, we see no reason why God should be for us. His judgments have been disregarded, His mercies despised, His name lightly esteemed, little or no notice taken of any temporal favour, except to abuse it; and must not this bring to our conscience the upbraiding thought, Why should we expect God to be for us? What has the world done for God? What has it done with its natural blessings? Sinned them away. With the law of God? Broken it. With the love of Christ and His coming? Rejected Him. With the testimony of the Holy Spirit to the work of Christ? Refused it - takes no pleasure in anything belonging to God, sees no glory, no loveliness, no beauty in Him, which just proves this one thing, that there is no real reason from us on earth why God should be for us, but, as far as we are concerned, every reason why He should be against us.

86 In this state of entire alienation from God, neither seeing nor desiring to see His glory and loveliness, there can be no love in the soul, as long as that soul is living without God, and it has manifestly no interest in the things of God. Being in this position, there is one terrible evil necessarily evident: that if we are living without God, and not following Him, we must be followers of Him who is the enemy of God and of our souls: who is the great deceiver of mankind, and, though he never shews himself, drags his victim down to ruin, and then mocks at his calamity. This is Satan, that arch-deceiver, who was a liar and a murderer from the beginning; who casts out his bait to decoy man, shewing him that, but carefully hiding the hook, that he may have his unresisting prey in his clutches; and man rushes to take the bait, willingly selling himself to Satan, though he is morally conscious that he is not acting according to the commandments of God. And this is not said of any one particular class of character or order of men, for all are included in it: "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." There is nothing that can meet the glory of God in all this.

There is one great thing as regards unrenewed man: he stands in dread of the holiness of God; he cannot contemplate God's glory with delight, but in that glory he must stand if ever he is saved; he may be changed, and he must be changed, if ever he meet it with joy; but that glory changes not. The sun is just as bright when earth obstructs our view of it, as when we behold it; clouds may intervene and hide its glory, but when the clouds are taken away, there is the sun just the same, just as bright, as warm, as glorious as ever; and the moment the veil is taken away, we see it as such. Where is the soul that can stand in the presence of the glory of God, and contemplate that glory in his sullied and natural mind? "Who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth?" A child, in order to see the natural light, must previously be brought into life; and so must we, for God cannot change. Were it possible for God to give up one atom of His glory, or one particle of His holiness, the effect would be that there would be no place where sin would not enter. Who can tell what would be the consequence if God could suffer the least diminution of His glory? Where is the spot that would then be sacred? where would be the place of unfading glory? But God's glory cannot be lessened or diminished, and what secures it is the unchangeable nature of God Himself. It is this, and the consciousness of it, that brings uneasiness and alarm into the soul unchanged by grace; for it is conscious of its unfitness for that glory, that this glory is far removed from what he loves, and that therefore we must feel convinced that God is not for us. If it be really true that God's glory cannot change, who then can be saved? The believer sees it an unchangeable glory, and it delights him. The unbeliever is conscious it must be so, and he is angry: If God be thus, he thinks, why should I have anything to do with Him? He struggles, but unavailingly, to get away from God; he would be glad then that there had been no God: he has no objection to receive God's earthly favours and blessings, sending rain on the just and on the unjust; but, provided he could have what he likes on earth, and the enjoyment of it, he would not care ever to see God, or His glory either.

87 It is not, it cannot be, pleasant to the natural mind to contemplate the judgment. No man likes to be judged; it is not natural to man; he does not like to have this sounded in his ears: "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment": that is the fact, and therefore he is always putting it off. Putting what off? God's presence. He does not want to see God; and is not this practically testifying that he is not at peace with God, that there is something which keeps him still desiring to be kept from God?

It is sorrow, brethren, it is grief, to dwell so long on this subject. There is no comfort in it, did we see nothing further than this. It is sorrow to have to dwell on it; but it is the truth, it is God's truth, that we are sinners, and, as sinners, are averse to God's glory. But, brethren, it is another and a blessed truth that is brought home to the heart of a sinner, when, notwithstanding all this, he finds to his joy and comfort that God is for him. Adam sinned and left God, because he thought more of what Satan offered him; he thought the devil a better friend to him than God: but he has since found out to his cost that the devil was a liar: that he never had the power of giving him what he promised; and that by catching at the devil's baits, he has received his hook, and that "the wages of sin is death." This is what man has done. But, oh! the blessedness of the consciousness that, in spite of all we can do, or Satan devise, the blessing is ours, the glory is ours! We come to see the truth that has risen out of this great truth.

88 The fact turns out quite a different way, when the Holy Spirit is bringing home to our souls that all the time God is for us. O what blessing, what wondrous blessing, is thus brought home to the poor, aching, harassed, anxious soul, when it is given to see that that God whom it despised, that Jesus whom it crucified, that Spirit whom it resisted, are for it! O what gladness to receive daily proofs, that it is one upon whom God is looking in love, in pity, and that He is for it! as the Lord, speaking of the children of Israel, says, "I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people, and I am come down to deliver them!" O what wondrous extent of love! nor height nor depth can reach or fathom it! We are frail men, and Satan exercises his subtlety on us; he knows what to lure us with, and therefore he puts suitable pleasures in our way, and within our reach; he throws his baits most skilfully; he knows the bait that is most seasonable, and he presents it just in the time and under the circumstances most likely to take effect. He knows what our natures like, what they are going after; and so he presents the very thing which, if continued in, must lead to destruction. All this is terrible, dear friends; but under all this there is comfort - the everlasting comfort, if we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, that we have seen and found One who is able to bear us through all this, and set us free from the power and dominion of Satan, making us children of the living God, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.

In this blessed privilege ends all the argument which Paul brings forward in this epistle; he shews them what they are by nature; they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, and so God gave them over to a reprobate mind (that is, a mind incapable of sound judgment in the exercise of what was right or wrong), and the consequence was, they committed all uncleanness with greediness. But "in due time Christ died for the ungodly." Dear brethren, this is the thing that brings comfort and peace and joy to the soul; this is what sets the devil aside; this is what brings a man to cease from loving to sin against God, from rejecting Christ, or refusing the testimony of the Holy Spirit. This is the effect of having this blessed knowledge brought home to the soul; and what a relief it is, after many sad experiences of deeper and deeper misery in the consciousness of sin and anxiety, to be released from it.

89 An individual under a sense of his own unworthiness looks upon others whom the Lord has enabled to act for Him, with a kind of jealousy, and he says, Oh, if I were like such a one, if I acted as consistently and godly as he does! I do not know how he does it; but it is not so with me: I cannot act as he does. God is just bringing him by all this to acknowledge, I am ungodly; and then God says, Yes, you are ungodly; but "in due time Christ died for the ungodly." How, in due time? It was just in due time for us, for we were lost, ruined, had sinned away our blessings, and were without strength, and then Christ died; yea, Christ died for the ungodly. O, what blessed intelligence for poor sinners! "God spared not his own Son"; He gave Him up for the ungodly, for sinners; for those who have no strength, who are without knowledge. Then none are excluded from the privilege, who will plead they are the ungodly; and this is so simple as to be as intelligible to the poor and ignorant as to the rich and wise, and perhaps even more intelligible, and for this very reason, that they are poor and ignorant, and that they are dealing with God in their consciences only, and the others are endeavouring to deal with Him by their knowledge. But God, who is rich in mercy, can bring to nothing the wisdom of the wise, and make them see their want of wisdom.

When the Spirit of God brings to the soul of a sinner this conviction, that he is ungodly, and that he has an interest in the death of the Son of God, he is conscious of being in Him also as a risen Saviour, and has therefore ample encouragement to look to the future. He sees One by faith come down from heaven; he sees God determined to save him, and in such a way as comes home to his heart, by sending His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. By faith he is witnessing what Jesus was doing here, and how He was used. He had a purpose, a holy purpose of love, which He came to execute here, and nothing could divert Him from that purpose. He was pledged to perform it, and therefore on He went, amidst all scorn, reproach, poverty, and contempt. The settled purpose of His heart was to save the ungodly, and so He despised all that was in the way of its accomplishment; He despised the cross, enduring the shame. The laugh of man, the scorn of sinners, was against Him; but what was that to Him? The one thing for which He came down was before Him, and so He went through all, perfectly sinless, and yet unjustly accused; and not only accused, traduced, ridiculed, and spit upon, but brought into the very dust of death. When once the believer enters into the spiritual apprehension of these acknowledged facts, then does he learn that this holy and much-dreaded God is for him - is on his side - has taken his part; then the spring of hope is lifted up in his soul; then he sees it is God for him, and not against him; that it is God, and not man is for him. It was God did all this, and He is for me. He is now no longer too proud to be a debtor to God; the arms of his rebellion and enmity are laid down; he becomes a suppliant; he no longer need dread, as a sinner, to appear before God, knowing, as he does, God's loving-kindness in Christ Jesus; he no longer need fear the day of judgment, nor be troubled, for his cause is made out, and he stands acquitted.

90 This is the great truth that brings joy, peace, and comfort, that in all these things God is for us! O what rest, what happiness for the poor soul, when he sees he has to do with One who has conquered all enemies for him, and in whom he has treasured up all glory for him! Before he came to the consciousness of this, the book of his daily transgressions appeared to ascend up before God, black with the catalogue of his offences, on every leaf of which was written - Sin, sin, sin; but now these blackened characters are effaced, and on each page is transcribed in letters of blood, in the blood of God's dear Lamb - Love, love, love. All the dark spots are now obliterated, for He who is for us has triumphed. He took the load of sin from off us, and suffered the punishment due to the commission of it, and this silences all Satan's accusations. Satan says to the soul, Oh, you are a sinner, you have broken God's laws. The Lord Jesus Christ acknowledges this, takes the sin, and bears the punishment of it unto death. Satan requires the right of judgment to be passed against us, that the Lord in justice ought not to let the sinner go unjudged; he accused him. But "who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? it is God that justifieth." Christ has taken the sinner's place, borne the punishment instead of us, poured out His soul unto death, and thus put away sin. He now is risen, and has ascended into heaven. Thus is sin expiated, and His people clear; thus is Christ proved for us.

91 To enter into the full perception of this blessedness constitutes the enjoyment of the believer. Here he finds a resting-place from the buffeting waves of the world, when he thus sees that, as sinners, God has proved Himself for us, and in the very act He commends His love towards us; for it was while we were such sinners, "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." We see just two things in this - that the sinner is without strength, without riches. Like the poor prodigal, he has spent all he had, and now he comes to himself, and is about to return, he has nothing to bring with him. Like a shipwrecked mariner, all is thrown overboard, everything going adrift, and he himself, struggling with the dark billows, is just cast ashore, wearied and poor, having nothing! but, blessed be God, if we have got to shore, God is there, and He is for us; and this is the mighty point gained, and we know we shall not be cast out again, and that we may lay claim now to all things that God can give. "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?"

Then, brethren, let us trust Him more; let us seek to get more from Him; we cannot look for too much of His favour who has not spared His Son for us: and this, dear brethren, will not lead to presumptuous expectations, but a sense of the greatness of His gifts will keep us humble; and the more deeply we are humbled, the more we are in a state to see and feel how God was and is for us, that Christ bled and died for us as enemies, and that the Father gave His Son for us when we were ungodly. O brethren, this is a blessed sight for faith, and nothing but faith can see it, and seeing this we can see everything is ours. Having Christ, we have all. "How shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" God has bestowed unnumbered blessings on man; but there was one thing which He had in heaven greater than all His other gifts: that one gift He gave, and having given this, shall He, or can He, refuse us anything else that is for our good? Christ is ours, and then it follows, all is ours; "for ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." God, therefore, gives us all things with Christ; not as man gives, for God gives freely - " He freely giveth us all things." The difficulties in our way may continue. Satan may still endeavour to distress and annoy; but we may be well assured, that if God has given us His Son, He has given us all things that will bring us through. He has fitted us for the undertaking, and when once put in order, set off, and set a-going by the power of God, we may be satisfied as to the issue, for Christ has engaged to see us through; we must arrive safely, for God, who has brought us thus far, is still for us; and who shall separate us from His love? "Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" Shall the deceitful pleasures of a false world, or the alluring baits of Satan tempt our souls to destruction? Nay, brethren, "in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him that loved us." Be our way dark or thorny, be it difficult or dangerous, be it in the midst of temptations or cares, the same God is for us, and we know that He went through them before us. Christ suffered, He was tempted, upbraided; wept and made supplication, and brought us through them all, even with groanings and tears, to look up to God as our Father, and heaven as our home: what have we to do with fear then?

92 Brethren, beloved of the Lord, seeing that our God has done such great things for us, we know that God is for us, by the love of Jesus, in going before us in all tribulations, so that nothing should separate us from His love. If you are tempted, dear friends, remember He was tempted before you; if your friends forsake you, remember that Christ is a "friend that sticketh closer than a brother"; the world may leave you, but it is not your friend, but your enemy, "for the friendship of the world is enmity with God"; and you are no longer debtors to the flesh, to live after the flesh, but you live in the Spirit, and therefore should walk in the Spirit, in the same mind that was in Jesus. Whatever temptation you are under, be persuaded, with Paul, of this one thing, that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

What the devil did was to undo our confidence in God: what Jesus did is to shew us that we may trust Him. And when the believer sees not this, he is looking to the devil and his temptation more than to the love and power of Christ, who has conquered all his enemies for him; but when our eyes are off all other objects, and on Christ, then, and then only, we can have peace.

Now, dear friends, I would just, in conclusion, ask you, Have you been led to come, as you are, ungodly sinners, to God? not to bring your own righteousness, which is nothing but filthy rags; but have you come pleading the blood-shedding of the Lamb of God? If you have, assuredly there is peace for you, for that is a sure token that God is for you. Or have you been acting against God all your lives, and have never found peace? Are you still tormented with a guilty conscience, and are you still rejecting and refusing the way of salvation? I would earnestly beseech you to consider the danger you are in, and I would ask you to look before you, and see where you are going, and what you are doing. You are wandering in the midst of the wide sea of this world, you are toiling through its waves without a prospect of deliverance; and if persisted in, you will, ere long, sink down into the sleep of death, to wake in eternal misery. Should you be found thus when Christ comes, you will feel, to your shame and grief, that there is One against you greater than Satan, who can destroy both him and you.

93 But be of good cheer if your hearts are set on Christ: there is your stay, the anchor of your soul. If He is such, dear friends, stand forward for Him; be not ashamed to own your relationship to Him, your dependence on Him: be decided, cut short all expedients for deferring the bold acknowledgment of your being His; confess Him before men, and act for Him, and live for Him in an ungodly world. He is not ashamed to call you brethren; and will you be ashamed to confess Him as your Lord and Master in the face of all the world? Be not debating within yourselves, when you shall avow yourselves; do it at once, decidedly. Make the plunge, and trust God for the consequence. I know it by experience, that an open bold confession of being Christ's is more than half the struggle over. I know the devil tempts, and says, O do not be too hasty, you might ruin the cause by over-forwardness; this is not the time to confess yourself openly, wait for another opportunity. But I say, dear friends, as one who knows, that if a man, in the strength of the Lord, is just brought to say to his companions and friends, I am Christ's, and I must act for Him - that he will not suffer what others will feel who are creeping on fearful and afraid to avow Him whom they desire to serve. Believe me, my friends, it is as I say: by this decided and open opposition to the world he may at first be laughed at and mocked; but what of that? Christ was served so. But soon, when his companions find him resolute, they will give him up as a bad case which they can make no hand of, and they will leave him comparatively free from ridicule.

94 Are there any of you who are thus halting between two opinions, and afraid to confess your obligations to the Lord? Oh! I once more entreat you to be candid. Be open, be decided, confess Christ's name on earth, and He will not be ashamed to confess your name before the whole assembled universe.

Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life

John 11: 25

J. N. Darby.

<12010E> 95

Notes of Sermons

These first thirteen discourses were delivered without any thought of extending them beyond the immediate congregation to whom they were addressed. They were taken down by one of the congregation, and are now at the desire of a brother made public, with the permission, but without any revision of the preacher. Dublin, 1838.

[The Editor would say here, once for all, that the contents of this volume in general being mere notes, he has taken the liberty of correcting the more obvious slips, most of which are perhaps due to such a means of transmission. The author is not justly responsible save for the substance, though no doubt the words are often his own; if he corrected, he would assuredly do so much more freely than another would feel free to do.]

This chapter presents in the most striking manner the perfect sympathy of the Lord Jesus Christ in all the trials and vicissitudes of His people, even in the sufferings which death brings, and displays the Lord's power and love conspicuous over death. It shews us what the energy, the utmost energy, of evil can do over those who are even the beloved of the Lord; but it also shews us how the Lord Jesus sets it altogether aside in the energy and in the strength of His own power.

We have here the full result of Satan's power, and the perfect triumphing of the Lord over that power. Death is the result of the power of Satan. By bringing in sin, he brought in death: "the wages of sin is death"; this is the utmost of Satan's power. He brought in this at the commencement, he brought it in by deceit; for "he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth." Such has he been ever since; he is called the old serpent and the deceiver; and having deceived, he became the murderer of the first Adam, and, in one sense, of the second Adam. He was and is a liar: that is his character, as exactly opposed to Christ, who is the truth. In like manner all the variations of his character are set in opposition to that of Christ: he is the destroyer, and Christ is the giver of life; he is the accuser of the brethren, and Christ the Mediator for them; Christ the truth of God, and Satan the father of lies. In this character he is first brought before us. By misrepresenting the truth and character of God, he became the murderer of the souls of men, and brought in death - this was his power. Christ came to destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil. The devil murdered souls by falsifying the truth of God. Here we learn his subtlety - presenting falsehood and death through the medium of the truth of God in part; and thus, from being a liar, he becomes a murderer.

Men are not aware of the depths of deceit practised by Satan; his plan is not to bring forward at once a broad intelligible falsehood, which carries the lie on the very face of it. Not so, brethren; he puts it forward under the guise of truth, in the form of truth, and in some sense mixed up with the truth. It was in this way he deceived Adam; he wanted him to eat the fruit which God had forbidden him; and how does he proceed? He says indeed, "Ye shall not surely die!" Now there was a palpable untruth; but he adds, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil": and this we know in part was the real truth, for immediately we hear God saying, "The man is become as one of us to know good and evil." Here we see the lie presented partly in the form of truth: but the truth which was most necessary for man to know, this he kept away entirely, namely, the consequences which would result from the man's taking his advice: this he did not, this he does not, make known to him. He does not tell him it will end in death. This is the way Satan presents his destructive baits, not by simply telling falsehood, but so mixing it up with the truth as to destroy the very soul of man, thus from a liar becoming a murderer. Thus has he brought in the power of evil, the extent of which power is death: "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."

96 Now all this the energy of the Lord has met in a superior power, which we shall presently see. Satan attempts to meet the power of the Lord Jesus, and to set up his power in opposition to the Lord's. We have an exhibition of it in the case of Job, a favoured servant of God, which was, doubtless, permitted for our learning as well as for Job's profit. We learn from this history how much Satan could bring to play against Job, and the circumscribing of that power by the almighty power of God. We are told, "There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? And Satan said, From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down in it." Observe, brethren, when Satan is described as going "to and fro in the world," "going about seeking whom he may devour" - under such circumstances we have need of great caution. But let the saints of God feel it is a permitted power, circumscribed, restrained, and subdued at God's will.

In the case of Job we find God saying with authority and permission to Satan, "Behold, all that he hath is in thy power: only upon himself put not forth thy hand." Here was the limitation of the permission; Satan could get no more. He goes to work at once: we read that "Job's oxen were ploughing, and his asses feeding, and the Sabeans came and took them away, and slew his servants." Again, "fire came down from heaven, and burned up his sheep, and his servants, and consumed them. The Chaldeans came upon the camels, and carried them away, and slew the servants." And lastly "Satan brought a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house in which his children were feasting, and killed them all." Here we see the wonderful extent of the power of Satan, but the further extent of the absolute power of God over the power of Satan; for the limitation was, "But on himself put not forth thine hand."

97 Job therefore was invulnerable, his person could not be touched. But after this we have Satan's power further extended by the almighty power of God, but still with a boundary which he could not pass: He allowed his body to be afflicted by the power of Satan: "but," says the Lord, "save his life." Immediately we hear of Job being covered with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, but his life was spared; and when his afflictions had done the work for which the Lord permitted them, they were removed; for we hear, "The Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning."

Thus blessedly do we see the extent of the power of God over the utmost power of Satan! Many instances of a similar nature might be adduced. We have one in the case of legion, the man in whom were many demons. The power of the living God was acknowledged by these: they were conscious of His superior authority. We learn how far Satan's power extended in the case of this poor man, to what a dreadful extent it was permitted. He wore no clothes, he abode in the tombs night and day, cutting himself with stones: no man could bind him, no fetter could keep him; but God kept him. Therefore he was still in the wilderness in the way of mercy, therefore he was not driven down into the deep; he would then have been out of the reach of grace, but his God had not so ordered it, He would not have it so, and therefore the utmost extent of Satan's power could not accomplish that.

Again, we see in Zechariah 3 the futility of Satan's power against those whom Jesus is engaged to defend. Here we view Satan as the accuser of the brethren, endeavouring thus in opposition to meet the priestly character of the Lord Jesus Christ. Joshua, a type of Israel, stands before the angel of the Lord, and Satan stands as his accuser, bringing forward his accusations, which might be truth, which might be real, which were so in some sense; but, having been put aside by almighty grace, the accusations are unacknowledged by the Lord as available to his condemnation: the Lord refutes them all with this appeal: "Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" In this we have the contrast of office between the Lord Jesus and Satan; one the accuser, having the power of death, the other the priestly intercessor, the giver of life; one the liar from the beginning, the other the eternal Truth. Satan's effort here is to keep the world from the power of Him who is the Prince of life, and he exercises that power over the children of disobedience.

98 The Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil by bringing souls from the power of Satan to the power of the living God. Observe the way the devil acquired his usurped power over man in the first Adam by presenting evil under the semblance of the truth. Man trusted to his own wisdom, and so permitted Satan to possess this power over him; man became spiritually dark, and Satan is the ruler of the darkness of this world; and how does he rule? By the same way he acquired his dominion over man - not by presenting evil in its own hideous garb; but in a plausible, insinuating manner he presents things to be desired to make one wise; and if man is really led to escape his wily snares, he must consent to become a fool in the world's estimation, and to feel that he is such in his own. We find the terrible result sin has wrought is death. Such was the threatened punishment: "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Man ate, and so sold himself to him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.

Now Christ has manifested Himself as the Prince of life; and Satan, in opposition thereto, endeavours to blind the minds of all, "lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." And further, when their eyes have been opened, and they have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope laid before them, he would, if it were possible, hinder all comfortable enjoyment of God's presence, all sensible communion with God through the operation of the Holy Spirit, and would dim and darken the path of every child of God, attempting to meet the priestly office of Christ, as Intercessor, by his accusations, and to oppose the testimony of the Spirit in the soul by his own dark counsels. But, to oppose all this artillery of power, we have Jesus passed into the heavens, ever living to make intercession for us at the right hand of God, and in the energy of the Holy Ghost dwelling within us we are enabled to maintain a successful though trying warfare with his temptations within.

99 The interesting history recorded in this chapter demonstrates indisputably the power of the Lord Jesus in setting aside the utmost power of Satan, in the entire overcoming of that by which Satan shewed his triumph over man. Death was this power; but here we have total subjection of that power to a superior power, to exercise which, in the person of Lazarus, Jesus came to Bethany. Martha, Lazarus's sister, said to Jesus, "Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had not died; but I know, that even now, whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, God will give it thee. Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again." The commandment had gone forth at the beginning, when it was said to Adam, "Ye shall die"; that power had been felt and acknowledged, and there was no setting it aside; there was no power to put it away, even in the case of those whom the Lord loved, but by a power such as sent forth the commandment at the first. By that power alone can death be intercepted, even by the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the resurrection and the life. Jesus says to Martha, "Thy brother shall rise again." Martha replies, "I know that he shall rise in the resurrection at the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die: believest thou this?"

There are two ways in which the Lord Jesus has become the resurrection and the life of His people: first, in purchasing their redemption from the wages of sin, having paid the full price to eternal justice for their transgressions by His voluntary and substituted sufferings; and also in respect of their oneness with Him who is the very life of all being. We have here the direct personal application of this power to Himself: "I am the resurrection and the life"; but we see in what sense He here alludes to His power of raising His creatures. There is something special here: a something which meets not the circumstances of every one; it is definitely applied to them that believe; "He that believeth." It is, therefore, not applicable to all; and what a recognition of the truth of a special resurrection this is - of the release from death of all that shall believe in Jesus. That makes all the difference - "because I live, ye shall live also," alluding to those who believe in Him. They are the children of the resurrection, which blessing flows from their union with Jesus by the indwelling of the Spirit of life; as it is written, "If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you."

100 Here then we have the peculiar, the special, cause of this difference: they are the children of God, therefore the children of the resurrection; they stand in altogether another character from the children of this world. All shall rise certainly at the coming day of retribution, but it is quite different from the quickening power of life, communicated in virtue of the oneness of the saint with Jesus. Every knee shall certainly bow to Him; be they godly, or be they earthly, or be they the power of darkness; whether they be angels, or principalities, or powers, all shall acknowledge Him when He appears. This was just the witness which the devil gave of His power when he came on earth - "Art thou come to torment us before the time? "Plainly then there is a time set apart, of which they are conscious, when full judgment will be executed on them. "They besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep," or abyss. Though devils, possessing the power of such, they recognised One before whom they quailed. There is a time coming when He, before whom they even then quailed, will bind them in everlasting chains no more to rove about. This almighty power they even then recognised in the Person of Jesus Christ, when apparently in weakness; therefore they exclaim, under the conscious terror of His power, Do not torment us before the time! Do not command us to go into the pit! He is Lord of all, and His authority extends to, and shall be exerted over, the ungodly, as well as His saints; in the resurrection all are then brought out of the power of Satan. But the resurrection of which Christ here speaks is peculiar to His own, when He says, "I am the resurrection and the life." "I know," said Martha, "that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." But what comfort could that bring, as regarded the bare fact of his rising, for so would the most ungodly sinner rise then? But the blessedness is this, that where Christ is made the life of the soul, there is the certainty of a resurrection to life eternal in Christ's life; when the life of Jesus comes in, there is that within over which the power of Satan is unable to prevail.

101 We find, in the occurrences of this beautiful chapter, that it was during the bodily absence of the Lord from Lazarus that death had its power; so it is with us now. This family scene is a type of wonderful things to the church: in the absence of her Lord she feels the power of Satan and death - bodily death seizes on her members; but it shall not always be thus, for Christ shall visit His afflicted family, and when that occurs His very presence will be the power of life. Here is the great secret: Christ's presence gives spiritual life; and His bodily presence not only raises the dead bodies, but by that presence the further power of death is arrested and interrupted and put aside for ever, as regards His saints; and according as His presence is felt, so is the power of Satan and the power of death set aside. In His absence is grief, but when He comes, He shall put away both grief and its cause. Now, He may and does allow temptations, and permit the exhibition of the power of Satan in such; but even now He makes Himself known in spirit as stronger than Satan, quickening the soul, and giving life to His people; sorrow, grief, and distress are here occasioned by Satan, particularly this character of sorrow, brought forward in this narrative before us.

Christ communicates life and liberty to His people; therefore He says, "I am the life." Though there may be still occasion of death in the world, yet when Christ comes and exhibits Himself, His very presence, which before spiritually quickened the soul, will now be powerful to quicken the mortal body, and clothe it with a glorious immortality: "He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall be live" And He will resuscitate the bodies of those that are dead, and arrest the further progress of death: "He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die." The consequence of Christ's being present in spirit is now life and liberty: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty"; so, when present in person, all bondage, grief, or sorrow is vanished. He shews us now in spirit, what He will shortly do in person, when the whole power of Satan is set aside. The moment Christ says, I am here, the power of death is gone; when spiritually, it is spiritually gone; for where Jesus has quickened a soul by communicating His life, there His presence has removed us from all the results of Satan's power in the soul; the power of the prince of the air has been superseded by the power of the Prince of life: the believer shall be under no power of death as to its results, being translated into another position by the life-giving power of Christ. He that is quickened is quickened unto spiritual and everlasting life - now in spirit, then in person; it is an inseparable connection.

102 The power of bodily death will not be manifested in all: for we are told 1 Thessalonians that some shall be alive when the Lord comes: "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up," etc. Also, in 1 Corinthians 15 it is positively said, "We shall not all sleep," for that some shall be alive at His coming; consequently they never can die, as He says Himself: "He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die." The presence of Christ naturally induces the absence of death: he that is dead when Christ comes shall be raised; and he that is alive shall be changed, thus unqualifiedly by His presence setting the power of death aside. The certainty of this resurrection is consequent upon the vital union of the believer with the Lord Jesus Christ, which, therefore, none can experience but such as are united to Him by a living faith. It is quite a distinct thing from the resurrection of those who shall be called out by the word of His power; His very presence vivifies the believer in virtue of his being made a partaker of the divine nature.

It is with this presence then that the believer has to do; it is for this he is looking. The child of God earnestly longs to enter into the perception of this power, which Christ has spent the travail of His soul to accomplish for him, in order that He may undo the very existence of Satan's power both in body and soul. He has triumphed over the power of Satan in the soul of every sinner who believes in Him - He shall triumph in their bodies also. "I am the resurrection," He says, as well as "the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die: believest thou this?" It is not simply saying, Men die, and then I raise them again; but the very power that wrought over them to death yields to His presence both spiritually and personally. Christ, as the first-fruits, rose to shew the certainty of His people's resurrection; then they which are Christ's at His coming shall rise, when shall be fulfilled the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory." Here is what the enlightened soul is led to look for, the exercise of Christ's power over the utmost power of Satan. If the Spirit testifies within us of the energy of the life of Christ, in the conscious power of His quickening the soul, we have by that the certain evidence that our bodies must also be quickened; for, having made a new man within, think ye, will the Lord suffer it always to occupy an unredeemed body, liable to the power of death and corruption?

103 But it is not yet a quickened body: that we feel, most sadly feel. We are then led to ask, Since it is so, to what use can this mortal body be converted here, since it does not yet partake of incorruptibility? The only use, dear friends, to which we should convert it is, to make it become a servant to the Saviour. Let the very instruments of corruption minister to godliness: "Yield your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." There is no bondage in this, dear friends; it is perfect freedom; it is the liberty of the child of God, of one who is quickened, made alive, rescued from slavery, made a new man. Satan wars against the dominion of this new life; but there is no charge that he brings that the Lord at all acknowledges, for the believer stands accepted in the Beloved. The Lord Jesus Christ exercises His priestly office in opposition to the reasonings and accusations of Satan against the saint. Satan brings forward the failings of the old man - the very things which he suggested to the mind, the very sins which by his suggestion the flesh acted out. These he endeavours to press on the conscience, bringing forward the old man, and saying, That is you! and if this is not resisted with a "Get thee behind me, Satan," then we allow him to interfere with our comfort.

But, blessed truth! "he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit," "and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." The Spirit presents Christ in His priestly office, as having undertaken and accomplished all for the believer; but until the whole body, as well as the soul, is quickened with the life of Jesus, we cannot fully enter into the blessedness of so glorious a liberty: but then we shall manifestly see our entire triumph over the world, the flesh, and the devil, and enter into the full perception of that comforting truth, "Because I live, ye shall also." Still, recognising no good in the flesh, we get peace and comfort by simply resting on the promise of Jesus, that He will change our vile bodies, and make them like unto His glorious body; and that, in the meantime, "sin shall not have dominion over us." The devil would hinder this peace if he could, and seek to do so by entering into controversy with the conscience, and introducing doubts and difficulties, which are encouraged and not repelled, when we are not apprehending Christ in His office of continual Mediator and Intercessor; but we are strengthened, and Satan's power is humbled, when we are looking up in faith, as united to Jesus, and seeing Him, as "the resurrection and the life," directing us in the prospect of that day when His glory shall be revealed, and when we shall be placed in a proper position to perceive our entire conquest in our glorious Head over the utmost power of evil.

104 But what the devil is always at here is, to draw us to the commission of evil, to do that which dishonours the Holy One within. And this dims the grace of the Spirit; this is why there are so many sorrowful Christians, because there are so many indulging the lusts of the old man, which shut out the glory; seeking the gratification of that which they profess to fight against, and not walking in the Spirit, in the liberty of Christ; but they are grieving that Spirit, and therefore are burdened; they are not walking in the consciousness of hearing "I am the resurrection and the life." But the time is coming, yea, rapidly coming, when the presence of the Saviour shall be always felt, and when, not only by faith but manifestly, the power of evil shall be set aside; when the presence of Jesus shall raise us to unspeakable blessedness; when this corrupt body shall no longer be a clog and hindrance to our spiritual enjoyment, for it shall be entirely conformed to His image, His glorious body. As He has made the souls of His own here to bear His image spiritually, so will He then change the vile body into the image of that body which He now possesses in glory. "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." "It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." Paul speaks of the same to the Philippians, saying, "Our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto his glorious body." Here is what the saint glories to contemplate, and into the contemplation of which he is led by the graciousness of the Holy Spirit, who, coming into the soul, reveals all this glory; and the more of the glory the Spirit unveils, the more He enables us to triumph over the extent of the power of evil here, and to be opposed in all things to that world which knows nothing of these things.

105 For what does the world know of the glory of Christ? Nothing: it is led by the spirit of darkness, and sees not the light; he has blinded their eyes; and whoever is really led by the teachings of the Spirit of glory is fully conscious that the world is not. Christ has quickened the souls of His people by His life; and in so far as they recognise this life-giving power are they in a capacity to sympathise with Jesus Himself in all these things. This was what Jesus had not while on earth - there was none to sympathise with Him. In sorrow, His sorrows were all His own: none shared them; they were felt by none. "They all forsook him, and fled." Even in prospect this was felt, when He exclaims, "Ye shall be scattered every one to his own, and shall leave me alone."

It was the want of this sympathy with Christ of which Paul complained: "All seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's." We see it here in the instance of Martha: though a saint, though loved of Jesus, she could not enter into the perfect sympathy of the Lord with His own. "I know," said she, "that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die: believest thou this?" Not, Do you believe that he shall rise again? but, Do you believe what I have said of myself as the resurrection and the life of every believer? But there was no perception of this in her soul: if there had been, it was truly calculated to have conveyed the greatest comfort to her soul: but no, she saw it not; she just replies, "Yea, Lord, I believe thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world," and there she left Him. She went her way to get sympathy elsewhere, while He, the life of every comfort, and the soul of sympathy, was left.

And are there not many of the Lord's people acting thus now? Where do we see that fixedness of satisfaction with the love of Christ which precludes all desire for any other sympathy? And why is it thus, dear friends? Why is it that there is so much of the failing of Martha still to be met with among the saints here? Just for the same reason; they are equally careful and cumbered about many things. She was a saint indeed, and yet so low that she could not enter into the perception of the Lord's sympathising presence, but went her way and sent her sister Mary in her stead. May the Lord grant that the Spirit may so apply the word to the hearts of His saints here, as to lead them from all false and unsatisfying comforts, more unto sympathy with Jesus!

106 Dear friends, let me ask you, Are you living on that word of the Lord Jesus - "I am the resurrection and the life"? Are your souls quickened to know that the power of death is put away, wherever the presence of Jesus is recognised? And are you looking out in joyful anticipation to that time when the presence of the Lord shall raise and quicken your mortal bodies? and when bodies and souls shall alike partake of His holy likeness, released from sin, released from the power of death and Satan? when we shall no more offend by yielding to Satan? when the devil shall have no power to disturb our peace, or the things of the flesh dissipate our joy? when our rest shall be glorious, for we shall rest with our all-glorious Head? when our joy shall be complete, for we shall enter into the full joy of our Lord? Till that time, dear friends, let us live in this blessed expectation, having our lights burning, waiting for the morning light when our Lord shall appear, living witnesses of the truth of God's promises; for He will surely come, He will not tarry. Amen.

The Parables

Matthew 13: 1-50

J. N. Darby.

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Notes of Sermons

These first thirteen discourses were delivered without any thought of extending them beyond the immediate congregation to whom they were addressed. They were taken down by one of the congregation, and are now at the desire of a brother made public, with the permission, but without any revision of the preacher. Dublin, 1838.

[The Editor would say here, once for all, that the contents of this volume in general being mere notes, he has taken the liberty of correcting the more obvious slips, most of which are perhaps due to such a means of transmission. The author is not justly responsible save for the substance, though no doubt the words are often his own; if he corrected, he would assuredly do so much more freely than another would feel free to do.]

I have read to you the entire collection of parables brought together in this chapter, because they collectively contain one general view of the plan of God, as developing "the kingdom of heaven": that it is not an isolated circumstance, but a connected whole, full of comfort to the saints of God. It unfolds the distinguishing features of the "kingdom of heaven." This term, together with the "kingdom of your Father," is exclusively used by Matthew, and particularly in this chapter, where are developed the character and circumstances of the kingdom in the dispensation of God.

"Jesus saith unto his disciples, Have ye understood all these things? They say, Yea, Lord. Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed into the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." Now, we know that a scribe who was taught from the law of Moses was instructed in the mysteries contained therein, which were to be unfolded in process of time, as the Lord quotes: "I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things that have been kept secret from the foundation of the world."

We find there were seven parables uttered by our Lord here; seven being a complete and perfect number, symbolical of entireness and perfection, wanting nothing, a completeness of intention and performance. Thus seven Spirits of God are taken for a whole; seven churches, seven trumpets, seven plagues, etc. Some of those parables were uttered for the disciples only, and the others for the multitude, which we shall perceive by just looking at the structure of the chapter.

In the first parable we have a symbol of the world as at present; of all who shall or shall not become partakers of the kingdom of heaven. Here we have the full mind of God upon the subject. The six others represent a likeness of the kingdom of heaven. In the first the man sowing the good seed is just a statement of what our Lord was doing in the world, "the field," out of which the kingdom of heaven springs up. He was there sowing good seed, while the devil was sowing tares - mingling with them, and mixing with them, but not of them; but of this there is no complete development till the resurrection. This is the testimony of the Spirit of God: at that time the wheat will be gathered into the garner, and the tares afterwards burned.

108 Now in the other parables we find that which resulted from the sowing of the seed absolutely and definitely. The last three are addressed to the disciples alone, and not to the multitude, as well as the explanation of the first of these six, as it says in verse 36: "Then Jesus sent away the multitude, and went into a house with his disciples"; and, after explaining to them the parable of the tares and the wheat, He says to them, "Again, the kingdom of heaven is likened unto," etc. The other three, spoken to the multitude were, the tares and wheat; the little seed, or grain of mustard seed, descriptive of the increase and growth of this kingdom; and the leaven hid beneath, but working unseen till the whole is completely leavened. The three to His disciples alone were, the treasure hid; the pearl of great price; and the net cast into the sea. Thus He commences with the sowing, and ends with the gathering in.

The first three exhibit the development of the character and habit this kingdom should assume in the world ostensibly. And of the latter three, two are descriptive of its high value in the sight of God, and the consequences of that love: and the last displays the entire distinction and separation between the children of the world and of the kingdom. The explanation of one parable, given along with this last parable, portrays the manner and mode of this separation - of those who are children of God, or those who are friends to God's enemy, the devil: "The friendship of the world is enmity with God."

You will find, on examination, the analogy very strong between the six; between the three to His disciples, and the three to the multitude, to which the explanation of the one is the key; from the first, which is sowing the good seed, to the last, which is drawing the net, of which the others are the medium - the ostensible character; the organisation of the plan; the building up of it; the actual value of the treasure; the beauty and excellency of the pearl of great price; the management and development of that which is the dispensation of the kingdom of heaven. These we will not go through now, only just to shew the structure and order of the whole. Thus the Spirit of God unfolds the way in lively emblems, which are God's most definite testimony to the world, and which are acknowledged as such by all when taught of God's Spirit. Here we have the perfect summing up of the dispensation, which is characterised in Scripture as the "kingdom of heaven."

109 It is calculated for the joy and comfort of disciples, though spoken to multitudes in parables: they press in the general throng, but they understand not, for they are spoken to in parables. But, says Jesus, "Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven." The world may despise them (it does despise them), it may heap obloquy and contempt on them, for these are not of the world, and the world loves its own. But the saints have the inestimable, the profound, the incalculable blessing of being children of the kingdom - children of God; they have a joy and heavenly delight in retirement with Jesus - of fellowship and communion with Him (of which the world in its natural state knows nothing; of which it is unable to form any conception); conscious of their association with Him, of being in the same position with Him, of being assimilated to Him; this is the constitution of their joy. They are made friends of God; they are in the same situation as Abraham, when the Lord says, "Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?" The Lord condescends to open out His mind - His plans - to them. Abraham was called "the friend of God." Exactly in the same way does the Lord now spread out the plan of His dispensations to His own, as He says, "Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." Now this is said for the joy and comfort of you who are His disciples. Treasure it up in your hearts, and, oh! feel the blessedness, the wondrous blessedness, of being made the depositaries of the Lord's mind: "for who hath known the mind of the Lord? But we have the mind of Christ."

Since this is your position, dear friends, be jealous of squandering your affections, lest you dishonour your trust. If you sin in the cold, heartless world; if you lightly esteem, or seek not continual enjoyment in, your high privileges, the Lord can put no confidence in you, Christ cannot trust you. If you are amusing yourselves with the things around you (no matter what), your minds must be opened to the world, and this leads to the love of it; and this is direct usurpation of Christ's prerogative. Christ's mind is not opened to the world, but is opened to His own. He reveals their portion to them, and He sends the Spirit into their hearts, enabling them to cry, "Abba, Father." He makes known to them that they have the inheritance of sons, shews them their family interest in it, meets them all, as it were, and unfolds the circumstances of His family, and points out to them their individual interest in it; tells them that they are heirs of this inheritance, and have a part and portion with Himself.

110 If this is our situation (and it is so if we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ), should we not be very jealous of admitting anything into our souls that might disturb this harmony, and so disable us from receiving communications with delight - with the filial fondness of children? This is what the world knows nothing about, but is the saint's privilege and lot, and neither Satan nor the world can take it from him. The parable with which this chapter begins introduces this glorious dispensation of which we have been speaking: "A sower went out," etc. (v. 3-9).

The great principle upon which all the blessing of the kingdom of heaven is founded is the sowing of the seed; there is no external development of the position of man till it is sown. The Lord Jesus Christ goes forth as the sower. The seed, in itself, is a perfectly new and distinct thing; it is not in principle assimilated to anything that was there previously; it finds nothing there that it can call its own; it is not a seed of the soil springing up from it, but it is the seed of God - it comes down from heaven. It is not a principle in the soil which the Lord acts on and improves: when it comes, it finds nothing akin to it there - nothing even like it. It comes from heaven, and leads to heaven; for it is the seed of eternal life. It is a perfectly new principle - extraneously so. When put into the soil, there is then in the soul what was not there before; it is no improvement or modification of that which was previously there. It is eternal life. "Of his own will begat he us." It is an implanted principle of life which knows no end.

Now, in all naturally there is no seed of eternal life, as life. We may have the seed of eternal endurance, but not of life. But this life is wrought by the implantation of a holy seed, by the power of the word of God, revealing what Christ is to the soul. It is planted by the word of God, watered by the Spirit of God, derives its growth and culture from the same God, and is found bearing fruit to the glory of God until the end, when we come to the "manifestation of the sons of God."

111 Now, this, which is God's truth, breaks down all the natural hopes of aspiring proud man, who thinks there is that within himself which will lead to this, ignorant that the only principle within him is one of death. But let him once experience the implantation of this new seed, he will then think very differently. He will find that he has now a new life; that it is a given life (consequently it could not have been there before); and, moreover, that it is "eternal life," and that that life is in Jesus: "he that hath the Son hath life."

There is one broad principle with which it is most important to be acquainted, namely, that it is nothing from within ourselves that originates this holy principle. And we who are taught of God know this to be the case; for the mind, once alive to God, is fully conscious that it does not live by any power in itself, but from the power of the life of Christ, which they were once conscious of not having, but now have been given. They now see how they stand in the presence of God, not as Adam, for God has stamped death on all that he, or his race, could bring before Him of their own, which is sin; but they know, that though once aliens and wanderers, they have been gathered into the flock, and have been (not made better in their original condition but) translated into another position, even into the kingdom of God's dear Son, who is now in glory.

There is no communication then from man to God, which can be the real cause or means of receiving heavenly blessings; for man, by nature, has nothing to bring but sin, which cannot draw down a blessing; for God has stamped this judgment on it - "The wages of sin is death." Now, notwithstanding this truth, what is the expectation of the natural man? Why, that though God has said this, yet in his case He will not observe it; that God must set aside the honour of His word, the strictness of His holiness, and not give him the wages of sin, which is eternal death; that, in his case, God will dispense with the quickening power which He speaks of as necessary to life, and through and for His Son He will shew him mercy. But it is not so, it cannot, it will not be so: "he," and he only, "who hath the Son hath life," "they," and they only, "that hear the voice of the Son of God shall live." The perceptive power comes to him from heaven, and he then has everlasting life; he has what he never had before, but he knows that he has it now. This is God's truth in the face of a sinful and lifeless world, and testifies the power and agency of the Spirit as manifested in it. They who hear, hear by His power: "the dead shall hear," therefore the dead must be quickened to hear.

112 This parable shews us the way in which the seed is scattered. The Lord is here represented by a sower, and is scattering the seed of His word. He that receives it receives life into his soul, which was before "dead in trespasses and sins." The Lord is scattering the seed now, whether you believe it or not. He is testifying that you are naturally enemies to God, "alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works," and that the only way of escaping the punishment due is by the reception of this life which He gives, which is in Christ and nowhere else.

The possession of this life is necessary to the entrance into glory. Now where will you seek it, where will you find it, but in Christ? God has told you, that "that life is in his Son." Have you then this Son of God? Do you know Him as your life? Do you hold sweet communion with Him? Have you a personal fellowship and enjoyment in Him? Do you understand the blessing of identity with Him, so as to comprehend His own words: "Because I live, ye shall live also"? If you do, you are blessed, for God is true, and He has said, "He that hath the Son hath life": there is a certitude, an everlasting truth, in it. The word sown carries the knowledge of Christ to the soul, and that brings us into relation with God; it opens out the blessing of life, and shews us that that life is in Christ, and Christ only.

The Lord scatters the seed, but the enemy does his utmost to hinder its progress; he tries to turn it aside, and to prevent its taking root. The Lord scatters and divides the seed, but it springs not up alike: there is a marked distinction made in the parable between the manner in which the seed was received in the first and last places where it was sown, which we have in the explanation of the first. It is said, "When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not"; and of the latter it is said, "He that heareth and understandeth." And so we see the work of the devil in the former: "When any man heareth and understandeth not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart." Oh, how subtle is Satan! he well knows that, if once entered in, his power will be resisted; and he endeavours to blind them, because he knows, that "except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God," nor ever shall see it; they cannot perceive it, and therefore he loves to catch away from them the scattered seed, lest they should see, and believe, and be saved: "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," can neither perceive it, nor enter into it.

113 "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his"; and when once we have it, what is the effect? "He hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son." This is the way, the particular process, which the Lord uses, which is brought before us in the word with reference to the sinner's salvation. It is hard to receive, for we are very slow to hear and understand, surrounded as we are by a world lying in wickedness; therefore it requires the power of One beyond ourselves to give us the knowledge of it.

We are in a far country; that is, we are not where our heavenly inheritance is - in our Father's house. We live among those who have the guilt of rejecting the Heir of the kingdom. Now, the heirs of the kingdom are there, but the testimony of God's word declares that He is now gathering them out of it, opening their eyes, and revealing Christ. But this is not understood by the world; they are specially distinguished by this, that they do not understand it. The word has been sown, but it has not entered. They know nothing at all about the kingdom of God: they hear the word; but it all passes away as though they heard nothing, for they do not understand it. And while so, while in this position of incapacity of comprehension, they have nothing to do with it: it conveys no ideas of happiness to them - it is associated with no portion of enjoyment to them. They are satisfied with the world: that they have, that is their portion, they are looking for no other. Their position is just that they know nothing in the world about the kingdom which is set up in Christ, in which, if any one be, he is blessed. But these receive it not; for, though the word of the kingdom has been sown and scattered, the devil has come and caught it away from them. This then is one very important distinction, that you would do well now to consider, that though the word is at this present moment being scattered to all, there is a wonderful difference in its effects. If you just hear and do not understand it, you may be sure there is one busy among you - busy in your hearts to snatch out the very remembrance of the thing, lest it should enter in. It fell only on the outside, for Satan keeps it out, and they are well pleased to let him; and this is God's truth about the matter.

114 Brethren, the world is a lost world, and Satan reigns; there is only one way of escape - by being taken out of the position in which the world is placed and planted in Christ's kingdom. There is no life but in Christ. Have you then entered into Christ's kingdom, or has the devil yet the key of your hearts? At that tremendous day, when the secrets of all hearts will be known, then will the distinguishing fruits be manifested, and many of the "wayside" hearers will then, for the first time, find they have been mistaken, when asked what they have been about here, and brought in condemned by the Judge Himself. Then will He recognise none but those who are united to Him, one with Himself in life, now for ever to be one with Him in glory.

These, and these alone, are His own - His crown of rejoicing - the travail of His righteous soul; and they know Him; they recognise Him, so as to be able to say, This is the Lord we have been longing and looking for. They know His countenance; they are, from close familiarity, well acquainted with His lineaments; they have had such communion, such fellowship, with Him, that they cannot be mistaken. Oh, the contrast between the sorrow (then unavailing sorrow) and misery of those who knew Him not, who have been ignorant of Him who comes to them now as a stranger and a Judge!

The next verse shews that some fell among stony places; and the explanation tells us, that they heard the word, and anon with joy received it, but had no root in themselves but endure for a while; and, when persecution arises because of it, are offended. These have heard the gospel extensively preached, are mixed up with the people of God, and appear to understand and enter into their joy. They commence a regular course, as if on the way heavenwards. They hear of God, of God's love to sinners, of God's wonderful love in giving His only Son to die for sinners. They hear of One "who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood." They hear of One, "who, though in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant." They hear of One, calculated, when thus spoken of, to win the natural affections, just as the exhibition of these beauties in any other being would do; and their natural feelings are awakened, but nothing more. "They have a name to live," and yet are practically dead; they have heard "a very lovely song," and are pleased; they have heard of Christ's demeaning Himself to the capacity of a slave, that He might exalt them to heaven; suiting Himself to their situation and wants; doing wonders in all the world; and the mere external apprehension of these things made a way to win the natural affections. They could not deny them as matters of fact - of historic faith; they were drawn, as it were, by the "bands of a man," but that was all; their feelings were excited, but they have never mourned for sin; there was no consciousness of their particular individual share in the sufferings of Christ; there was no internal perception of love, leading the soul to seek the object of it; there was no feeling of life, making them know that they were living on Christ for all things, making them feel that the sins that were on them had been placed to His account, bringing Him "into the dust of death."

115 This humbling work they know not; when Satan's dominion is broken down in the soul, and Christ admitted as a Sovereign and a Saviour; when He becomes all to the soul, and the soul rejoices in that portion. And the day of trial, of affliction, of tribulation, or of persecution manifests this, and the day of the Lord's fierce wrath terminates it; this apparent joy comes to nothing, for they knew not Christ; the seed was only on the surface - the root of the matter was not in them: theirs was only the manifested outward joy of natural feelings awakened; they had not the joy of the inner man of the heart; the surface of their affections was pliable and soft, but their heart was still hard as a stone - it was a stony heart - the stone had never been removed; therefore there was no warmth, no love, no life, no Christ within; they had Christ without, but the stone within. No Spirit's teaching, no work in the conscience; they had nothing to look to for comfort or assurance, when the great question, the great controversy which is between God and man, came to be decided; not being associated with Christ, they just came to nothing. They had no root, and they all fell away.

116 Now the next class have less of this character which is described in these last. The seed fell, but it was received into a ground previously occupied and overrun with thorns. They appeared well; had received the seed, as far as human observation could go; and there were indeed roots in these, but they were the roots of something else - "some fell among thorns"; they were growing there before the scattering of the seed. The thorns had pre-occupied the ground; they occupied all the ground, and were nourished from it. Doubtless, when the word was first received on the soil, these thorns might have appeared feeble, and of very little importance, perhaps supposed to be plucked up; but they left the roots there, which sprung up, to the rejection of the good seed - choked it - and so no fruit came forth. These are they who profess to hear, understand, and receive the word of the kingdom; who seem to set a value upon the great gospel plan of salvation; who go on for a while prosperously, but the latent enemy has been and is working underneath and soon shews himself. He flings into the balance the trials, cares, pleasures, profits, lusts, and deceitful tricks of this world, and the progress of the seed is choked up and becomes unfruitful. They are occupied with the things of this world - its sorrows, its sadness, or its delights; they are buried in them; the things in which they engage are those which choke the seed - things associated, not with Christ, but with that which He will judge.

It would be the saints' delight to have the weeds plucked up by the roots; they know the value of the true seed, and therefore are jealous of admitting or having anything in the soil which may render it unfruitful. They well know that if the thorns are there, their natural tendency is to choke the seed; and therefore they desire their entire departure.

Is this your estimation of the worth and value of the true seed? God takes care of His own seed; He husbands it, He waters it, He is very jealous over it; and when He sees a thorn spring up, even in the good ground, He says in affectionate remonstrance, "Thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing only is needful": and leads them then to say and feel, "We are debtors, not to the flesh to live after the flesh."

If any thing keeps the seed from springing up, having occupied the place where it should be, that is not of God, He says, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!" The gathering them, living for them, and enjoying of them choke the seed, shut up the mind from the things of God, and make it rest in what is an abhorrence in God's sight. "One thing is needful"; and we see how the Lord vindicated Mary's choice: "Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." And in that day, when all worldly wealth, riches, and honours can no longer be esteemed, even by the possessors of them, then the till then unseen (unseen except by faith) realities of the true riches hid in Christ will be wonderfully exhibited, when they who have chosen Him for their portion shall have their portion, and all others will be destroyed.

117 There is one class more to which we must direct our attention, and they are distinguished here, as "he that heareth the word and understandeth it." And here one delights to rest on the blessedness of the hope of glory implanted in the soul of the true believer; his heart is opened - the seed descends, and abides, springing up and bearing fruit. They understand that they are in a world which wearied Christ, and they too are wearied of it; they seek a separation from it; they understand that Jesus was "holy, harmless, and undefiled"; and God the Spirit, dwelling in them, leads them to follow in His footsteps. They understand from the word of grace that the Lord Jesus has set up this spiritual kingdom in the midst of a world which has rejected Him, and in this His grace settles them - no rest in any other portion; their controversy with God, and their question with hell, has been settled by Jesus. They understand that the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ their Lord, has sealed with His own blood their forgiveness, and this takes the spring of their hearts, and sends their affections out again to centre on Jesus.

These are the things which the saints understand; and the devil cannot dispossess them of them. Were they only on the surface, he might catch away the word, or cause them to be offended, or choke its fruitfulness; but, being planted within by the Spirit of the living God, and taking root, Satan in vain assaults, for there the Lord reigns, who has proved Himself stronger than Satan. Satan may torment, but cannot overcome; for, though choking cares may intrude, and noxious weeds will shew their heads, the possessors of this heavenly seed are willing - are longing - to have them all plucked up and burned, with all the briars and thorns of nature. They "have tasted that the Lord is gracious"; they understand His word, and they love it amidst distresses, trials, and sorrows; they know that Jesus came to unbind the heavy burdens, and soon He will come again to set His own free from every fetter. In the contemplation of this the believer will rest His soul on Jesus, viewing Him as gathering in His own elect, when His oppressed, persecuted, but very dear children shall see and inherit the kingdom of their Father.

118 They have then passed through the cross, they have left everything behind at the "door," which is Christ. Guilt cannot pass through Him; sin can no longer shew itself; being purged, it has no longer any hold of the believer: he is standing in the favour and smiles of God, being included in the body to which Christ belongs. He has entered by Christ, and is therefore recognised as His. And this blessedness he has in anticipation and perspective here - the reality is there for him; that he knows, for he has the dawn of it within himself, the seed of a divine nature. He is waiting for the coming of the "Morning Star," when the seed He blesses will be known. And in this the believer rejoices, being conscious of having life, of being quickened, of being in the second Adam. He is also conscious he has not the glory at present; but he knows he has "eternal life," the fruits of which he is called upon to exhibit while here, as described in the Epistle of James; which he desires and seeks for, and to which it is his delight in his measure to attain. This is the character, the hope, the attainment of the believer; of one who has received the good seed, understands the word of the kingdom, and brings forth fruit according to his measure.

In closing this testimony, let us remember, that "he that hath the Son hath life"; he actually possesses it at present -  that is the fact. The word of God says not shall have, but "hath eternal life"; and God the Spirit testifies of this to our souls. He testifies of the electing love of God, of the redeeming grace of Jesus, and enables us to recognise ourselves as "accepted in the Beloved," having received and believed the word of the kingdom, and this in the face of a world lying in wickedness, on which judgments are now about to be executed.

The times portend great things: the dark and heavy clouds are gathering in the air, and hanging over a guilty world, which shall soon be discharged in tremendous judgments; the day of God's long-suffering will soon be over: now, "now is the accepted time." If ye have resisted the voice of truth, the voice of the Holy Ghost till now, resist it no longer. Judgments are coming, more terrible than on them to whom it was said, "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost." I say not, ye do -  but do ye yet resist His power? I say not, it is the case - but is it the case? Is it not very possible that some, even among you, are still rejecting the counsel of God against yourselves? If you say you are not, let me ask, Have you received and understood the word of the kingdom? With what are you seeking to please God? Honour? God does not want honour. Or wisdom? God does not want your wisdom, nor learning, nor outward profession, nor knowledge. These you may have, and be admired for the possession of; and you may have nothing that assimilates you to God. If you know not the hidden life, you know nothing: the princes and wise men of this world knew not, and so they crucified the Lord of glory.

119 Have you been doing this? If so, even now turn to the Lord Jesus. Look at the testimony of Him in every passage of His word, and you will see that it is one whole testimony of love. It shews the work of the Lord Jesus undertaken and accomplished for sinners, the Spirit's witness of Him, the Father's love in sending Him. Till this is understood, the testimony of God's witnesses is spent in vain, as far as regards those who receive it not, and threatened vengeance awaits them.

May the Lord introduce and nourish this seed in your souls, give you the tastes, desires, and aims of His people, and fill you with unspeakable, everlasting blessing hereafter. Amen.

The Sufferings of Christ

Psalm 22: 22

J. N. Darby.

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Notes of Sermons

These first thirteen discourses were delivered without any thought of extending them beyond the immediate congregation to whom they were addressed. They were taken down by one of the congregation, and are now at the desire of a brother made public, with the permission, but without any revision of the preacher. Dublin, 1838.

[The Editor would say here, once for all, that the contents of this volume in general being mere notes, he has taken the liberty of correcting the more obvious slips, most of which are perhaps due to such a means of transmission. The author is not justly responsible save for the substance, though no doubt the words are often his own; if he corrected, he would assuredly do so much more freely than another would feel free to do.]

The whole of this Psalm evidently contains the words and experience of the Lord Jesus Christ. It begins with one of His most momentous sentences, as if a direct quotation from prophecy: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and gives the very words of the infidel Jews, when the Saviour was expiring on the tree, in the eighth verse: "He trusted in the Lord, that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him."

The whole Psalm is an accurate scene of our Lord's sufferings. In the verse preceding the text, His agony of soul is described: "Save me from the lion's mouth!" the intenseness of which agony is thus described in Hebrews 5: 7: "Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears"; and of which we have witnessed the facts in the garden of Gethsemane, where His soul was "sore amazed," and He prayed, if it were possible, to have this cup pass from Him. And in the concluding part of verse 21 ("Thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns"), we have Him brought to the crisis of extreme suffering, on the very horns of the altar, as describing the sacrifice bound and laid on. We have His delivery thence, "Thou hast heard me," as in Psalm 40: "I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry: he brought me up also from out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and ordered my goings." The very next verse describes Him thus: "I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation [or church] will I praise thee."

Here we read our Lord's testimony after He had been heard, after He had come out of the horrible pit, after the agony, and suffering, and woe, and death had been past; in short, at His resurrection. It is just at that time this verse describes Him: and in it we see, first, the office He has taken in declaring God's name to His brethren; and, secondly, we see Him as He stands in the midst of His church, as its Head.

And who is it that thus testifies, "I will declare"? Who it is we cannot mistake, from the entire tenor and express words of the Psalm. It is the Lord Jesus Christ. And what does He declare? "Thy name": "I will declare thy name unto my brethren"; the name of Him to whom He appeals as His God. And that, brethren, is the only way we know anything of God; when the Lord Jesus Christ Himself reveals Him and declares Him. It is God's appointed way of communicating anything of Himself; and without a knowledge of God through Christ we never can know peace. In declaring God's name, Christ declares His own: He testifies what He has done for man, and the consequences of it. Immediately after the work is finished, He communicates it to His brethren: "Save me from the lion's mouth; for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns." And immediately after His delivery, He exclaims, "I will declare thy name unto my brethren."

121 The Psalm, throughout, gives us the sufferings of the Lord Jesus, and also His strength, and comfort, and trust in God in the midst of them, which prophecies meet their fulfilment so accurately and fully in His life: "I knew that thou hearest me always"; "I am not alone, for the Father is with me" But there was one hour, one period of darkness, and of agony, when Satan was let loose to buffet Him, but not yet able to turn Him aside - to take Him off from His high trust in God, when He was brought so low as to say, "The waters have come in even unto my soul": "My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour." The very height of His trouble was the hiding of God's countenance.

There were three things which the Lord Jesus had to encounter, and to triumph over, and which were ever before Him - death, guilt, and the power of Satan. The union of these against Him was the "power of darkness," which He acknowledges to the multitudes who came to apprehend Him - "This is your hour, and the power of darkness." Now these were the three great enemies which were against us. We had sinned, and God had declared, "The wages of sin is death." We were guilty; and condemnation could not be put away but by the removal of the occasion of it; and Satan was manifestly against us, as an adversary to our final freedom. Now the Lord Jesus Christ had just to meet all these, and if they were overcome in Him, as the federal Head and representative of His people, then there was liberty - glorious and everlasting liberty.

122 We find then that Christ had really these three to contend with. He came to be the sin-bearer; and, bearing sin, He must necessarily subject Himself to its wages, which was death. Thus bearing sin, guilt was necessarily imputed to Him, and He must suffer its condemnation until God was satisfied. And finally He must, as the Head of His people, overcome him under whom Adam, and all mankind in him, had failed. This Christ did; these He met, took, sustained, remained stedfast under, and overcame; conquered them all, obtained the victory - with wounds and bloodshed indeed; but having triumphed, He rose with the full blessedness of the enjoyment of God's countenance, death having passed, and guilt removed, and Satan overcome by Him, in the name and for the eternal blessedness of His people.

This was fully manifested at His resurrection, which was a seal of His perfect accomplishment and acceptance; when He rose (a living witness to the full satisfaction for sin having been asked and obtained, and God's faithfulness being manifested), "Thou hast heard me," said Christ, "from the horns of the unicorns." And then, without any delay, He immediately adds, "I will declare thy name unto my brethren": as if the enjoyment He possessed was incomplete until the knowledge of it was communicated to them whom He had made part of Himself.

Christ Himself bore witness, and still bears witness by the Spirit, to the souls of believers, that redemption work is completed, and by this they are participators in all His blessedness. He comes to them with the blessed information of death being triumphed over, guilt being put away for ever, and Satan overcome. That is the comfort, the joy, the peace He brings to the soul, which the knowledge of these facts leads to. "I will declare thy name unto my brethren"; as if He had said, I will come and make known to your souls, my brethren, the victory I have obtained over all your enemies, and the consequences resulting from it, as standing perfectly justified. And in this full position of acquittal all His people stand, when Christ was declared "to be the Son of God, with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." And having ascended, think you that He has less power now? No. Having risen over sin, death, the grave, and Satan, He gives the Spirit now as a witness to the soul, to prove the subjugation of all its enemies - death triumphed over, guilt removed, and Satan overcome.

123 And thus He brings believers to the adoption of children, to the endearing character of family relationship, not as servants, but sons. He shews them that He has redeemed them that were under the curse of a violated law, that they might receive the adoption of sons; and then He brings them into the communion of the Father's love - "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father."

This is what He does - that is what He declares in the hearts of believers by the indwelling of the Spirit; and this union between Himself and His people - this blessed relationship subsisting between them and the Father, He blessedly proclaimed, immediately after His resurrection, when He declared, "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God."

He was just about to ascend to His Father, to ascend to that glory which He had with His Father; but what does He do previously? - there standing as the representative of His people, He identifies Himself thus with them: "My Father, and your Father; my God, and your God!" O brethren, the consciousness of this is great blessedness to a soul having gone through the conviction that it is lost, ruined; finding it just and right for God to cast it off because of its transgressions. O the happiness, when Christ comes by the Spirit, in the power of His resurrection, and demonstrates this to the poor soul, who knows it has sinned, and has been justly cast out of the presence of God, because, like Adam, it practically refused and rejected God. Then can the believer understand the full peace Christ brings, when He testifies what He has done for the soul, and the position into which He has already brought His people: "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God."

If the Lord were pleased personally to appear, and to say to your souls: I am come to tell you what I have done for you; I have conquered all your enemies, and brought you into so wondrous a state of privilege, that you are the sons of God - joint-heirs with Me in My Father's house - all sin is done away for ever, and there is no more condemnation for you - what a witness would this be to your soul! But, brethren, this witness you have had, when Christ rose after the battle had been fought - rose triumphant, and just on the eve of His ascension to glory, testifies to His people, "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father." Christ gives the believer faith just to see Him standing in that position, and to believe it, as though he saw Him with his bodily eyes, recognising Christ as his representative entering into heavenly places for him, and now in that glory which shall be his. Thus is the believer's peace firmly established, as the Saviour says, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you."

124 And was this peace to cease when He went from the earth? No; He expressly says, "I will not leave you comfortless; I will come unto you." This He will do manifestly - but now by the Spirit of holiness, who comes to the soul in a new power; declaring the same truth which Jesus had before revealed; still bringing home this testimony to the soul, "My Father, and your Father." And He just brings in the same blessed truth - "Ye are sons." It is not less true - it is not less real - not less certain, because Christ is actually gone to the Father. No, that proves its reality, for He is thence declared to be the Son of God with power, by His resurrection; and this He declares to His brethren, and in a way the most engagingly convincing.

He says it, when these things had been done; after death had been triumphed over, sin blotted out, guilt removed for ever, and Satan foiled! And now, He comes with this message, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus." There is no more sacrifice for sin - He Himself having suffered all the penalty due for all the sins of His people, gone through the punishment of it - God's wrath, and received the wages for it - death: so He is entitled well to credence, as He brings the truth to us in a way of suffering and in a way of love unparalleled.

Now there are two ways in which sin would hinder our peace with God: either in not seeing the sufficiency of Christ's blood to wipe it out of the book of God's remembrance, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; or not having a consciousness that the guilt of it is removed from ourselves; which feeling of guilt the devil endeavours to tie on our conscience, and thus to keep us from peace. But when the Comforter, the Spirit of holiness, enters into our hearts, "to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God" in the face of Jesus Christ, then we see that Christ having ascended, having entered into heaven, His work for sinners has been accomplished, and as the representative of all believers He is now before the throne, appearing there in the presence of God for us: and as He is without spot, having fulfilled all righteousness, so in Him we are spotless and righteous.

125 Here we see the perfectness of His love; having removed their sin and guilt, He makes Himself one with them - He calls them His own brethren: "I will declare thy name unto my brethren." "He is not ashamed to call them brethren." Oh, this is a blessed identity into which the child of God is brought! Have you any consciousness of this in your souls? If you have, you are blessed. How wondrous is that manifestation of His anxiety and willingness to make known immediately to His brethren His deliverance, and the consequences of it to them! His first declaration, on being rescued from the horns of the altar, is to make His brethren partakers of its blessed effects; He declares it to those He loves; as though He would say, It is all done now, and I must go and tell them. It is done that they may participate in My blessedness, being about to enter into the presence of God with great joy for them, and as their representative. Thus, being delivered Himself, He delivers from sin, guilt, death, and Satan, all those who are part of Himself - who "are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones" - by declaring His finished work, making known the Father's love, and bringing them to the sweet consciousness that God is their Father.

Jesus has declared Himself to be the Apostle and High Priest of their profession, ever living to make intercession. Having entered within the vail, He is there pleading the efficacy of that blood which He has shed; and He sends down this testimony of love by the Holy Spirit, who, being a witness to His work, stamps the truth of it in the soul, where He takes up His dwelling, and thus unites the believer in sweet association and fellowship with Christ, in all He has done, and suffered, and in the high station to which He is now exalted: and they are Christ's brethren, who are brought to see Him thus their Head and representative - to know Him and the power of His resurrection, as rising for them without sin unto salvation. This the world knows nothing about. Christ's fellowship was not with the world, but with His own, whom He had chosen out of the world: "I pray for them: I pray not for the world." He is a Christian to whom Christ has declared the Father's name, as reconciled to Him by the peace-speaking blood; that He has carried into effect His glorious purpose of redemption - this He declares in the midst of the Church, of those whom He has gathered out of the world, and translated into the kingdom of heaven. There He stands in the midst of them, as their glorious and triumphant Head - they are His. "They are not of the world," He said Himself, "even as I am not of the world." They are no longer in connection with the world; they have done with it, as a rule of life or conduct; its fashions, pursuits, customs, and desires, no longer guide them; instead of being led by them, they are led by the Spirit, and choose those things which the Spirit delights in.

126 As Christ offers up the prayers of His church, so He is said to be the Head of their praises. The believer sees Christ brought into the "dust of death"; but he also hears Him, after His conquest, in the midst of His church, declaring the Father's perfect satisfaction and pleasure. Christ's joy in the church's salvation, and in the inward witness of the Spirit of love to the work of Christ, we have the blessed certainty of the Father's love. All is thus finished. Now, did the Lord begin to praise before the work was finished? No; it is upon His resurrection He shews forth praises; then He begins the "new song," which His redeemed are taught to sing: "And they sing a new song, saying, Thou art worthy; for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood." It is a new song, because a redeemed song, and they have done with sin, that is, as to any condemnation; they may, indeed, before they join the church triumphant, while they are here below, be tempted still, harassed, and oppressed; but greater is He that is for them than he that is against them.

Here we see what the Lord's work is, and the blessed effects of it. Nothing could so completely satisfy a soul of this, as the declaration of our Lord, after He had effected redemption: "I ascend to my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God," leading the way to the Father, and then bringing them by that way that He went Himself; bringing them as His associates - His brethren - as His own, engaged with them in the same work of praising God. Now, that is what the world cannot do. The world never praises God; it knows not how; it knows Him not, and never can know Him by its own wisdom: "The world by wisdom knew not God"; but Christ's brethren know Him, and praise Him, when He comes and declares God's name to them; and it is the very declaration of the Father that calls forth their praises: they cannot but praise when they hear Christ saying, "I have declared unto them thy name and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." Now, dear friends, have you received this declaration of the Father's love by Christ? If you have, are you now praising Him? Have you entered into the vastness of that guilt to which you have individually contributed, which could call for such wonder-working effects as the descent of the Son of God into this world of woe? And have you seen it put away? Have you measured sin - your sin - by the sufferings and death of Jesus? And have you set your seal to the truth of God's word, as seen in Christ, that "the wages of sin is death"? What was all the work about? Is it true, or was it all a mere story or tale? What was all this suffering for?

127 Christ has declared His Father's name unto you. If you know why it was, you know that you are living in a world guilty of the sin of rejecting Christ, and that He thus permitted Himself to be rejected, that in Him you might be accepted; that He might pay the ransom price for your souls, and set you free. This He tells you, and declares that what He does, He does surely. Do you want security for it? You have the word of God, and the oath of God for it, "that by two immutable things, wherein it was impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us." Has God made such a declaration to you? O, wondrous intelligence! Then is He of inestimable value to your souls. As sinners you were lost; but, as sinners, He has declared that there is hope - that there is joy - that there is salvation, and that He brings it to you. He does not wait for you to come for it, for then you would never receive it, but He brings it to you - He makes known the Father's love - that "it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom"; that God the Father is pleased, satisfied, glorified; and He brings you to the same acknowledgment of satisfaction in Jesus, who lived for you, who died for you, who rose for you, and "who ever liveth to make intercession for you." O, what a claim has He on you to live for Him! Can it be possible that you still love the world? that you are still fond of the world which hated Christ, and drove Him out of it? The world is the enemy of God. Will you then be its friend? Oh, may the Lord draw off your affections, that are now drawn out and placed on the things of the world, and fix them on Himself, on Him who changeth not, but is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever!"

Parable of the Sowwer

Matthew 13

J. N. Darby.

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Notes of Sermons

These first thirteen discourses were delivered without any thought of extending them beyond the immediate congregation to whom they were addressed. They were taken down by one of the congregation, and are now at the desire of a brother made public, with the permission, but without any revision of the preacher. Dublin, 1838.

[The Editor would say here, once for all, that the contents of this volume in general being mere notes, he has taken the liberty of correcting the more obvious slips, most of which are perhaps due to such a means of transmission. The author is not justly responsible save for the substance, though no doubt the words are often his own; if he corrected, he would assuredly do so much more freely than another would feel free to do.]

We have here three reasons why the seed of God's testimony concerning Christ is unproductive, described in the character and circumstances; first, of those who hear by the wayside, the hard rock, and the beaten path in which Satan ever watches to catch away that which is sown in the heart. In this he is compared to the fowls of the air, which immediately devour the scattered seed that remains on the surface of the earth.

Dear friends, what do we learn from this? That there is nothing in the natural heart of man to afford root for divine truth. No, everything within us is entirely dissimilar to God, and therefore to everything that is like Him; and hence we must naturally hate and reject that testimony concerning Himself, which He has given in His word. The Word signifies Christ, through whom alone God is seen and known by sinful man. I say, dear friends, there is nothing whatever in the natural heart of man to receive God's revelation of Christ as a Saviour; therefore he ever must and will reject it, till God Himself imparts that vivifying power through which alone Christ is seen and valued. Everything in our hearts (I now speak of what we are naturally) is unlike God, as much unlike Him as sin is to holiness; and therefore we cannot admit Christ into our hearts any more than the Jews could abide Him in the world.

Dear friends, I say, By nature we are nothing but sin. Man might consider us amiable, but everything that is not exactly like God He rejects and abhors; and, dear friends, when He looks into our hearts, what does He see there? Everything, I say, that is the very opposite to Himself. Can a revelation from Him, can anything of which He approves, be received for a while in this state? No, everything within us must dislike it, and therefore I say, until God Himself imparts power to receive Christ, our hearts will still remain the hard beaten path trodden by the devil, who will always destroy the seed which is there sown (as described in verse 19 of this chapter), "when any one heareth the word of the kingdom and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart." From this, dear friends, we learn that God alone can give the seed of the word root within us, which, as the power of God, Satan cannot destroy. Observe, it is true and real seed that perishes after it was sown, not a false testimony, not something like it, which yet differs from it. It is truth, God's testimony concerning Christ, that is received in the natural heart and mind; but unless God Himself give it root there, it lies like seed scattered on the surface of the earth, and is immediately caught away by Satan.

130 A second reason for the destruction of this seed is given us in the description of those who received it as on "stony places, where they had not much earth, and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: and when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root they withered away." Nothing whatever to afford root for it in the natural heart. Here the seed is not immediately destroyed by Satan, it dureth for a while. Natural feelings and dispositions give it influence: but observe, dear friends, it is nature still - that which is unlike God - what is entirely opposed to Him; and therefore the seed sown in such a heart cannot take root, and must wither away. Seed on stony ground might have some earth, grow, and produce a flower as beautiful as any that has root. But let a scorching sun or unfavourable weather affect it, and it will soon wither. Thus, dear friends, can the natural man receive the word by the exercise of his intellect, and have his natural affections so influenced by it as for a while to resemble those in whom the seed has a divine root.

I say, dear friends, the intellect and affections of the natural man, according to his particular disposition, whether more influenced by his understanding or feelings, may, for a while, be so moved by divine truth as to cause him to resemble those who receive the seed into good ground - no apparent difference between them. I speak of what they are in our sight. They rejoice in Christ; they profess to love Him, and are outwardly separated from the world; they present fruits so like those of God's planting, that I say to human observation there appears no difference between them, but they have no root, and soon wither away. The seed forthwith sprung up: why? Because it had no deepness of earth, no solemn views, no serious sense of their past alienation from God and present distance from fellowship with Him. God can, and in some does, enable His people to rejoice in Christ with exceeding great joy, when they first see and receive Him. But these instances are few, and usually not followed by such good fruit as is seen in those who receive the word with strong affections of heart and mind at a sense of their past transgressions, the dissimilarity of their past lives to everything that was like God, and therefore to everything that He liked, and at their present distance from that fellowship with God, to which they are admitted through Christ.

131 Those who receive the seed, as in stony places, know nothing of this; they have no apprehension of the glory of Christ; no fellowship with Him through the Spirit; no communion with God: the seed has no root whatever within them, and therefore, though it dureth for a while, it must and will wither away. Why? It is declared in verse 21 of this chapter, "When tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by-and-by he is offended." All is well with such as receive the word with joy, but have no root, while they live at ease in the world. They produce fruit as fair and promising as any that is seen in the church; but when they are exposed to worldly loss and persecution for their profession of Christ, when trials and afflictions and the cross meet them in their path, they are offended. These are the scorching sun which withers the seed and all its fruits. It has no root which could assimilate the heart and mind to the mind and will of God, and hence they must prefer all that nature loves and God hates, to a knowledge of Him through Christ, and all the glories of His kingdom. This seed was soon received, had no root, and when tribulation and persecution arose, soon perished. This, I say, dear friends, ever must and will be the case where the seed is not planted and rooted by divine power - a power entirely opposed to everything which is naturally within us. Unless God Himself give us deepness of earth, by leading us into a knowledge of what we are, and what He is, and an apprehension of the glory of Christ, the seed sown in our hearts will wither away; there are things which are too deep for the sun of the world to reach and affect; without them we cannot endure. In obeying Christ, He may require us to act as though we hated father, and mother, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and our own life also; and unless prepared for the sacrifice, He declares we cannot be His disciples. How can he be prepared for this, who loves nothing but sin and the present world? and therefore, dear friends, I again say, that unless God Himself plant and root the word of His truth within us by a power that assimilates us to Himself, we cannot endure or forsake all that He requires of us as followers of Christ, and as His children called to communion and fellowship with Himself.

132 We proceed to the third cause, why the seed is unfruitful. "And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprung up and choked them." What are these thorns? They are particularly described in Mark 4: 19: "And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful." Observe, dear friends, the lusts of other things, not only the cares of this world, but the lusts of other things, are equally effectual in destroying it. What are these other things? "Other" is here contrasted with everything of which the word testifies: it signifies everything but the word, all that is not the word - to be plainer, all that is not Christ. Yes, dear friends, the word, when described as choked, signifies the testimony concerning Christ; but Christ Himself is the word presented to us in this testimony. To reveal Christ, to bring us into fellowship with Him, to form Him within us, is God's purpose when He plants in us the seed of divine truth; and therefore, dear friends, I again say, the lusts of other things signify anything and everything but Christ. No matter what it is, if the natural heart loves it, desires it, finds pleasure in it, it is a lust that chokes the seed.

"All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, are not of the Father." To human sight it may assume a very pleasing appearance, what is called amiable, or it may assume the form of lawful duties; but if these proceed from nature, if nature feels ease and satisfaction in them, they are not Christ, they are opposed to Him, and as certainly choke the seed and prevent any fruit from it, as the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, or the most evil dispositions which we condemn. Everything that is not the fruit of the Spirit is flesh. The Spirit reveals Christ, and forms Him in the heart, and therefore everything but Christ is among the lusts of the flesh. All but Christ are the lusts described in Galatians 5, in which it is said, "the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other." Christ and nature are entirely contrary to each other, for nature is the flesh and its lusts, and it is declared in Romans 8, "If ye live after the flesh ye shall die, but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." I again say, that what the natural man calls his lawful duties are among his lusts which choke the seed of the word; they proceed from nature, they serve and please it, a nature which is unlike God and Christ, and therefore what they must hate.

133 The Christian has lawful duties to perform, duties to parents and children, and other relations, and the Spirit of God will teach him to discover and fulfil them. These duties may then be called Christ, for they proceed from Christ living in him, are done in obedience to Him, and are the effects of His wisdom and power. I again say, everything but Christ is the thorns that choke the seed and render it unfruitful. It may assume the appearance of what is called amiable, or it might appear unamiable, it is seen in both forms, but I again say; everything within us and done by us which is not Christ, are the lusts of other things described in Mark 4; and are the thorns which choke the seed and prevent its fruitfulness, as much as any outward wickedness that is generally condemned. Here, dear friends, are the three reasons why the seed of the word is unfruitful: Satan's power; the natural enmity of our heart to God, to all that He loves and is like Him; and the influence of things seen and temporal - usually and justly described as the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

We shall now notice the seed falling into good ground, in which it brings forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirtyfold. If all that is in the natural heart hates and rejects the word, why is it thus fruitful? Our Lord Himself informs us, as declared in the beginning of John 15, "I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman." Here, dear friends, is the reason why the seed has a root in any heart and produces fruit. Such is God's value and love for all the branches of the true vine, that He Himself condescends to be their husbandman, first, to impart to them that power by which the seed has root and grows, and when it becomes a branch in Christ to purge it that it may bring forth more fruit. This power, as proceeding from Himself, is like God, and loves everything that He approves; hence it is the very opposite of all that is in the natural heart - it brings into fellowship with Christ. Christ lives in and through those who experience this power, for, as we read in 1 Corinthians 6, "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit"; and according to their fellowship with Christ, and their separation from everything that is not Him, they bring forth fruit, thirty, sixty, or an hundredfold.

134 That the vivifying power of the Father is engaged, when the seed takes root in the heart, is declared in two passages of Scripture, to which I shall direct your attention: James 1: 18, "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures"; and also in 1 Peter 1: 23: "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever." Here, you perceive that it is the creating vivifying power of God that provides a root in the heart of man through which the seed abides there. "Begotten," "born again"; a new birth by almighty power is needful, and effected in every heart where the seed has root. The resurrection life that is in Christ is imparted to all for whom He died. With Him they live again, arise, ascend, and sit in heavenly places; they are rooted and built up in Him; He dwelleth in their hearts; because He lives, they shall live also. The seed must remain in them, but He Himself declared, "Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up."

I again direct your attention to His words in John 15. "Every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit." Dear brethren, though we have fellowship with Christ, and sit with Him in heavenly places, our earthly nature is still in a defiling world. The world and Satan act on this nature; these and its own sin (for it is still enmity to God and all that He loves) are continually drawing the believer to dispositions and objects that defile the conscience, hide from him the glory of Christ, and hinder the blessedness of fellowship with Him and communion with the Father. How is their influence prevented? The Father purges every branch in the true vine. While the flesh lusts against the Spirit, the Spirit acts against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other. The Spirit Himself directs the believer to everything opposed to the flesh, it fills him with communion and earnest desires to enjoy his fellowship with Christ and the Father: Satan, the world, and nature work against this. How is the flesh subdued that God's children may enjoy their precious liberty? Precisely in this way: the Father purgeth them that they may bring forth more fruit. He sends afflictions and trials, to increase their separation from the present world, and to weaken the sin that works in their members; then that word within them, which is Christ, has dominion, and by Him they bring forth more fruit. Thus does the Father purge every branch in the vine. He ploughs up their hearts to remove from them everything that prevents their fruitfulness; He suits the affliction to the particular need for it, that it might root out of their hearts the lust of other things which tends to choke the seed. The other things, as I have said, are all and everything which is not Christ. Everything but Christ prevents our fruitfulness, the least contact with the world (for who can touch pitch and not be defiled?) everything nature desires and loves. These causes destroy not the seed where God has given it root, for it is the incorruptible seed which liveth and abideth for ever; but, dear friends, they are the reason why we bring forth fruit, some thirty, some sixty fold, instead of that hundredfold which affords such blessedness.

135 I say again, the Father purgeth every branch in the true vine, that it may bring forth more fruit. Dear friends, let us notice His love and condescension in this; just think what we are, and what He is; we, such guilty, weak, miserable sinners, and He so exalted and glorious, and yet He condescends to serve us! Yes, to serve us, for surely He does this when He undertakes and fulfils a service so important as purging us that we may bring forth more fruit. Such, I say, is His love for the vine and its branches, that He is their husbandman! Such are His purposes concerning all whom He gave to Christ, and are one in Him, that He is continually purging them from the influence of nature, and the world, and the power of Satan, who works through both; and again I notice His wonderful love and condescension in rendering them this service.

Dear friends, how are you affected by knowing that the Father will purge you, that you may bring forth more fruit? - purge you from everything that nature loves? - from all that assimilates you to the world? Can you say that you desire this by whatever means He is pleased to use? Since Christ Himself was not of this world, when He chose entire dissimilarity to it, God cannot suffer His people to be assimilated to it; no, He will purge them to draw them altogether from it, and then will they bring forth more fruit. But, I say, how are your minds affected by this? Can you say that you desire to be thus purged; that you love to have your hearts ploughed up, that God might remove from them everything that prevents you bringing forth fruit an hundredfold, everything that is not Christ and fellowship with Him? Are you pleased with every trial and affliction, however painful to nature, that subdues nature, draws you from the world, assimilates you to God and to Christ, and raises you to the glory and blessedness of fellowship with them? I inquire not, does nature love it? This cannot be, because the trial is sent to mortify and subdue nature, and, therefore, must be painful. It is, and must be, as described in Hebrews 12: "Now, no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward, it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them that are exercised thereby." And observe the apostle's reasoning in the preceding verses, "If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons, for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily, for a few days, chastened us after their own pleasure, but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness."

136 Dear friends, does this reasoning reconcile you to everything by which the Father purges you, that you might bring forth more fruit? I say, I am not inquiring, does nature love it? but I ask, does faith approve of it? does faith desire it? does the Spirit, who is opposed to all that opposes Christ, lead you to present your hearts unto God, that He might plough them up and purge them, ready and thankful for anything and everything by which He will prepare you to bring forth fruit an hundredfold? The Father is the husbandman who waits on you, that He might thus serve you. He ploughs, He waters, He purges every branch in Christ. Let us, I again say, admire and adore His love and condescension in this, and yield our hearts to Him with gratitude and submission, that we may experience His power in purging us, that we might bring forth more fruit.

To you who are strangers to this power, I address a few words. To you in whom the word of God has not yet taken root, I present Christ as a Saviour. Your sins are between you and the Father. Until these are removed, you cannot have any communion with Him. Christ can remove your sins, and present His blood in their place. Believe in Him, and He will do this; then you will have fellowship with Christ and communion with God, and bring forth fruit unto Him! The Lord direct your hearts to this! May He reveal Christ to all among us who may not yet know Him! The Lord bless His word to all who have heard it! The Lord bless it to all of us, and to His name be praise and glory. Amen.

Christ as the Searcher of Hearts

Mark 10: 1-46

J. N. Darby.

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It is a wonderful thing that the Lord came into this world and took all our sorrows and trials, but was entirely above them all. He was thus able to take up everything that was of God, and at the same time to shew what the state of man really was, just as the word of God divides soul and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. As the perfect light and mind of God, it comes and dissects our hearts, recognising everything that is of God, and shewing what we are.

Here the Lord judges all that would attempt to take the cross in a legal sense, that which would deny God in natural goodness, and also the thought that there is some good in man. He has no idea of anything good in man for God, and at the same time all that is of God is put in its own proper place. He owns everything that God establishes in the world, and yet probes the heart to the bottom. There were some who condemned everything, as if God had made nothing good. God never denies nature, because He made it; but Christ goes deeper, and puts the probe to the centre of man's intents and thoughts, yet He knows how to divide between them, and thus shews His perfectness. He was the perfectly obedient Son, who must be about His Father's business. He had power to own everything that was of God, and, if there was occasion, to be subject to it; but He had power too to detect everything of man, and that we have to learn, to have ourselves totally and fully judged. There is progress in seeing it, but we cannot go to God at all unless self is judged. There is a danger too of not getting with God above the evil. Here the Lord, in the exercise of His own blessed grace, can take notice of His own works - all He has done and all He has made; and it is just this One who can also discern what man is. He can say, "Consider the lilies"; not that they were of any value. But I find the blessed Lord, the Man of sorrows, who felt the sin all around, who looked for comforters and found none, and (except where His grace wrought) getting nothing but hatred for His love, yet so completely with God practically (He was God over all) that He was above evil. That principle is fully manifested in Him, and is to be looked for in us. It is not condemning the sins of nature and recognising it, nor yet saying that man is all bad, or I falsify the holy nature of God. What meets the power of evil is, that He gave His life a ransom. But there is evil all around us, and it is apt to hinder our being gracious, and to get power over us, and that hinders our having power over it, and over ourselves, and judging ourselves, as well as presenting grace, and basking in the sunshine of God's favour.

139 Our natural tendency is to get pleasures for self. Innocent they may be, but they take the heart from God; they are spoiled by sin. People ask the harm of these things. The question is, What use are you making of them, and where is your heart? The moment there is a turning from the cross (death to everything), our Lord says, "Get thee behind me," for that is all He has. He is going to Jerusalem, and they are amazed, and as they follow they are afraid. There I get the way the cross makes me afraid of following Christ; but He says, If you do not take it up, you cannot be my disciple. The Lord judges man totally, and utterly; we cannot go too deep. People say, If man is not good, he can be made so. But the thing Christ brings us to is, "In me dwells no good thing." There is no good in talking of good fruit when the tree is bad; there are self-will and lusts. Then we see that before we take up the cross for ourselves there is the cross for us. He suffered, and gave His life a ransom. There my sins were put away, and the old nature judged. I have died, and my life is hid with Christ in God. I am alive to God, not to Adam. That separates me from the world. Christ is my righteousness and my life up there. He has given me His Spirit, and I look down from there in grace, being an object of His favour, at what is of His hand in the creation. When I have got out of it, I can look at it. He had a divine view of the world. He can judge man's heart as man's heart, and at the same time admire the beauty of the lilies. Though He was with God, and was God, He could not despise the work of His hand. Everything was corrupted, even the brute creation, through man; but whenever anything had the stamp of God, He could see it. We have to learn this, and it is difficult; but I do look that Christians should walk with God. Either a man is letting his mind go after what the flesh likes, or he is applying the cross to it. If you admire a flower you see, all right; but if you care for it, all wrong. I can see the hand of God in its beauty, but if I am thinking of the thing it is not the beauty, but my own will and inclination. The Lord runs the sharp edge of His word in, dividing between soul and spirit.

140 First, He takes up marriage, and says, God allowed divorce for the hardness of their hearts; but it was not so at first. There is natural affection; but if it gets hold of us it may become idolatry. A child or a husband may take our heart from God, but being without affection is one of the signs of the last times. In the last days men are not only not spiritual, but they are not natural. The Lord puts His seal on every relationship. It is an awful thing, even if a child is not converted, to see it failing in affection to its parent; and the nearer the relationship, the more dreadful it is. God owns the relationships, and it is a sign of the last days to be wanting in the affections proper to them.

Then we get the Lord greatly displeased at the disciples sending away the children, not that there was no sin in the children, but they were the expression of what God had created - the confidingness of a child without the distrust that grows up with one. The world lives in distrust (miserable at root), but that is not the case with a child. It has no distrust, but a disposition to believe everything (it often gets cheated); and the Lord says that is what He likes. Unless you receive the kingdom as a child you will not enter it.

Then I find a thoroughly lovely character, and the Lord "beholding him, loved him." It was not the love of God to the world, nor the special love of relationship and grace for His own; but the Lord loved what was lovely - a ready, willing mind to learn everything. The young man had no idea of the ruin of man. He does not say, "What shall I do to be saved?" or Christ would have given him no such answer. He takes him on the ground of a Jew (v. 19), and the young man answers, "All these have I observed from my youth." The Lord does not say, You have not; but beholding him, He loved him. He saw what was lovely in his character (and we ought to see natural loveliness); but his conscience must be touched, and his heart was unknown to himself. "Sell whatsoever thou hast, and take . . . up the cross," v. 21. He went away sorrowful. The instant the state is detected the loveliness vanishes. His character was lovely in its ingenuousness; but when it is searched and detected his heart comes out as a thing in which there was nothing for God. He deceived himself as to man's state; but there was natural loveliness in him (and we often meet unselfish, amiable characters). How does the Lord meet it? He says, "There is none good save one, that is God." There is no such things as a good man in the world. You are totally on wrong ground. There is none good but God is a principle. Why do you call Me good if you come to Me as a man? The Lord takes him up on the ground of law that he was on, and says, Don't say man is good, but keep the law.

141 Another thing comes out. The disciples say, "Who then can be saved?" And the Lord tells them, "With men it is impossible." There is no such thing as being saved on man's ground; but God can save by His Son. That is another thing (v. 27). By man it is impossible; but the means of being saved has reached man. He can get eternal life; but when his heart is detected it is totally wrong. This young man turned away with sorrow and grief; for his heart was with his money. The gospel does not deny natural loveliness; but that will not do with God. It will not do for Him to have no vile ones. He looks for the vilest sinners (the thief on the cross, for instance), and takes them to paradise. He does not take the pretty flowers and leave the weeds. What man calls goodness is often abominable selfishness; and they say, If that man does not go to heaven, who will? They do not know the heart a bit. The supreme goodness of God takes up the one that will not have God and Christ, and will have his lusts and pleasures, and saves him. "All things are possible with God." The gospel does not build on what is there, but judges it. The flowers of a wild apple may be as pretty as others, but there is no fruit on it. What Christ says is, Where is your heart? Have you not a will, and the thoughts of your heart and your conduct in everything moved by it? And the answer of it is only hatred to God.

That is very humbling, but it puts the gospel on the right ground. There was unspeakable love to sinners, with all their sins. He was ever moved at oppression and sorrow - never at insult or outrage to Himself, but always moved with compassion for man - "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ." He brings all this goodness to where we are, but He must detect the conscience. He will not build the goodness of God on ours, and deceive us. The Lord lays the young man's heart bare. He does not drive him away; He never drove any one away; but he went away because his heart was never reached. Self must be detected - "All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." When I learn His goodness in coming in grace into this world to win our hearts, I say, "Search me, 0 Lord, and try my heart." I know He has not come to impute sin, and I come into His presence with an open heart. The moment I fully trust this blessed love of Christ my place is that of the man to whom the Lord imputes no sin. He has given His life a ransom, and put it all away. He lays bare our hearts, but gives us confidence; so that we desire to have everything out before God, and the whole ground we stand on before Him is "truth in the inward parts." He stood where I was, and now I stand where He is, and that is the only place I have before God. The Christian stands between accomplished redemption and the glory, at liberty with God and from the world and sin. We may fail and grieve the Spirit, but there we are set.

142 The disciples are thinking, What is the meaning of this, that this lovable character is driven away, and cannot come to God? Well, the very grace that has come to seek and save, drives away the natural heart because it cannot bear it. It detects the heart, and must claim it for God both as Creator and Redeemer. They were still looking to tack the new thing on to the old, looking for the glory in a carnal way. The Lord says, You must take up the cross and follow me. If you follow Me, I can give you the cross; that is all I have to give you now. He takes the lowly place as to man and the world; death was all He had for those who followed Him (v. 38-40). "Can you drink of the cup that I drink of?" They say, "Yes," deceiving themselves. He says, "Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of" (not atonement, but suffering) - you will have to suffer if you take up the cross and follow Me really. You shall be like Me, and close to Me too; but what you must reckon on is the cross, if you are going to glory. "If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour." Not that there is not joy, "a hundred fold now in this time"; but He says, I must have your hearts: I have to die, and if you are going to follow me, the road I am going is to the cross, that is the path I am going to the glory. Are you ready to take up your cross, or have you a question if the cross is right, or if there is any other road? The Lord knew none, and I know none.

There is another point. If we were perfect, all would be simple; but we have a great deal to learn and to detect and correct. At this time the Lord set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem, and the disciples want to know the meaning of it. "The Jews sought to stone thee, and goest thou thither again?" "As they followed they were afraid." Not only will and lust were detected, but they were afraid of following Christ. Do not you know what that is? The instant you are following Christ there is the consciousness that the world is against you. Nicodemus went to the Lord by night because he was afraid to go by day. There is the instinctive consciousness that the world is against us, and we are afraid to confess Christ in our habits, our houses, etc. It is very base, but there it is. Paul says what things were gain to him he counted loss for Christ; he did not go away sorrowful. He says, I am glad to get rid of it (it is dross and dung) "to win Christ." There was the energy and power of the Spirit. Did Paul follow trembling? Not at all. Five times forty stripes save one - beaten, stoned, all sorts of things! It was all on the road, and he had real liberty, "always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus." These disciples did not dare leave the Lord; they kept in the way, for here was eternal life in Him and nowhere else; but they had no liberty. When He spoke of the cross Peter says, "That be far from thee"; and the Lord says, "Get thee behind me, Satan" - the very man who had confessed Him as the Christ, and to whom He had said, "Blessed art thou." But if he will not take up the cross, he is "Satan." "Thou art an offence unto me." The cross deals with all that is of man, and where there is the willing spirit and blessed free liberty with God, the power of Christ rests upon us, and it is no sacrifice to give up human righteousness, or all I possess if need be, that I may win Christ; they are only weights as I run the race.

143 Natural affection we are to have by the power of God; but the Lord is in heaven, and the cross is the path, because though we are in a world where there are a thousand needed things, and all richly to enjoy, when it is a question of what our hearts are, there is none good. Christ has been rejected, and I am dead to the world, sin, and the law, and alive to God. It should be so more practically every day with willing hearts. Our steps are feeble, but He shews us the way, and we delight in His love. Of course the Spirit reproves us, instead of bringing us joy, if we are grieving Him.

144 How far have our hearts believed this voice of the blessed Son of God in such love, when He puts forth His own sheep, going before them, meeting the dangers and leading them in the path? How far are our hearts in truth and simplicity disposed to follow Him, to think His love not mistaken in the path He has marked out? It is real deliverance from the flesh; but we must trust His love. When my heart thoroughly trusts Christ, it is His cross and His reproach; and it has the sweetness of Christ, and all is sweet (we may be cowards in it), and we judge everything that hinders His leading us in the path.

The Lord give us to trust Him, that we may have courage to follow Him, and learn what this poor world is!

Two Warnings and an Example

Being the substance of a lecture on Matthew 26

J. N. Darby.

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We have here an example in the case of Jesus, and two warnings in Peter and in Judas. In Peter we may learn the weakness, and in Judas the dreadful wickedness, of the flesh. We get in Jesus what we should aim after. In Judas we see the mere professor, in Peter the saint sifted. All three are before us in a time of searching trial, and the result of trial is seen in each. We ought to remember that we have received the Holy Ghost, which Peter had not when he denied the Lord; yet, having the Holy Ghost, we may still learn a lesson from Peter's flesh. And is not the entire worthlessness of the flesh among the last things we learn? In Peter we see what the flesh is. There is no real living upon the hope of the glory, except in measure as the flesh is mortified and brought under subjection.

I would dwell, first, upon Judas's apostasy. He had all the appearance to men of being as the other disciples; he had companied with the Lord, he had been one of those sent forth to preach the gospel and work miracles; but his conscience never was before God. He might have truth in his understanding (and, indeed, the understanding does not generally receive truth so readily where the conscience is affected). Again, Judas could not have walked three years with Jesus, and seen His grace and love, and not have had his affections moved. But then his conscience had never been brought into exercise before God. So it is with many. If we watch the saint receiving truth, we shall often find him slow of apprehension. There is something to be judged before God; something which condemns him, and which involves sacrifice. For instance, we see most clearly that the precious blood cleanses from all sin; but only let us commit sin - and how slowly do we apprehend that blessed truth so as to get the comfort of it! In the latter case the conscience is at work. In like manner the affections of the unconverted may be moved - a great company of women followed Christ at the crucifixion, bewailing and lamenting Him! So we read of "anon with joy" receiving, and "by and by" [or anon, for it is the same word], when tribulation arises, turning away.

146 The natural man wants something to satisfy self before God; and, until he has done with himself, he will be looking for a certain measure of righteousness before God. He may have been, in connection with this want, instructed in the gospel, and thus the understanding may be clear, and the affections moved: but, unless the conscience be bare before God, there is no life. Here was Judas betraying his Master! After all, what was this? Nothing more, at the bottom, than what was in every heart. Judas loved money - no uncommon lust. And the love of money in a saint nowadays is as bad, or worse, as being done more in the light.

There was sin in Judas's nature: which sin shewed itself in the shape of the love of money. The next thing was, Satan suggesting a way of gratifying this lust, for he loved money more than he loved Jesus. And now we find the result of outward nearness to the Lord while the conscience is unaffected - it was to make Judas reason upon circumstances. He thought, probably, the Lord would deliver Himself, as He had done before; for, when he found it not so, he threw down the money, and said, "I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood." He continues in this nearness to Christ, until, thirdly, we read that "after the sop Satan entered into him." In the condition of hypocrisy he gets his heart hardened; and then Satan gets between his conscience and all hope of pardon. Many a natural man would not betray a friend with a kiss, as Judas soon after did. His nearness served to harden him; and he actually took the sop from the hand of the Lord! Even natural feeling was silenced. So it is when the unconverted man gets into a similar position. He becomes more vile than ever. His heart is hardened. Hypocrisy, and at length despair, ensues. Such is the flesh and its end. And the flesh cannot be bettered by ordinances, even where Christ Himself is. Such is the flesh - I can hardly say, when left to itself, for man is never left to himself, he is never really independent. He has the will to be so; therefore he is perfectly a sinner, but if disobedient, he is servant to his lust, "disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures," and slave to Satan. A natural man has a conscience and shame. He will not do in the light what he would do in the dark. But the outward form of Christianity, where it has not touched the heart, only makes this difference, that his conscience is seared, and he is only more subtly the slave of Satan.

147 I turn now to the contrast afforded by what is seen in Peter with what we see in our blessed Lord. In Jesus we see the obedient, the dependent One, expressing His entire dependence by His praying. And there was seen an angel from heaven strengthening Him. He felt the weakness which He had given Himself up to bear; He was "crucified in weakness." "All my bones," He says, "are out of joint, my heart is melted like wax in the midst of my bowels." "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; tarry ye here and watch with me." So in the earlier temptation, we hear Him answering the devil out of the word of God. Jesus might have sent Satan away by divine power, but this would have been no example to us. So, in this chapter, we see the Lord praying!

If you compare what Peter is doing with what the Lord is doing, you learn the secret of Peter's weakness and the Lord's strength. What was the effect of trial upon the weakness of Peter's flesh? He had said, "I will go with thee to prison and to death"; but the Lord has to say to him, "could ye not watch with me one hour?" They were sleeping for sorrow. Here was neither prison nor death! "Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation" (not merely that there be no transgression). Peter entered into temptation; Jesus never did at all. Yet the trial was far greater to Jesus. Jew and Gentile were against Him, and behind them the power of Satan. "This," said He, "is your hour, and the power of darkness"; and again, "my soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." Where does He take all this? The Lord does not sleep and seek to forget His sorrow. He goes and prays to the Father. His eye rested not on the circumstances to think of them. He looked to His Father. Not that He did not feel; for He said, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." It was weakness here as man, and that is real strength.

Remember, if we are in entire dependence, the temptation does not meet us at all. Jesus does not say, 'shall I not go through all these trials?' but "the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" He does not see Pilate or Judas in it; it was not Satan that had given Him the cup, but His Father. So with us; if in a frame of entire dependence, temptation does not touch us at all! Trial comes; but, like Jesus, we can say of it, "the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? "Every trial becomes a blessed occasion for perfecting obedience, if near God; if otherwise, a temptation! Jesus was walking with God. It was not that He did not feel weakness. "Tarry ye here, and watch with me," shews the weakness of human condition fully felt. As in Psalm 22: 14, referring to the cross, He says, "I am poured out like water, all my bones are out of joint: my heart is melted like wax in the midst of my bowels." And yet He shrank not from suffering alone when love to His disciples called for it. "If ye seek me, let these go their way." But being in an agony, He prays the more earnestly; it drives Him to His Father; and that before the trial comes. Then what is the next thing? When the trial actually comes, it is already gone through with God! He presents Himself before them saying, "whom seek ye?" as calmly as if going to work a miracle. Whether before Caiaphas or Pontius Pilate, He makes a good confession; owns Himself Son of God before the Jews, and King before Pilate.

148 How comes this difference? In the first place with Peter the flesh is sleeping; he goes to sleep to get rid of the pressure of circumstances. Peter has not gone through the trial with the Father. At the moment when Jesus is going to be led away, the energy of the flesh wakes up, and Peter draws the sword. The flesh has just energy enough to carry us into the danger where it cannot stand - that energy deserts us then. How little real communion is here! When Christ was praying, Peter was sleeping; when Christ was submitting as a lamb led to the slaughter, Peter was fighting; when Christ was confessing in suffering, Peter was denying Him with cursing and swearing. This is just the flesh: sleeping when it ought to be waking; in energy when it ought to be still; and then denying the Lord when the time of trial comes. With Christ it was agony with the Father, but perfect peace when the trial came. Oh, if we knew how to go on in all circumstances in communion with the Father, there would be no temptation that would not be an occasion of glorifying Him!

The great thing was, Peter had not learned what the flesh is: he did not keep in memory the weakness of the flesh; and thus the condition of dependence was hindered. He seems to be sincere in wishing to own the Lord Jesus and not deny Him. There was more energy of natural and very true affection in Peter than in those who forsook the Lord and fled. He really loved the Lord. Peter fails, not from self-will, not from willing to sin, but through the weakness of the flesh. In Christ there was no possible moral weakness, because He always walked in the place of weakness in communion with His Father. Jesus goes - through agony itself - with the Father. Peter fails, though but the shadow of temptation comes to him. All Peter's fall began by want of dependence, and by neglecting prayer. We must be watching "unto prayer"; not merely ready to pray when temptation comes, but walking with God, and so meeting it in the power of previous communion and prayer. Without continual prayer, and constant sense of entire weakness in self, the more love to Christ, and the more good-will to serve Him are in a saint, the more certainly will he, by that very good-will, be led into the place in which he will dishonour Christ! The other disciples that fled did not so much dishonour the name of their Master as Peter did.

149 It was thus Peter had to learn the evil of the flesh. Jesus, on the contrary, ever walked in the confession of dependence - always praying. And what use did the Lord make of His knowledge of Satan's purpose to sift Peter? He prayed for him! The more knowledge, dear brethren, the more prayer! "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." As the result of this intercession, Peter learnt the evil of the flesh more deeply than the others, and was able to "strengthen his brethren."

We are incapable of ministering truth to our brethren unless we are conscious of weakness in ourselves. Without the prayer of Jesus, where would Peter have been? He was running nearly like Judas. Oh, what a blessed thing to be kept in entire consciousness of weakness, instead of running on like Peter into a place where we cannot stand! How good to be afraid to take a single step without the Lord's guidance! The flesh is ever playing us false - it is good for nothing. The effect of keeping it in the Lord's presence is to have done with it - to be cast on the Father. There is no wisdom that will stand us in any stead but the wisdom that is from above. The Lord knew what the flesh was, and what Paul needed, when he had been caught up into the third heaven. To be taken up to a fourth? No; but a messenger of Satan to buffet: that is, he needed to be brought down. There is the thorn in the flesh given him; there is to be the consciousness that the flesh is worth nothing.

150 We may notice that there are three ways of learning the powerlessness and wretchedness of the flesh: prior to peace, often in desperate struggles (for knowledge and conscience are distinct things); when we have peace, before the Lord in prayer and communion, not daring to take a step till He leads us, and then He is glorified in us in grace and obedience, whatever the trial; or in the bitter experience in which Peter learned it, when flesh is not judged in communion with God. This last will be the way, so long as we are judging of things instead of judging ourselves. When we are faithfully judging ourselves and walking with God, we shall enter into no temptation. Trial may come, but there will be full preparation to meet it; not that we may be able to say, Now I am prepared for this or that temptation. We are in no certainty from one moment to another as to what trial may be coming; but we shall have the strength of God with us in it. Therefore our only safe place is watching and prayer - yes, prayer before the assault - prayer that may amount to agony; for so Jesus prayed!

We must expect to have our souls much exercised; often, it may be, when trial is there, casting about as to why this trial is sent. It may be for a fault; it may be for some careless or hard state of soul. It may be, as Paul's, to keep down the flesh; it may be preparatory to some coming conflict. But in these exercises of soul we must keep before the Lord: then, when the trial comes for which the Father has been training us, there will be perfect peace. The Lord will make you bear in spirit with Him, when exercised, the burden which He will make you bear in strength in the battle. Do not shrink from inward exercise; settle it with Him. There is no limit to our strength for obedience when our strength is the Lord's.

"If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." None of our souls can estimate what that cup was for One who had dwelt essentially in the Father's love; but the most spiritual will most acknowledge it. Then the Holy One was made sin; no gleam of light on the soul of Jesus. At the thought of it, when pressed by Satan on His soul, we see Him sweating as it were great drops of blood. He did not think lightly of sin! The Prince of life was brought into the dust of death - "all thy billows passed over me." At the cross Jesus bore what you will never be called to bear. Beware of denying Him. Many do so in detail who in the main acknowledge Him. Our happy privilege is, not to be occupied with the trial as a trial, but to see in every trial an opportunity of obeying God, and to say of each, as Jesus did, "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?"

151 "Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only God, our Saviour, be glory."

God's Grace and Man's Need

Matthew 15: 1 - 28

J. N. Darby.

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Here we have the wonderful contrast between the ways and actings of man's heart towards God, and the ways and actings of God's heart towards poor guilty man. These two things must be brought close the one to the other, and be shewn as they rightly are. Men's hearts were not fully put to the test before the Lord Jesus came (John 15: 22-24): "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin. He that hateth me hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father." It was all fully brought out then; and what man's heart was was plainly proved. When he saw God, he hated Him.

Although God was present in the midst of Israel, He was not openly revealed. He was hid within the veil, within which the high priest, shrouded in a cloud of incense, alone approached His holy throne. Neither did man's heart come up there to see the holiness of it; nor did man come down fully to man. It was not the full revelation of God. It was that which could leave man in a good deal of darkness, and God hid; and therefore that which could not clearly detect man's heart. Consequently He says, "If I had not come, they had not had sin": not that they had not sinned; but that the Lord would not hold them finally guilty until He had manifested Himself in Him of whom He had spoken to Israel. But when God was made manifest, man hated Him. God had before revealed a great deal, but not Himself. He revealed much in the figures of the law, and which foreshadowed and veiled better things; and we find the use man made of it. I am not here speaking of the law, as trying man's conscience; though, in passing, we may notice that too, as bringing in - not sin, for that was there already - but transgression. The use God made of it was to prove man a sinner. It was used to make manifest - in fact, to create - transgression.

To turn for a moment to the use man made of the law, in contrast with God's purpose in it: God used it, as we have seen, that the offence might abound - that sin might appear exceeding sinful. Man set about to make himself righteous by the very thing by which God was proving him a sinner, and sin exceedingly sinful. This you are doing, if you are seeking to satisfy the demands of God's righteousness by your own ways. Man seeks to save himself by the righteousness of the law; but God's use was not that, for He never thought of saving any but by Jesus. When a child is forbidden by its parent, by an express law, and breaks the law, it not only makes manifest the evil disposition that is in its heart, but there is then positive disobedience, and the consciousness of sin, in that which the child does. It might have followed its inclination in many cases before, without consciousness of sin; but now not so: the conscience is affected and defiled; and by the law we are under condemnation and death.

153 To return to the figures and shadows of better things. Man took those very ceremonies and sacrifices, which were typical of that one sacrifice which sin had made necessary, and by them, their conscience nothing satisfied, tried to eke out their own righteousness; and they follow the same course now. We know that there were a great many sacrifices for sin under the law: for God has tried this way, .that we might know its incapacity of bringing us to Him. To employ similar means is mere superstition, and denial of Christ. Men first set about to be righteous by commands which they cannot fulfil; and then they seek to add ceremonies, to eke out a righteousness of their own. That is the sum of the religion of so many - making an attempt at keeping the law, and adding ceremonial observances thereto, and then attaching the name of Christianity to it, while all God's truth is shut out.

Further, after all, the conscience never will be satisfied, because there will be the dread of that day when God shall make manifest the secrets of the heart. The soul is not on the road to have a conscience at peace with God. Travelling on this road, the man will go on from one thing to another. He may add ceremony to ceremony, and tradition to tradition, but he has only got farther from God - he has only got more between God and his conscience, and no forgiveness after all. The conscience gets satisfied for a moment or two by man's dealing with it in this way; but there is no peace with God. When sin is brought into the presence of God's holiness, the conscience, if not despairing, gets hardened. See what a state those Jews were in who could go and buy Christ's blood for thirty pieces of silver, and yet have scruples of conscience as to where the price of blood should be put - refusing to put it into the treasury, because it was the price of blood! Anything will suit man, provided it is not his conscience in the presence of God. Where He is detecting the state of heart, and making it know complete forgiveness, so that it can be in His presence without sin, it is another thing. Nothing is more simple than this, glorious as is the grace that has wrought it; indeed, it is too simple for those who are not taught of God to love the truth. But, simple as it is, man's conscience is thus in the presence of God, and anything suits man rather than that.

154 Though God is infinitely high, He is very simple to man's wants, and to man's conscience. The washing the hands is not that which signifies, but that which comes from the heart. Here we have something more simple than all the intricacies of ceremony and tradition. God's light deals with realities; and God's purpose is, by the powerful light of His Spirit, to bring into the conscience of man all the different evils of his heart. When God's light shines in, that evil of which the conscience before took no notice - a vain thought or the like, that passed and was forgotten - is now made manifest. That which comes out of the heart is what defiles a man.

God is dealing with realities. He wants nothing from man. He is shewing him what he is. He is bringing into man's conscience what is already in his heart. When God's light shines in, it detects what is in the heart, and thus there is a manifestation to a man's conscience of all that comes out of his heart. That light soon teaches him the vanity of washing his hands, and such things (v. 2-8). It tells him that to draw near to God with his mouth, and honour Him with his lips, while his heart is far from Him, is all in vain. It shews him that all mere ceremonial offerings and prayers are worse than useless. "This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." The light detects the evil of man's heart (v. 11-20): "Not that which goeth into the mouth, but that which cometh out of the mouth, defileth a man. For out of the mouth [heart] proceed evil thoughts, murders," etc. Thus God's light comes in and shews what comes out of the heart. Take the first index of what is there, when seen and expressed in the light - an idle word, perhaps (James 3). But farther, the Lord does not say, simply, You have done this or that, but He traces the evil to the root. He traces the conduct or the words of man to some source - to what? to the heart! If there are idle and corrupt words, there is an idle and corrupt heart; and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. That is what man's nature is, what he is. So that, though men have the fairest conduct outwardly, God unmasks what is within, and shews the vanity of all their outward ceremonies as a means of eking out a righteousness of their own. He regards not the mere outward conduct of man, but measures the heart; and tracing all the evil to that, asks, Why is this? For out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts (v. 19), and there He closes with man. His purpose, in all these dealings and ways with man, is to shew him what he is before God.

155 Then we turn to the other side of the picture, in which God's heart is brought out (in the case of the woman of Canaan) (v. 21-28). This woman had not the pride of human distinction in which the Jews gloried. She was neither a Jewess nor a Pharisee - quite the contrary; she belonged to a city which God had held up as a most reprobate city; Matt. 11: 2I. She was a Syrophoenician - a Canaanite - of a race held in the Old Testament to be accursed (Gen. 9: 25-27), whence nothing of repentance could be expected. The Lord comes into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, peopled by the descendants of Canaan ("cursed is Canaan"). That is where grace ever comes. And she was one of these outcasts in the fullest sense of the word. She had no privileges, no claims. Well, she recognises Him here as the Lord, the Son of David, and salutes Him as such. As such she knew what mercies He had brought among the Jews; and she comes and asks for blessing. He does not answer her a word. He takes no notice of her whatever. His ear was closed to her request, at least so far as that He gave her no answer. A repentant Jew might have appealed to Him under this title. He was in the place of the promise which Messiah came to accomplish. "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel," v. 24. But for this there must be some claim to the promise. If you meet Christ on the ground of what He is as promised to Israel, you must have some fitness for the promise, some claim to it. If you are seeking by righteousness to get the help of grace, that is not my errand, says Christ; I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Why is there no answer? the heart may say; for she had recognised His lordship. She had, and could have no claim on or connection with Him on that ground; with the Son of David a Canaanite had nothing to do. The disciples were anxious to get rid of her by satisfying her demand, but He would not allow it; He holds to God's order. If she came to the Son of David to get help, she must come as a Jew. But here (v. 25) she gets a step farther, she ceases to address Him as the Son of David (the ground on which she supposed, giving Him the due honour, she might expect something), and her sense of want constrains her to cry out, "Lord, help."

156 Are there none here expecting that, because they entitle Christ aright, because they give Him His due title, and honour Him, He must answer them, and are astonished that He does not? The poor woman felt her sorrow; she wanted something, and there was the simple expression of her need; but, even then, He answers, "It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to the dogs." My errand is from God; I do not go beyond that. Her owning and addressing Him as the Son of David was in the way of righteousness, which was true. Her need still makes her go forward, and she says, "Lord, help me!" But He answers, I am come to the children - to seek for fruit on the vine which God owns. You might think God would own righteous, well-conducted people, and that they might then take the fruits and blessings God attached to that. But you have no claim on that ground: you are sinners. As far as God's ways were revealed outwardly, the Jews were God's people. But she was outside everything - a dog. She is looked upon as a dog, and she now takes the place of a dog. What now, being a dog, could she hope for? Why not give up hope? Why, because she abandons all title and claim in herself, but the need which cast itself on pure bounty; and there was, she asserted, an overflowing abundance of grace, which could even give some supply to the dogs: "Truth, Lord; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table."

There was bounty in the house of God for dogs themselves. Be it she was a dog; she made no pretence to take the children's place, and therefore it was no answer to her to call her that, because the Master could look beyond the children, and there was an overflowing supply of grace and fulness that did not leave even the dogs without provision (v. 27). And such was the poor woman's real state. She knew the Master of the house was infinitely rich. She knew God and Jesus ten thousand times better than the disciples around. She knew that there were bounty and plenty enough in the Master's house, and from that super-abounding supply of grace He could let the dogs eat. The vilest and the most hopeless could find food in the Master's house. The real understanding of God is according to our understanding of our total vileness and nothingness. Israel had never understood divine love as it was here exhibited to the dogs - fathomed by her need - fathomed by her wretchedness. She reached up to the source from whence even the children are fed - the fulness of the love of God Himself, which did not shut even dogs out from His bounty. She passed by all dispensation, even to what God Himself had done, seeing He had come down, not to hide His holiness, but to shew what He really was; and when the sinner was brought to a confession of her own nothingness, He swept away everything between the sinner and Himself, as He did with the woman of Samaria.

157 She had arrived at what God was. He had done away with that which brought man a little nearer to Him, that is, ordinances, etc.; and He now comes down to shew what He is, and what man is; and when man comes to his true and real standing, God is there to meet him in all His unlimited grace. Law was given by Moses, and was but a veil; but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. The full truth of what man's heart is is brought out by the revelation of God in Christ. Now there was not any one between God and man to veil His holiness or to conceal His love; not even any oft-repeated sacrifice; not even a Moses with a veil on his face; but man must deal with God Himself - with God in Christ. And here, you see, the Lord would not satisfy this poor woman on any other plea but on that of her own real character. He calls her really what she was, and she understood that there was in God's heart all that the Lord Jesus Christ had seen in it when He was in heaven, for He was here to shew it. And, supposing she had been something more than a dog, she would not have needed so much grace. It is our vileness which brings out that wonderful grace which God gave. For, if she had been in less need, what would have been the consequence? Why, that there would have been less grace manifested in God.

And what is the great truth in Christianity that is brought out by all this? That the veil is rent from the top to the bottom; and that man, as he is, is in the presence of God - the man is there unveiled. What have we got in the cross? The first thing is, God dealing with man in His own presence? But how? Did He come to require anything? Nothing; how should He come and require it? In a certain sense He did require fruit from the vine, but there was none. What then did He come for? why did He come into a world full of sin? what did He seek there? He sought sinners! Did He come here ignorant of the extent of their sin? No, for He knew what was in man's heart full well before He came. He knew their sin well. He knew all that would come upon Him. But what stops the sinner? Not that he is to come to God - we see the Lord Jesus Christ come down to him in his sins. Is there anything between Him and the sinner? No, my friends - nothing; not even His disciples. They might quiet and get rid of importunity, but neither shew God's holiness nor reveal His love. It was the prerogative of His own love to come and touch the sinner without being defiled by the sin: just as He did to the leper. The leper exclaimed, "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." The Lord puts forth His hand and touches Him, saying, "I will; be thou clean." And remember, if He came to shew God's love to man in his sins, so that his heart might be won, and have confidence with God, He came to take away sin from man by taking it upon Himself.

158 The veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom, I see the holiness of God: but the very stroke which has thus unveiled the holiness of God has put away the sin that would have hindered my standing in the presence of that holiness. I see what God in His love has done for us in the Person of Christ. I see that the bruising of His Son has taken place. Here I get God Himself coming down to me, and I am enabled now to go back with Christ into the rest of His holiness. In the death of Christ I see the fearful vengeance of God against sin; and the rending of the veil, which displays God's holiness and love to man. And so the more the eye of God scrutinises and searches me, the more it brings out the blessed truth, that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin. It shews the whiteness of the robe that has been washed in the blood of the Lamb.

If I hesitate to stand in His presence, I am putting in question the value of Christ's precious blood. You may say, I hope to be saved. You cannot hope that Christ will die for you! .It cannot be a matter of hope whether Christ is to die! The way the heart reasons is, I am not hoping Christ will die for me, but I hope to get an interest in Him; I want a proof of His love. When you question this, you question whether Christ has become the friend of publicans and sinners; and, further, you question the power of His blood.

159 Suppose you had a title to demand some proof of His love, what could you demand more than what God has given? He has given His own Son. You could not ask so much as He has already given. But if I am seeking that God should tell me something else, I am seeking some other revelation than what He has given me. He rests my peace on believing the one He has given. The soul that has come to God knows that He is love, and it is to Himself we are come.

The very way in which I know God is through faith in His Son. I know His own love, that He thought of this, and did it for me. Why is it the soul does not get this wondrous simple peace, to be in His own presence without a cloud on His love? Because we are telling to God, and to our poor hearts, something short of this - that we are dogs. Grace is to the sinner, and to none other. If I can stand before God in my own righteousness, grace is not needed. He will bring down your hearts to your real contrition. There He can act in the fulness of His grace, according to the need of the heart that has discovered its need in His presence. He is manifesting that grace according to the value of the sacrifice, now that He is at the right hand of God. Not merely now that God can come to the sinner, but the cleansed sinner stands accepted in the presence of God - accepted in the Person of Jesus; and that nothing stands between us and God. The Lord give us only to own the fulness of His grace, and see the way in which we are debtors to Him, who was willing to suffer all things that He might present us spotless to God. Amen.

Parables of Luke 15

J. N. Darby.

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It is a wonderfully blessed thing to have One (the thoughts, and words, and ways of One down here, in His actings among men) who could so well manifest God, as the Lord Jesus.

We may look at the sin of man, at our sins, as a question to be judged of in the light of righteousness before God, and most important it is; but still, in one sense, God moves above all the evil, and asserts His right to shew what He is. And blessed is it for us, that God will be God in spite of sin. God is love; and if He will be God, He must be love, and that notwithstanding all the reasonings and murmurings of the heart of man against Him. God will act upon what I may call the feelings of His heart, and make them find their way into the hearts of men. And that is the reason there is such a freshness in certain passages of the word of God, however often we recur to them, because God especially reveals Himself in them. God never fails; the moment He speaks and reveals Himself, we have always the full blessedness of what He is. It is Himself who has come forth, and that with power to our hearts - the blessed God. He will take no character from man. If He has to deal with sin, and shew what it is, and how He has put it away, and the like, still above and through all He will manifest Himself. Now this is where our hearts get rest. We have the privilege to have done with ourselves in the house and bosom of God.

In a certain sense He hid Himself. Man could not have borne the manifestation of God in the brightness of glory; so He hid it in grace in the Person of the Son of man. He clothed Himself in flesh: but the effect of the wicked and heartless reasonings of man's corrupt judgment was this; it forced Him to shew Himself what He really was as God. When He presented Himself as Messiah, the Son of man, the fulfiller of the law, and the like, this was not all the fulness of God. Man was always rejecting, constantly finding fault, carping at certain things with which he could not agree in the ways of Christ; but by thus pressing upon and urging Him, man only forced Him back as Christ to press out from Him what He really was as God. In the chapters which exhibit this, the soul is arrested and finds itself with unhesitating certainty in the presence of God Himself - in the presence of love. There we get rest and peace.

161 So in this chapter. He was forced to tell all the truth. God will be God. If there was that which could make God merry and glad, as it is expressed in the parable (and such was the case in the welcome of the poor prodigal son), He would have His own joy in spite of the objections of men. It is God's own joy to act in love; and that is just what men object to. They do not deny that He is going to judge (I do not of course speak of professed infidels); nor as a general principle do they object to God's being righteous, because their pride makes them think they can meet Him on that ground: but the moment He comes to have all His own full joy, and to bring out that which is the joy of heaven, man begins to object. It must not be all of grace; not God dealing with publicans and sinners thus! and why not? Because, what then becomes of man's righteousness? God dealing in grace makes nothing of man's righteousness; "there is no difference; for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Christ manifesting the light proved this; pharisee and publican were alike detected; and man hated it. The thing that levels down the moral condition of man, bringing in grace to the sinner, is what man cannot bear. It is the setting up of what God is, and the putting down man.

What man is always seeking to do is, to make a difference between the righteousness of one man and another, so that character may be sustained before men. Slighting God's righteousness and magnifying our own, always go together. In John 8 we find brought by the scribes and pharisees before Jesus, one who by the law was worthy of being stoned - undeniably guilty - that He might be obliged to deny either mercy or righteousness. This was their motive. They thought to place Him in an inextricable difficulty. If He should let her off, He would break the law of Moses; but, should He say, 'let her be stoned,' it would be no more than Moses had done. How does He act? He let law and righteousness have all their course; but tells her accusers at the same time, "He that is without sin amongst you, let him first cast a stone at her." Conscience begins to work; not rightly, it is true, for their character was what they cared about; still it would speak; and they get out of the presence of light, because the light made manifest what they were - it proved them sinners. From the eldest to the youngest, all went out. He that had the reputation of the longest standing was glad to be the first to go away from that eye which could penetrate and detect what was within; and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. He would not execute the law; for He came not to judge: "neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more." That which is produced is only love. Whenever one stood before Him, or had anything to do with Him as a detected and confessed sinner, it was always grace, and all grace. The more the discovered sin, the more grace was revealed, free and unqualified.

162 "Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them." And after all it may seem strange to many that, if God did come down here, He should take no notice of the righteousness of man, but be found in the company of publicans and sinners. Why, that would upset all the moral righteous thoughts of men; and that is what God has to do, because they are wrongly based.

In all the parables of this chapter put forth by Jesus, because grace had been objected to, in His dealings with publicans and sinners, we have this one great and blessed thought - God manifested. 'I will suppose,' it is to say, 'a man in the worst and vilest possible condition you please; one reduced to the degradation of feeding with swine.['] But then there is something still behind all this that I am going to bring out; something which even your own natural hearts ought to recognise - the father's delight in receiving back a child. Would not a father's heart justify itself in its own feelings of kindness, let the condition of the child be what it may?

After weariness of heart in the world - after the Lord Jesus had gone through the world and found no place where a really broken heart could rest (He could find proud morality enough, but no place where a poor, wearied, broken heart could find sympathy and rest, to open it and give it life) - He came to shew that what could not be found for man anywhere else could be found in God. This is so blessed! that, after all, the poor wearied heart, wearied with itself, with its own ways, wearied with the world and everything, can find rest in the blessedness of the bosom of the Father; and what it could not do in any other place - tell itself out - now that it has found God, it can; and that in truth of heart too, as we read in Psalm 32: "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile." So long as I am afraid of being blamed for what may be discovered, there is guile in the heart; but the moment that I know that all is forgiven, that nothing but love is drawn out by it, I can tell out all to God. The only thing that produces "truth in the inward parts" is the grace that imputes nothing. This is the secret of God's power in setting hearts right with Himself - " there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared." There is all the difference possible between finding a man flying from God by reason of his conscience, and his finding in God one who says "neither do I condemn thee"; what in truth relieves and heals a conscience completely convicted. We cannot in our actual state, if under the law, and acknowledging its righteousness, take it into our own hands. If I take the law to smite you, I must kill myself; it is too sharp to handle. The man who would stone the adulteress must put his own head under the weight of the blow. "O wretched man that I am!" If I am a man, I am undone.

163 We have three parables presented to us in the chapter. The source of that which is taught in them all is love. The first parable is that of the shepherd who sought the sheep that was lost. The second that of the woman who sought the piece of money that was lost. The third, the father's reception of the returning prodigal.

In the last it is not a question of seeking, but of the manner of the father's receiving the son when he had come back. And this is of much importance. Our souls need to understand it aright, as well as to know the great cardinal truth that God seeks the lost. There is many a heart that longs to go back, but does not know how he will be received. The Lord Jesus tells us the grace and love of God are shewn out, first in seeking, and then in the reception. In the first two parables we have the seeking; in the third, the reception by the father. One great principle runs through them all; it is the joy of God to seek and to receive the sinner. He is acting upon His own character. No doubt it is joy to the sinner to be received, but it is the joy of God to receive him: "it is meet that we should make merry and be glad" - not merely meet that the child should be glad to be in the house: the father is the happy one. The return of the prodigal is joy in heaven, whatever men, whatever Pharisees, may think about it.

164 Beloved friends, this is a blessed truth! It is the tone that God has raised, and that every heart in heaven responds to. It is something wonderfully lovely to be let into heaven in this way; and that, too by One who knew heaven so well. The chord which God strikes Himself heaven responds to and re-echoes, and so must every heart down here that is tuned by grace. What discord then must self-righteousness produce! Jesus tells forth the joy and grace of God in thus acting, the joy of heaven, and puts all this in contrast with the feelings of the elder brother - those of any self-righteous person - though the description be of the Jews.

It is this note sounded from heaven in love, that we read in the heart and ways of Christ down here: "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." And oh, how sweet! In one sense it is more sweet to have it here than up there. It is down here that this love of God (and it must be here, if man is to be reached) is astonishing; it is natural in heaven. It is here, on earth, amongst us, that God has manifested what He is - that He has delight in saving lost sinners; "which things the angels desire to look into."

The first thing the Lord Jesus does is to justify God in being good to sinners. He appeals at once to the natural heart of man. "What man of you, having an hundred sheep?" etc. The shepherd puts the sheep upon his shoulder, and brings it home rejoicing - have I not a right to seek lost sinners? Is it not a right thing for God to come among publicans and sinners? This may not suit a moral man, but it suits God; it is His privilege to come amidst sin - to come near to ruined sinners - because He can deliver out of it. The shepherd lays the sheep upon his shoulders and rejoices; he goes out to seek it, charges himself with it; he takes the whole toil of it. It was his own interest to do it, because he valued the sheep; it was his, and he brings it home again rejoicing. Thus He presents the shepherd here. And thus it is with "the Great Shepherd of the sheep." He presents it as His interest to "seek and to save that which is lost": He even makes it His interest in the sense of love; the sheep is His own, and He brings it home rejoicing, bidding others to rejoice with Him. There is the strength and power of salvation.

But how does the Lord set about it? We tell people sometimes to seek Christ. Well, in one sense that is right; for it is quite true that "he that seeketh findeth"; but He never said, "Come unto me," until He had first come to them - come "to seek and to save that which was lost." He did not say it from heaven, for the sinner could not go there; but because the poor sinner could not go to heaven to seek Christ, Christ came to the earth to seek him. He does not say to the poor leper, Come up to heaven; but comes Himself down to the leper in all his need, and says, "Be thou clean." Had any other laid his hand upon the leper it would have made him as unclean as himself; Christ alone could touch the power of evil in the leper and have no contamination, but dispel it. He says, "Come unto me, all ye that labour . . . and I will give you rest." It is not to be found here, any more than it was for Noah's dove amidst the deluge. I have tried the world all through, and it is a sea of evil without a shore; Come to Me, and you will find rest. Who but Jesus could have said this?

165 There is another thing in the second parable - the painstaking of this love, its eager diligence with determination to succeed in seeking that which has been lost. It is not a sheep, but money in a house. Everything is done to get the money. The woman lights the candle, sweeps the house, she could not stop in the task of love - diligent active love, until the piece was found. It was her affair and interest again, because the money was hers. And then we have the joy when her possession is recovered; her own joy and the tone given to those who are called in to have communion with it: "Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I had lost." And that is the way of the Lord.

Thus we have the same great principle in this parable as in the former. There is the patient activity of love in the use of means by the Holy Spirit until the result is produced. In both parables we see the absolute actings of grace, without any reference to the effect in the heart of the sinner; also, in both this great principle (common, as noticed before, to the three), God's own joy in love. It was the joy of the woman, as of the shepherd. Thus the result of man's pharisaic objection to grace was but the bringing out of the declaration by Jesus of the energetic power and activity of this grace, as well as the good will. There was entire inactivity in the sheep and in the money. The piece of money, as the sheep, could do nothing. The shepherd and the woman alike did all; it was their joy, who had lost, to get them back again, because they valued them. Worth nothing, in a certain sense, to God's love the sinner is immensely valuable.

166 It is true, at the same time, that there is a most important work - an effect produced in the heart of the one who has gone astray and is brought back again. On this account we have the third parable, which shews the feelings of the wanderer; and further, the manner of his reception. The father's heart and the prodigal's are both laid open. Not only are the inward workings of the prodigal told out, but we have also the manifestation of the father's heart. In a word, it is not the estimate formed by the one brought back about the love of the father, that gives the answer to all his thoughts, but the manifestation of his own heart by the father. There is this one simple fact -  the father is on his neck kissing him! and that tells him what that heart is.

In this last parable the Lord takes up a case, meeting the objection of the Pharisees to His receiving publicans and sinners. He says, as it were, I will take the case of a man brought to the utmost degradation - eating husks with the swine (we must remember what swine were to the Jew), there too of his own choice. Why was the picture drawn thus? To shew that nothing could put the sinner beyond the reach of grace. Trace it as far as you please; God will act as God at the end of the story. Let us look a little at the case in detail (v. 11-13). This is just our history as men. The son here was happier far, as a man, when going from home than when returning; he was doing his own will. And this is the secret of all sin. But remark, whether we are living in vice or not, we have all turned our back on God. The young man was as great a sinner when he stepped rich across his father's threshold, as when feeding with the swine in the far country; he had chosen to act independently of God, and that is sin. He reaped the fruits afterwards of this, no doubt, but that is not the question. Nay, in one sense, the very consequences of his sin were mercies, because they shewed him what his sin was.

But man makes a distinction between sinners. So the Lord puts a case where the sinner is gone, even in man's judgment, to the fullest degree of evil, and shews it does not outreach the grace of God - a case which wonderfully exhibits the truth, that "if sin abounds, grace does much more abound." When he first left the house he shewed where his heart was -  alienated, revolted, gone; his back was turned upon his father and his father's house, and his face was towards the far country. He went forth to do his own will. A parent's heart will understand it. Our child sins against us - we feel it. We sin against God, and do not feel it. We are all of us in that sense children, that "have turned every one to his own way."

167 "And there," having reached the far country, he went on gaily in his own will as long as he could; "he wasted his substance in riotous living." Any person who lives beyond his means looks rich for a time; so does the sinner, wasting his soul, seem happy. But if he thinks himself happy, he does so because he has got to a distance from God, where he has no restraint upon his will. But then, after all, he is in the devil's country, and enslaved to him. Liberty of will is just slavery to the devil.

"And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat: and no one gave unto him." There is no giving in the "far country," not even of husks. Satan sells all, and dearly - our souls are the price. You must buy everything. The world's principle is 'nothing for nothing'; everything must bring its price. Your gratifications there must be purchased at the sacrifice of reputation and soul. If you sell yourself to the devil, you will get husks: he will never give you anything. Would you find a giver, you must come to God. Hearts are not easy in the world; leave a man for a few hours to himself, and he will soon be in want; but it is never the effect of this merely to bring back to God. "He began to be in want," but his will was not touched yet. There are very few hearts that have arrived at a certain time of life, that have not "begun to be in want." They go to seek in pleasure or in vice (in one thing or another, it matters not what; last of all, in God) something to satisfy them. The last thing the world thinks of is God: and then only when they are convinced that nothing else will do. They never think of the Father's house, for they know it not. If indeed they think of God, it is in judgment, not in grace. A man of the world says, You must have everything that is in the world to know that the world cannot satisfy you; but the knowledge that all the world cannot satisfy would never turn a man to God. He must know more, even that he is perishing; not merely not satisfied, but ruined. So it was with the prodigal.

168 "When he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants." He awoke to the consciousness, "I perish with hunger"; and then it was he thought of "the father's house," the very place he had been so anxious to get away from at first. He had not yet understood how he would be received, yet he did understand that there was love in that house (the very hired servants had bread enough and to spare); and he did understand, too, not only that he was hungry, but perishing with hunger. He wanted the goodness of that house; his was no mere abstract delighting in it. Wisdom and philosophy never found out God: He makes Himself known to us through our need; necessity finds him out. Who is it that really discovers the value of bread? The chemist? No; a hungry man. The sinner's heart - yes, and the saint's heart too - is put in its right place in this way. I doubt much if we have ever learned anything solidly, except we have learnt it thus. He knew that all was goodness there, the very servants were happy, and it was all over with him where he was; the need of his condition, all told him he must get back: "I will arise," etc.; but he did not yet know the extent of that goodness. Every soul that returns to God is thus brought to the thought of goodness in God.

We see the same thing in Peter (Luke 5). He goes and falls at the feet of Jesus, and says, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." What an inconsistency! at the knees of Jesus, and yet telling Him to go away. And there is often this apparent inconsistency where there is a work in the conscience and the affections. God becomes necessary to us, and yet conscience says, I am too sinful. Peter felt his own worthlessness, and that Jesus was too holy, too righteous, to be with such an one as he; and yet he could not help going to Him.

Well, the prodigal goes back, glad to be in the father's house, but having no true estimate of the father's heart. No more worthy to be called a son, "make me as one of thy hired servants," was still his thought. He measured the father's love in some little degree by the sense of what he had done and the evil in which he had been; he thought to get into the place of a servant. Now there are a multitude of hearts in this state, lowering down the standard of what the Father must do to some sort of adaptedness to their fitness (I am not speaking of positive self-righteousness); they have still the remains of legalism, and would take the place of a servant in the house. Now God can only receive us in grace, because we have spent all, ruined ourselves, and forfeited every claim upon Him. Look at the history before us. This "make me as one of thy hired servants" will not do for the father, if it would do for the son; it would be constant misery to the father's heart, as well as degradation to the son to receive and treat him thus! his very condition in the house a constant memorial of his sin! Neither would it be testimony to the servants in the house, as to the father's love. The father cannot have sons in his house as servants; if boundless grace brings them, he must shew the manner of the reception to be worthy of a father's love. The prodigal was not yet brought to thorough humbleness - to feel it must be grace or nothing. But the father does not even give him time to say, "Make me as one of thy hired servants!" He lets him tell out the confession of his sin, "I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son," but no more; for he is on his neck kissing him. How could he say, "Make me a hired servant," when his father is on his neck, producing the consciousness that he was a son?

169 The prodigal's judgment about the father must now be drawn from what the father actually is to him, and not from any abstract reasonings about it. The one was a father, if the other was not a son. And that is the true way of receiving the gospel of the grace of God. It is not the working of my mind as to what I am before God, but the revelation by the Holy Ghost of what the Father is to me; and if He is a Father, I am a son. I dwell on this, because I know there are so many souls who have not, as it were, received the spirit of adoption fully; neither knowing what they are as sons in the house of the Father, nor finding their rest in the love of the Father.

See again the manner of the reception of the prodigal here. He determined in his own mind now renewed what he would do, what he would say, and the conditions of his reception: he says, "I will arise," etc. But before he has time to reach the father's house and say all this, "while he was yet a great way off," we read, the father saw him, and had compassion on him. The son's path is now lost in the father's love: the father runs to meet him, falls on his neck and kisses him. There is nothing in the son but confession of unworthiness. Once received, we are left, as it were, to discover what were his thoughts and feelings by the knowledge of the father's. And so entirely is it in the estimate of our salvation: we are left to discover what we are in the revelation of the love of the Father. The father is on his neck, while all the rags of the far country are upon him. Was it for anything in the son? No; it was because of the love that was in his own heart. The father does not stop to ask him anything: he knows he has acted very wrongly, it would have been no use to say, You have disgraced me, dishonoured my name; he could see that very well. It was no question of fitness or worthiness in the son: the father's heart did not reason in that way; he was acting from himself and for himself - worthily as a father. He was on his neck, because the father loves to be there. It is the love that is in God, not any loveliness in the sinner, that accounts for the extravagant liberality of his reception in Christ.

170 It is the knowledge of the Father's love that makes me feel what I am. But if I know my sins are forgiven, and the Father is on my neck kissing me, then the more I know of my sins, while I know the Father's love, the happier I am; Luke 7: 47. Suppose a merchant having liabilities which he knows himself unable to meet; he would be afraid to look fairly through his books: but suppose on the other hand the debt was discharged, and that he had the certainty of an immense fund of riches after all was paid - if some friend had done it all - he would no longer be afraid to look at them. The discovery of the extent of his obligation would only serve to enhance the sense of his friend's love. If, instead of £1,000, he found his debt had been £10,000, he would say, Why, this is better than I thought; and if, on looking further, he found the amount £100,000 - Well, there never was a friend like this friend of mine! Grace has put all away; therefore the whole effect of the discovery of sin, when we know forgiveness, is but to enhance the love and heighten the joy. If the Father is kissing me, the very consciousness that He is doing it while I am in my rags, proves what a forgiveness it is. There is not another in the whole world who would not have thought of my rags, before he was on my neck.

171 But he does another thing. The servants are called now to introduce him into the house fittingly. "But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf and kill it," etc. God shews His love towards us as wretched sinners, but then clothes us with Christ. He brings us into the house where the servants are, with nothing less than all the honour He can put upon us. His love welcomes us while in our rags, but here the same love acts in another way. He introduces us into the house as He would have us be there, with His mind expressed about the value of a son. We read here the description of the robe, the ring, the shoes, the fatted calf, and the feast of joy that welcomes the returning prodigal. The father's mind was, that a son of his was worth it all; and that it was worthy of him to give it. How little worthy would it have been of a father, acting in grace, to keep him as a servant in the house!

There are, perhaps, some who would think it humility to desire the servant's place in the house. But it is not so; it is only ignorance of the Father's mind. I read, "that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." Now if you begin at that end - the Father's mind and grace - would it have been worthy of Him to have put us in the house with a constant memorial of our sin and shame - of our former dishonour and degradation? If there was any sense of shame, the merest trace of the far country, would it have been worthy of the father? No! "The worshipper once purged has no more conscience of sins." The condition that finds its place in God's house must be worthy of God.

Take another case. Perhaps our wretched unbelieving hearts may say, Ah, that will be quite true when there - when really in the Father's house. Let me ask what faith is. Faith judges as God judges. I see sin in the light of God's holiness. I judge it most truly when I see its opposition to Him, and the dishonour it puts on Him. I learn grace, too, in the heart of my Father. He that believes sets to his seal that God is true. Faith is the only thing that gives certainty; reasoning does not. Reasoning may be all quite well for the things of this world; but if God speaks about anything, faith believes; faith sets to its seal, not that it may be perhaps, but "that God is true." Now having this, I am as sure that it is true, as if I were now in heaven.

172 "Abraham believed God," not in God (though that is also true), but God: he believed that what God said was true. And this is what we ought to do: the first point is to believe God. What then does He tell me if I am a believer in His Son? That my sins and iniquities are remembered no more, and I believe it; that I have eternal life, I believe that too; it were sin to doubt it. If I do not believe what He assures me of, I wrong God. It is a sin not to believe myself a son - that I am in God's presence without a spot of sin, through the blood of the Lamb. Faith believes this: God has said it. If it were only my own righteousness, it must be torn to shreds; but it is the blood of the Lamb: and what has that done? - cleansed half my sins? The question is, What is God's estimate of the value of the blood of Jesus? do you think that God limits the efficacy of His blood? No! He says, it cleanses from all sin. If we go on to see further, it is - who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree. Is it some of my sins? It is my sins. If my soul knows on the one hand the value to God of the blood of the Lamb, I know on the other hand that it all results from the love of the Father. It would be an evil thing to doubt this love, as it would have been an evil thing in the prodigal, when the father was kissing him, to say, I have the rags of the far country upon me. Did he then think of his rags as a reason why there should not be that expression of the love which was in the heart of his father? Thus when I see here the character Christ gives of what God is towards me as a sinner (and He was forced to do this by the self-righteousness of the Pharisees - of man), the doubts of my heart are silenced before such grace.

Is there one who would say, that divine grace sanctions sin? Let him read his judgment in the spirit of the elder brother here. Yet let even such an one see how grace speaks to him. "Therefore came his father out, and entreated him." We see the patience of love towards this wretched man - not merely a poor prodigal - but this wretched one who shared not in the general joy. The servants were glad; they say, "Thy brother is come, and thy father has killed for him the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound." All catch the tone of joy but one; and who was he? The man who thought of self and self-righteousness: "therefore came his father out and entreated him."

173 Take care of that, lest your hearts be turning to sourness the love and grace that God shews to a fellow sinner. "He would not go in." The father reasons with him - "it was meet that we should make merry and be glad; for this [not my son, but] thy brother was dead and is alive again; and was lost and is found." Love is high enough up for anything; but in vain, he could not enter into the spirit that actuated all in the house, from the father down to the lowest menial. He remained without, and had none of the happiness and none of the joy; there was in him manifested opposition of heart to the riches of the father's grace; and this is man.

Do you know God thus? You would know yourselves too. Be it so; it is indeed well; but do not call God's heart in question because of that. How can I know God's heart? Is it by looking into my own heart? No; but by learning it in the gift of His Son. The God we have to do with is the God who has given His Son for sinners; and if we do not know this, we do not know Him at all. "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" (Rom. 8: 32.) Do not be saying to God, Make me as one of thy hired servants. All true service must result from the knowledge of Himself. Do not be putting the estimate of your own hearts on God's goodness. Our hearts have such a tendency to turn back to legalism, and think it humility. The only real humbleness and strength and blessing is to forget self in the presence and blessedness of God. We may be brought thither by a humbling process; but it is not in thinking evil of self merely, that we are truly humble: we have the privilege of forgetting ourselves in the manifestation of the love of God and our Father, who is love to us.

The Lord grant you, through Jesus, to know, as poor sinners, God thus revealed in love.

"No more conscience of sins"

Hebrews 10

J. N. Darby.

<12018E> 174

The object of redemption is to bring us nigh to God, as it is written, "Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." But what is our state before God when thus brought nigh? The right understanding of this is most important. It is impossible that we could be happy even in the presence of God, if there still existed a thought of His being against us. I need the perfect settled assurance that there is no sin upon me before Him. The sense of responsibility ever makes a person unhappy when there is any question as to sin standing against him: see the case of a servant and his master, or that of a child and its parent - the conscience is miserable if there be upon it the sense of that which will be judged. So God's presence must be indeed terrible, unless the conscience be perfectly good. If there be happiness for me there, it can only be in the sense of His favour, and of the completeness with which we have been brought back - the perfect assurance of "the worshipper once purged" having "no more conscience of sins."

God speaks to us according to His estimate of our standing: it may not be our heart's experience. There is a distinctness between the operation of the Spirit of God in bringing me unto Jesus, bearing witness to me of God's love, and of the efficacy of what Christ has done, and His operation in my soul in producing in me the love of God. That which is the subject of experience is what is produced in my own soul, whereas that which gives me peace is His testimony to the work of Jesus. A Christian who doubts the Father's love to him, and who looks for peace to that which passes in his own heart, is doubting God's truth. The gospel is the revelation God has given of Himself; it displays the love of God towards us, and what is in His heart. I can trust the declaration of what is in God's heart, and not what I think of myself.

The apostle speaks of a due time: "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." It is almost always true that there is in us a terrible process of breaking the heart, in order that we may be brought to the ascertainment that we are lost and ruined sinners; but the gospel begins at the close of God's experience of man's heart, and calls us from that in order that we should have joy and peace from the experience of what is in His heart. Man left alone before the flood, put under the law, in Canaan, indeed under all and every trial of his nature and tendency up to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, was just God's putting him to the test.

175 One would have thought, after Adam had been turned out of paradise for transgression, that would have been a sufficient warning; but his first-born became a murderer. We should have supposed that the flood which swept off the workers of iniquity would have repressed, for a time at least, by the terror of judgment, the outbreak of sin; but we find immediately afterwards Noah getting drunk, and Ham dishonouring his father. The devouring fire of Sinai, which made even Moses fear and quake, seemed sufficient to subdue the rebel heart and make it bow beneath God's hand; but the golden calf was the awful evidence that the heart of man was "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." Again in Canaan a part of the world was tried to the utmost to be cultivated, but it would not do. A bad tree producing bad fruit was the only type by which God could set Israel forth. See Isaiah 5. He might dig about it and dung it, but after all these efforts it could only bring forth more bad fruit. At last He said, "I have yet one son, perhaps they will reverence my son," but man preferred having the world for himself, and so crucified Jesus. Looking to His cross, Christ said, "Now is the judgment of this world," John 12.

At the crucifixion of Jesus, the veil was rent, and the holiest opened; what God was within the veil then shone out in all its fulness. When grace reveals this to me, I get confidence. I see God holy and expecting holiness - true; but the peace of God is in knowing what He is to us, and not what we are to Him. He knows all the evil of our hearts. Nothing can be worse than the rejection of Jesus - man's hatred is shewn` out there, and God's love to the full. The wretched soldier (who, in the cowardly impotence of the consciousness that he could with impunity insult the meek and lowly Jesus, pierced His side with a spear), let out, in that disgraceful act, the blood and the water, which was able to cleanse even such as he. Here God's heart was revealed, what He is to the sinner; and this is our salvation.

176 Death and judgment teach me redemption. God judged sin indeed in sacrificing His well-beloved Son to put it away It must be punished: Jesus bore the blow - this rent the veil and shewed out what God really is. The very blow that let out the holiness of God put away the sin which His holiness judged. The perfect certainty of God's love and the perfect cleansing of the conscience is that which the defiled and trembling sinner needs. "By the grace of God" Jesus Christ has "tasted death." Death, the wages of sin, is seen in the cross of Jesus as the consequence of "the grace of God." "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong sweetness." Were anyone to demand of me a proof of God's love, I could not give more than God has done in that "He spared not his own Son": none other could be so great. But then, it might be asked, may not my sin affect it? No, God knew all your sin, and He has provided for it all: "the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

In real communion the conscience must be purged; there can be no communion if the soul be not at peace. We read here, "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." There is very frequently the confounding of what faith produces with what faith rests upon. Faith always rests upon God's estimate of the blood of Jesus as He has revealed it in His word: faith rests on no experience. Jesus said, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God!" - "by the which will we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." "We are sanctified," it is not that which is proposed for our attainment; it was the good will of God to do it, and the work is done, to bring our souls back unto Himself. Jesus has said "it is finished." But then there must be the knowledge of this also, in order for us to begin to act. You might have a person willing to pay your debts; nay, you might even have them paid; but if you did not know it, you would be just as miserable as before. We are not called upon to believe in a promise that Jesus should come to die and rise again. The work is done. He "sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high" "when he had by himself purged our sins." But then this is not sufficient for me: I must know that the work is done; and therefore He sent down the Holy Ghost to be the witness that God is satisfied.

Knowing perfectly their guilt and amount, God has declared, "your sins and iniquities I will remember no more." Faith rests on this, "God is true": "he that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true." The Lord said to Israel in Egypt concerning the blood of the paschal lamb, "When I see the blood, I will pass over." Could there be hesitation if we were in a house marked with the blood on the door-post? Should we not know that He would pass over? Faith is always divine certainty. God has said, "I will remember no more." This is the ground on which we enter into the holiest. "The worshipper once purged" has "no more conscience of sins."

177 God has found His rest in Jesus: our peace and joy depend upon knowing this. Were anything more necessary, it could not be His rest: God is not seeking for something else when at rest. None else could have afforded this. "God looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God." "They are all gone out of the way": "there was none righteous; no, not one." But God bore witness unto Jesus, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." God is well pleased in Christ; God rests in His Son, not merely in His life, though that was holy and acceptable unto Him, but in His work on the cross. Jesus said, "except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit," and that meets our need. When He shews His glory to the angels, He points to what has been done by man. In man was God glorified; as in man, the first Adam, He had been dishonoured. Christ reversed all this: "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him"; which God recognises in straightway glorifying Him. Righteousness cannot be looked for from the creature, but the fruit of righteousness will - the thing itself is only in Christ.

God is not a grudging giver. Did Satan, tempting Eve, question this in the forbidden fruit? He has given His Son; He rests in Him; the sinner likewise rests there. What can man do for me? Nothing. If I were to come to him to deliver me from death, could he help me? No. He might fill my hand with those perishing things which could only swell the triumph of death and decorate the tomb, but there his power ends

In Jesus God has found His rest - this is mine also; I know it from the testimony of God's truth. Have you found rest in God's rest? If you say, I have not, will you say that God has not found His rest there? Will you look to your own heart? In that you can never find it - it is only in Jesus: who had said, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest." Would that all knew the perfect rest to be found there!

Growth through the Truth

1 Peter 2: 1-6

J. N. Darby.

<12019E> 179

In one sense, as here taught us by the Spirit of God through the apostle, the healthful position of the saint is ever that of the "new-born babe"; whilst in another sense we are, of course, to be making progress so as to become young men and fathers in Christ. As to practical position of soul in receiving truth from God, it is that of the new-born babe: "as new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby." This is the place in which, as believers, we are set by the Spirit, in order that we may grow up into Christ.

But if we are to grow by the sincere milk of the word, it is not by the exercise of our minds upon the word, nor yet even by great study of it merely; we need the teaching of the Holy Spirit, and in order to this, there must be the exercising of ourselves unto godliness - the "laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings," so that the Holy Spirit be not grieved. Has the Christian envy, guile, hypocrisies, allowed to work in his heart? There can be no growth in the true knowledge of the things of God. Therefore he is called upon to be ever a "new-born babe," coming to receive, in the consciousness of his own weakness, littleness, and ignorance, and in simplicity of heart, food from the word of God.

The Lord always keeps His simple dependent ones thus. "Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord." But then the knowledge of God always humbles; the more we know of Him, the more shall we know of our own emptiness. "If any man think he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know." Just as the babe is constantly receiving nourishment from the mother, so need we to be constantly receiving spiritual nourishment from the word of God. When the word is received by us in faith, we become strengthened; we grow thereby in the knowledge of God, and of His grace. The apostle Paul, having heard of the faith of the Ephesians in the Lord Jesus, prays "that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory," would "give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints," etc. Having "tasted that the Lord is gracious," we come to His word and receive from Him that which we need to comfort, nourish, and refresh our souls. The word always comes with savour from Himself; it is known as "the word of his grace." I may study the word again and again; but unless I get into communion with Him by it, it will profit me nothing - at least at the time.

180 God reveals not His things "to the wise and prudent," but unto "babes." It is not the strength of man's mind judging about "the things of God," that gets the blessing from Him; it is the spirit of the babe desiring "the sincere milk of the word." He says, "open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." The strongest mind must come to the word of God as the new-born babe.

And so too in speaking of God's truth; whenever we cannot "speak as the oracles of God," through the power of communion, it is our business to be silent. We should be cautious not to trifle with unascertained truth. Nothing hinders growth more than this - trifling with unascertained truth: we then act as masters and not as learners. Our position as regards the truth of God must be ever that of new-born babes desiring the sincere milk of the word that we may grow thereby.

But there is nothing so hard for our hearts as to be humble - nothing so easy for them as to get out of this place of lowliness. It is not by precepts merely that we are either brought into this state, or preserved there; it is by tasting "that the Lord is gracious." It is quite true that God is a God of judgment - that He will exercise vengeance on His enemies; but this is not the way in which He stands towards the Christian. He is made known unto us as "the God of all grace"; and the position in which we are set is that of tasting that He is gracious!

How hard it is for us to believe this, that the Lord is gracious! The natural feeling of our hearts is, "I know that thou art an austere man." Are our wills thwarted? we quarrel with God's ways, and are angry because we cannot have our own. It may be perhaps that this feeling is not manifested; but still at any rate there is the want in all of us naturally of the understanding of the grace of God, the inability to apprehend it. See the case of the poor prodigal in the gospel: the thought of his father's grace never once entered into his mind when he set out on his return, and therefore he only reckoned on being received as a "hired servant." But what does the father say? What are the feelings of his heart? "Bring forth the best robe and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it . . . for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." This is grace, free grace.

181 So too in the case of the woman of Samaria (the poor adulteress, ignorant of the character of Him who spake with her, "the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth," and therefore the suited one to meet her need): the Lord says to her, "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." Hadst thou only understood what grace is, thou wouldst have asked, and I would have given!

It is not only when there is open rebellion against God, and utter carelessness and unconcern about salvation, that there is this darkness of understanding as to grace. Our natural heart has got so far away from God, that it will look to anything in the world - to the devil even - to get happiness; anywhere but to the grace of God. Our consciences, when at all awakened to a sense of sin, and of its hatefulness in the sight of God, think that He cannot be gracious. Adam, had he known the grace of God, when he found himself naked, would at once have gone to God to cover him. But no, he was ignorant of it; he saw his state, and he sought to hide himself from God amongst the trees of the garden. And so it is with us. The consciousness of being naked before God, apart from the understanding of His grace, makes us flee from Him.

Nay, further, as believers in Jesus, when our consciences come to be exercised, and we feel that we must have to do with God in everything, we may not have the distinct sense of the Lord's being gracious; and there will then be not only a deep sense of our responsibility but at the same time the thought that we have to answer to God's requirements, and shall be judged of Him according to the way in which we do so. There is a measure of truth in this the requirements of God must be met; but then the wrongness is in thinking that, if we do not find in ourselves what will please God, He will condemn us because of it.

182 On the other hand there is sometimes the thought that grace implies God's passing by sin. But no, quite the contrary; grace supposes sin to be so horribly bad a thing that God cannot tolerate it. Were it in the power of man, after being unrighteous and evil, to patch up his ways, and mend himself so as to stand before God, there would then be no need of grace. The very fact of the Lord's being gracious shews sin to be so evil a thing, that, man being a sinner, his state is utterly ruined and hopeless, and nothing but free grace will do for him - can meet his need.

A man may see sin to be a deadly thing, and he may see that nothing that defiles can enter into the presence of God: his conscience may be brought to a true conviction of sin; yet this is not tasting "that the Lord is gracious." It is a very good thing to be brought even to that, for I am then tasting that the Lord is righteous, and it is needful for me to know it; but then I must not stop there: sin without grace would put me in a hopeless state. Peter had not "tasted that the Lord was gracious" when he said, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" and therefore he thought that his sin unfitted him for the presence of the Lord.

Such too was the thought of Simon the leper, respecting the poor woman who washed the feet of Jesus with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Ah, if this man had been a prophet (if he had known the mind of God), he would have sent away this woman out of his presence, "for she is a sinner." And why? Because he did not know that the Lord was gracious. He had a certain sense of the righteousness of God, but not the knowledge of His grace. I cannot say that God ought to be gracious; but I can say (if ignorant of His grace), that He ought to cast me, as a sinner, away from His presence, because He is righteous. Thus we see that we must learn what God is to us, not by our own thoughts, but by what He has revealed Himself to be, and that is "the God of all grace."

The moment I understand (as Peter did) that I am a sinful man, and yet that it was because the Lord knew the full extent of my sin, and what its hatefulness was, that He came to me, I understand what grace is. Faith makes me see that God is greater than my sin, and not that my sin is greater than God. "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." As soon as I believe Jesus to be the Son of God, I see that God has come to me because I was a sinner and could not go to Him.

183 Man's ability to meet the requirements of the holiness of God has been fully tried: but the plainer the light came, the more did it shew to man his darkness; and the stricter the rule, the more did it bring out his self-will. And then it was, "when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly" - "when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." This is grace. God, seeing the blood of His Son, is satisfied with it; and if I am satisfied with it, this is what glorifies God.

But the Lord that I have known as laying down His life for me is the same Lord that I have to do with every day of my life; and all His dealings with me are on this same principle of grace. Do I want to learn what His love is? it is taught in the cross; but He gave Himself for me in order that all the fulness and joy that is in Him might be mine. I must be a learner of it still - a new born babe desiring "the sincere milk of the word that I may grow thereby."

The great secret of growth is the looking up to the Lord as gracious. How precious, how strengthening it is, to know that Jesus is at this moment feeling and exercising the same love towards me as when He died upon the cross for me! This is a truth that should be used by us in the most common everyday circumstances of life. Suppose, for instance, I find an evil temper in myself, which I feel it difficult to overcome: let me bring it to Jesus as my friend, virtue goes out of Him for my need. Faith should be ever thus in exercise against temptation, and not simply my own effort; my own effort against it will never be sufficient. The source of real strength is in the sense of the Lord's being gracious.

But the natural man in us always disallows Christ as the only source of strength and of every blessing. Suppose my soul is out of communion, the natural heart says, I must correct the cause of this before I can come to Christ: but He is gracious. And, knowing this, the way is to return to Him at once, just as we are, and then humble ourselves deeply before Him. It is only in Him, and from Him, that we shall find that which will restore our souls. Humbleness in His presence is the only real humbleness. If we own ourselves in His presence to be just what we are, we shall find that He will shew us nothing but grace.

184 But though "disallowed indeed of men" - of the natural heart in every one of us - who is this that says, "Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious; and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded"? It is God; He laid this corner stone, not man; and He says, This is what I think of Christ. By learning of God, through His teaching me by the Holy Spirit, I come to have the same thoughts about Jesus that He has. Here I find my strength, my comfort, my joy. That in which God delights and will delight for ever is now my joy also.

God says, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"; "mine elect in whom my soul delighteth"; and, working these (His) thoughts into my soul, I too see Jesus to be precious, and find my delight in Him. Thus He who was crucified for me - who "bare my sins in his own body on the tree" - is precious to God and precious to me. God could find no rest save in Jesus. We may look throughout the world, we shall find nothing which can satisfy our hearts but Jesus. If God looked for truth, for righteousness, all He could desire He found in Jesus; and He found it in Him for us. Here is that which gives comfort to the soul. I see Jesus "now in the presence of God for us "; and God is satisfied, God delights in Him.

It is Christ Himself in whom God rests, and will rest for ever; but then Jesus, having borne and blotted out my sins by His own blood, has united me to Himself in heaven. He descended from above, bringing God down to us here: He has ascended, placing the saints in union with Himself there. If God finds Jesus precious, He finds me (in Him) precious also.

Jesus, as Man, has glorified God on the earth: God rests in that; as Man, having accomplished redemption, He "has passed into the heavens," "now to appear in the presence of God for us." It is Jesus who gives abiding rest to our souls, and not what our thoughts about ourselves may be. Faith never thinks about that which is in ourselves as its ground of rest; it receives, loves, and apprehends what God has revealed, and what are God's thoughts about Jesus, in whom is His rest.

It is not by human knowledge or intellect that we attain to this. The poor ignorant sinner, when enlightened by the Spirit, can understand how precious Jesus is to the heart of God, as well as the most intellectual. The dying robber could give a better account of the whole life of Jesus than all around him, saying, "This man has done nothing amiss"; he was taught by the Spirit.

185 Are we much in communion with God, our faces will shine, and others will discover it though we may not be conscious of it ourselves. Moses, when he had been talking with God, wist not that the skin of his face shone; he forgot himself, he was absorbed in God. As knowing Jesus to be precious to our souls, our eyes and our hearts being occupied with Him, they will be effectually prevented from being taken up with the vanity and sin around; and this too will be our strength against the sin and corruption of our own hearts. Whatever I see in myself that is not in Him is sin; but then it is not thinking upon my own sins, and my own vileness, and being occupied with them, that will humble me; but thinking of the Lord Jesus, dwelling upon the excellence in Him. It is well to have done with ourselves and to be taken up with Jesus. We are entitled to forget ourselves, we are entitled to forget our sins, we are entitled to forget all but Jesus. It is by looking to Jesus that we can give up anything, that we can walk as obedient children: His love constrains us. Were it simply a command, we should have no power to obey.

The Lord give us thus to be learners of the fulness of grace which is in Jesus, the beloved and elect One of God, so that "we may be changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord."

May we, beloved, in searching into the truth of God, having "tasted that the Lord is gracious," ever be found as new-born babes desiring the sincere milk of the word, that we may grow thereby.

Why do I Groan?

Romans 7 and 8

J. N. Darby.

<12020E> 186

There is nothing so hard for our hearts as to abide in the sense of grace, to continue practically conscious that "we are not under law, but under grace." It is by grace that the heart is "established"; but then there is nothing more difficult for us really to comprehend than the fulness of grace - that "grace of God wherein we stand," and to walk in the power and consciousness of it.

It is only in the presence of God that we can know it, and there it is our privilege to be. The moment we get away from the presence of God, there will always be certain workings of our own thoughts within us; and our own thoughts can never reach up to the thoughts of God about us, to the "grace of God."

It is quite impossible for us to draw any right conclusion about grace, until we are settled on the great foundation of grace - God's gift of Jesus. No reasoning of our own hearts could ever reach up to "the grace of God," for the very simple reason, that in order to be such it must flow directly and freely from God. What I had any, the smallest possible, right to expect, could not be pure, free grace - could not be this "grace of God."

But then, even after we have "tasted that the Lord is gracious," it is quite natural for our own thoughts to work as soon as we leave the presence of God; and the moment they do so, whether it be about our sins, or about our graces, or anything else that we are occupied with, we lose the sense of grace, and can no longer reckon upon it.

This getting out of God's presence is the source of all our weakness as saints, for in God's strength we can do anything: "if God be for us, who can be against us?" The consciousness of His realised presence with us makes us "more than conquerors." Whether our thoughts be about ourselves, or about circumstances around us, everything then becomes easy. But it is alone, when in communion with Him, that we are able thus to measure everything according to grace.

Are our thoughts about ourselves? When in the presence of God we rest on His grace, nothing can trouble us. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" "Who is he that condemneth?" "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" But the moment that we get out of God's presence, we cannot any longer rest on His grace as when in communion with Him.

187 Again, are they respecting the condition of things around? He may have sorrow of spirit on this account, as conscious of the evil, misery, and ruin in which everything is (as Jesus, He "groaned in spirit, and was troubled"). But it is impossible, when we are abiding in the sense of God's presence, for anything, be it what it may, even the state of the church, to shake us; for we count on God, and then all things become but a sphere and scene for the operation of His grace.

Nature never counts upon God's grace; it may count upon God's mercy in passing by sin, but only because it imagines either that He is indifferent about it (attributing to Him its own low estimate of sin), or that He has no right to judge it. Grace, when understood by the soul, is seen to be the very opposite of this - to be founded on a just sense of the tremendous evil of sin, on the part of God. And when we have learnt in our measure to take God's estimate of sin, we are filled with amazement at that grace of God which can blot it all out - which has given His own Son to die because of it. What the natural man understands by mercy is not this - God's blotting out sin by the bloodshedding of Jesus, but His passing by sin with indifference. This is not grace.

When the conscience becomes awakened, and there are thoughts of responsibility, without the apprehension of grace, the first thing it seeks to do is to put itself under the law; it cannot do otherwise. And the natural man even often does this; he knows of no other way of pleasing God than obedience to the law; and this, being ignorant both of God and himself, he thinks he can render.

But the having very simple thoughts of grace is the true source of our strength as Christians; and the abiding in the sense of grace in the presence of God is all the secret of holiness, peace, and quietness of spirit. There are two things which may hinder our peace of spirit, and which, being frequently confounded and mixed up together, create a difficulty in the minds of the saints: Firstly, a troubled state of conscience respecting acceptance and salvation; Secondly, a groaning of spirit, similar to that mentioned by Paul in Romans 8: 23, because of circumstances around which distress and try us. But these are quite distinct. The trouble and exercise of spirit which the saint may and indeed will have, whilst living in this world, because of circumstances around, is altogether an opposite thing to that trouble of conscience which is respecting pardon of sin.

188 Where there is that trouble of conscience, love is not in exercise, but self is the centre. But when the trouble is because of the state of things around us, the contrary is the case. How deep the trouble of soul of the Lord Jesus! but it flowed from love and from a perfect sense of what the grace of God was. When grace is fully, that is, simply known - when we are resting upon God as being for us, and know that He is love, there can be no mistake between these two causes of disquiet; but if we do not understand what grace is, we shall be apt immediately to confound them.

If there be in us any anxiety of conscience as to our acceptance, we may be quite sure that we are not thoroughly established in grace. It is true there may be the sense of sin in one who is established, but this is a very different thing from distress of conscience as to acceptance. Want of peace may be caused by either of two things; my never having been fully brought to trust in grace, or my having through carelessness lost the sense of grace, which is easily done. The grace of God is so unlimited, so full, so perfect, that, if we get for a moment out of the presence of God, we cannot have the true consciousness of it - we have no strength to apprehend it; and if we attempt to know it out of His presence, we shall only turn it to licentiousness.

If we look at the simple fact of what grace is, it has no limit, no bounds. Be we what we may (and we cannot be worse than we are), in spite of all that, what God is towards us is love! Neither our joy nor our peace is dependent on what we are to God, but on what He is to us, and this is grace.

Grace supposes all the sin and evil that is in us, and is the blessed revelation that through Jesus all this sin and evil have been put away. A single sin is more horrible to God than a thousand sins - nay, than all the sins in the world - are to us; and yet, with the fullest consciousness of what we are, all that God is pleased to be towards us is love! It is vain to look to any extent of evil: a person may be (speaking after the manner of man) a great sinner, or a little sinner; but this is not the question at all: grace has reference to what God is, and not to what we are, except indeed that the very greatness of our sins does but magnify the extent of the grace of God. At the same time, we must remember that the object and necessary effect of grace is to bring our souls into communion with God, to sanctify us, by bringing the soul to know God and to love Him. Therefore the knowledge of grace is the true source of sanctification.

189 If grace then be what God is toward me, and has nothing at all to do with what I am, the moment I begin to think about myself as though God would judge me because of my sins, it is evident that I am not then consciously standing in grace. The heart naturally has these thoughts; and indeed it is also one of the effects of being awakened, for the conscience then begins directly to reason about what God thinks of it; but this is not grace. The soul that turns back upon itself to learn God's judgment about it, and what His dealings with it are likely to be, is not leaning upon what God is - is not standing in grace.

I have said that there are two things which, though quite distinct, are nevertheless frequently confounded in the minds of the saints - a bad conscience, and the groaning of the spiritual man because of evil around. The moment we get a little away from the sense of grace, we shall be in danger of confusing these together. Suppose for instance that I, as a saint, am sensible of the terrible weight of evil which is all around me, and groan about it, soon (unless it be guarded against) this will mix itself up with trouble of conscience; I shall lose the sense of God's love and put myself under law. But a saint may "groan" thus without at all losing the consciousness of love, nay, for the very reason that he has it.

When the Lord Jesus "groaned in himself" and wept at the grave of Lazarus, His deep sense of the sorrow which sin had brought into the world did not affect that of His Father's love. We find Him using at the same time the language of the fullest confidence in that love - "Father, I know that thou hearest me always." And so a Christian may be sorrowful, but should not on that account feel as though God were not love, or lose the sense of His grace. Love to others combined with a spiritual perception of evil will cause us very much sorrow. Jesus felt this infinitely more than we can ever do, because the power of love in His heart made Him so much more deeply sensible of the dreadful weight of evil which was pressing on the hearts of others. He felt the miseries around Him in proportion as He knew the blessedness and love of the Father's presence.

190 We have "suffering," "groaning," etc., spoken of in Romans 8. Paul groaned within himself from the consciousness of infirmity, from distress, trials, etc.; but this raised no question in his mind about the certainty of God's grace - quite the contrary. The more conscious we are that the Spirit dwells in us, the more we shall "groan." The more certain we are of blessing, the more we realise grace; the more we know of God's love, and the effects of that love, the more shall we "groan" at all that is at present around us; but not as though these things brought the smallest cloud over divine favour.

Paul is spoken of as groaning in spirit, and why? He realised the result of the grace in which he stood. Through the power of faith being made conscious of the blessings which are his, he groans within himself after them; but never as if there were the slightest doubt respecting his salvation. Delivered he is from all uncertainty as to the fulness, the freeness, of divine favour towards him; and in the consciousness of this he groans within himself, "waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body."

The end of chapter 7 describes quite another sort of groaning, though, as before remarked, the two are often confounded together; because, as sin is still dwelling in us (in our flesh), those who are not really established in grace do not discern the difference between them. The whole chapter is full of what people call experience; not of that which is (properly speaking) Christian experience, but of the thoughts of the mind within and about itself. The state described is that of a person, quickened indeed, but whose whole set of reasonings centres in himself. I could not venture to say how many times he says "I," and "me": the whole chapter is full of it.

Observe the difference of expression in verse 14: "We know that the law is spiritual"; all Christians know that; but then does he say, We know that we are carnal, sold under sin? No, "I am carnal, sold under sin." He turns back immediately to self and to the judgment, which, being quickened, he had formed of himself by his own experience, as under the law, and begins to reason about what he is before God, and not about what God is towards him; and the consequence is that he exclaims, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" So it is with us; directly we begin to reason about ourselves, we can only say, "O wretched man that I am!" what shall I do? I hate sin, I wish to please God, I confess that the law is good; but the more that I see it is so, the worse it is for me - the more miserable I am!

191 Is there a word of grace in all this? No, not a word. When he brings in Christ at the close, then he is able to thank God: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." This chapter is full of a great deal of truth, in the experience of the individual mentioned; but it is truth stopping short of grace, of the simple fact that, whatever be his state, let him be as bad as he may, "God is love," and only love towards him. Instead of looking at God, it is all "I," "I," "I." In verse 15, six times over does he speak of himself, his own thoughts; and though some of these were spiritual, yet it is, "What I hate, that do I," "When I would do good, evil is present with me!"

All this may be very profitable experience to bring us to the conviction of our utter hopelessness in ourselves. Still let us put it in its right place, and remember that it is not, properly speaking, Christian experience; but that it only describes the feelings of a soul that has not yet fully and experimentally known the simple fact, that "when we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly"; or else that of one who, through the workings of the flesh, has slipped back to looking at himself, and at what he is, instead of looking at God - at grace.

Faith produces many effects in our hearts always suitable to the object at which it looks. If for instance faith looks at the law, it sees its spirituality far more clearly than nature can; and then, seeing the flesh too in its real vileness, if it looks no farther, but judges of itself according to this spirituality of the law, the effect must be to bring us under condemnation of it (I mean of course as to our feeling) - under the consciousness of guilt and weakness. We shall hate, and seek to separate from evil; but that will be all; it will leave us crying out, "O wretched man that I am!" With increased light there will only be increased misery.

But if faith looks at God as He has revealed Himself in grace, it judges accordingly. It never then reasons upon the fruit produced, it rests in the revelation God has given of Himself - grace. The fruits of grace are to be looked for of course; for if there be life in us, the "fruit of the Spirit" will be manifested. The saint, for instance, knows that "peace" has been "made through the blood of the cross." The effect is, that love flows forth. He feels that he is called unto blessing, and therefore has his feet "shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace"; drinking into his own soul the love of God, he becomes as a river of love flowing forth to others; John 7: 38. But though these fruits are produced, faith never reasons on its own fruits; it can alone rest in the revelation God has given of Himself as "the God of all grace." This is its own and only proper sphere.

192 The natural heart ever reasons about itself, and in a Christian it is always judging by fruits. This must necessarily bring disquiet, instead of peace. In itself it can see nothing but sin; and as to any fruit I have even been enabled to bear, this is so mixed with imperfection that it can only a be subject for judgment (though it be the Father's judgment) - it cannot give me peace. That can only be found in what Jesus has wrought, in "the grace that is in Christ Jesus."

What then is the position in chapter 7? First of all the apostle establishes the great principle that the believer is "dead to the law." Then he describes the workings of a quickened soul, which, knowing that the "law is spiritual," still feels "under the law," and is therefore compelled to exclaim, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

Whom is he thinking of in all this? Himself. Now, dear friends, let me ask you, Am I, or is my state the object of faith? No, surely not! Faith never makes what is in my heart its object, but God's revelation of Himself in grace. If we stop half way, and see nothing but the law, it will just discover to us our condemnation, and prove us to be "without strength." If God allows us to know enough of the law and of the experience described in this chapter to shew us what is our true state, that is just where grace meets us.

It is not that the conflict here spoken of will not continue: grace could not be known at all where conflict is not known; the unconverted only are without it. But that which will not continue when grace is fully known is that bitterness of spirit in which, while the conflict is going on, the person judges himself, seeing the law to be "spiritual," but himself "carnal, sold under sin." The love of God is not realised as his own, and therefore this causes him to cry out, "O wretched man that I am!"

193 It is quite clear that, while there is this experience felt, there is not simple faith in God's grace; there is not a clear view of what God is towards me in Christ; for when the soul apprehends that, when the faculties of the new man are exercised on their proper object, there is perfect rest. And though there is still conflict, yet the soul is at peace: "the battle is not ours, but the Lord's."

But how am I to know what is God's mind towards me? Is it by judging of it from what I find in myself? Surely not! Supposing that I even found good in myself, if I expected God to look at me on that account, would it be grace? There may be a measure of truth in this kind of reasoning; for, if there be life in my soul, fruit will be apparent; but this is not to give me peace any more than the evil that is in me is to hinder my having peace. That too is true reasoning where the apostle says, "the law is spiritual, but I am carnal"; "O wretched man that I am!" but there is nothing of grace in it.

But does the certainty of grace take us out of all trouble? No; I am not at all denying the fact that there is, and while we are in a sinful body that there ever must be, conflict going on between the flesh and the Spirit. But then to have this conflict going on in the conscious certainty that God is for me, because I am "under grace," is a very different thing from having it in the fear that He is against me, because I am "under law."

If in evil I see myself (and this I always shall whilst here, in the root, even if it be not manifested in its fruit), and if I think that God will be against me because of it, I shall have no strength for conflict, but be utterly cast down, groaning as to my acceptance. But if certain that God is for me, the consciousness of this will give me courage and victory, nay, even enable me to say, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." In the confidence of the love and grace of God I can ask Him to search out all my evil - what I otherwise dare not do, lest it should overwhelm me with despair. God is my friend - for me, against my own evil.

194 The apostle speaks (chap. 8) of the "carnal mind" being "enmity against God"; but then God in the gift of Jesus has brought out this blessed truth, that when man was at enmity against God, God was love towards man: our enmity was met by His love. The triumph of grace was seen in this, that when man's enmity had cast out Jesus from the earth, God's love brought in salvation by that very act - came in to atone for the sin of those who had rejected Him. In the view of the fullest development of man's sin faith sees the fullest manifestation of God's grace. Where does faith see the greatest depth of man's sin and hatred of God? In the cross; and at the same glance it sees the greatest extent of God's triumphant love and mercy to man. The spear of the centurion which pierced the side of Jesus only brought out that which spoke of love and mercy.

The apostle then goes on to shew that those once at enmity with God are now become His heirs; and that the knowledge of this is founded on the knowledge of grace: "Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again," etc. Grace first makes us children of God, and then gives us the knowledge of it, and that we are heirs of God.

But what is the extent of this grace towards us? It has given us the same portion that the Lord Jesus has. "We are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." It is not only certain that grace has visited us, has found us when we were "in our sins," but it is also certain that it has set us where Christ is; that we are identified with the Lord Jesus in all but His essential glory as God. The soul is placed thus in the consciousness of God's perfect love, and therefore, as it is said in chapter 5, "we joy in God."

I have got away from grace if I have the slightest doubt or hesitation about God's love. I shall then be saying, I am unhappy, because I am not what I should like to be. But, dear friends, this is not the question: the real question is, whether God is what we should like Him to be, whether Jesus is all we could wish. If the consciousness of what we are, of what we find in ourselves, has any other effect than, while it humbles us, to increase our adoration of what God is, we are off the ground of pure grace. The immediate effect of such consciousness should be to make our hearts reach out to God and to His grace as abounding over it all.

But while grace thus gives us perfect peace in our souls, it does not save us from sorrow. Even as the Lord Jesus so perfectly entered into the sorrow and groaning around Him when here, and was therefore a "man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief"; so in his measure ought to saint to take up the sense of the weight of evil that is in the world, and thus become a man of sorrows also. Just as we abide in grace, shall we have in proportion a sense of the weight of evil that is all around, and groan in sympathy with a groaning and travailing creation; and not only so, but being ourselves in the body, we shall "groan" likewise "within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body."

195 But is there any uncertainty as to our salvation in this groaning? No, quite the contrary; it is the very certainty that "all things are ours" which makes us "groan." Having the certainty and foretaste of glory everything here is made the more painful by contrast. That which the saint is entitled to is so very different from all that is actually around him, that the more he knows of the joy of dwelling in the presence of God, the larger understanding he has of God's love and grace; the more he realises the blessedness of his portion in that glory to which he is predestinated, the more will he "groan"!

How different this from the groaning of an uneasy conscience! Let us not mistake, dear friends; let us not confound the two: this groaning of one perfectly free from the sense of condemnation described in chapter 8, and the groaning of conscience, the "O wretched man that I am!" of chapter 7. Carelessness of walk, and through it losing the sense of grace, may indeed expose him who has once consciously stood in the power of redemption to the fiery darts of the wicked one. But this is not, as before remarked, true Christian experience. When the heart is made full with the rich blessings of Christ, it will not turn back to gnaw upon itself.

It is our privilege as saints to know that "there is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus"; that "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death." But we must not stop simply here. There must be the going on to know what we are as sons of God, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, the Spirit bearing witness to us of it. God "hath established us in Christ," "hath anointed us," and "given us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts." Having thus the fullest knowledge that God has thought about us in love, and predestinated us to be conformed to the image of Jesus, and to share His glory, understanding what His love is now about in His dealings with us, and not being yet in the glory but still in the body, and in the midst of evil and groaning all around, we shall therefore groan. "Ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." The very reason of our groaning is because of our having the first-fruits of the Spirit, not at all because of a bad conscience; it is the Spirit of Christ groaning in us.

196 And then this groaning is always accompanied by confidence in God. As with Jesus, when "he groaned in the spirit and was troubled" at the grave of Lazarus, He said, "I know that thou hearest me always"; so is it given to the saint to have the like confidence (see 1 John 5: 14, 15). Nor should this confidence even fail, when we "know not what to pray for as we ought," for it is added, "but we know that all things work together for good," etc. I may see evil in myself - in another saint - in the church, and seek to pray about it, but yet not have sufficient intelligence to know what would remedy it; the Spirit will help my infirmity, and groan within me. God does not regard my ignorance, but answers according to "the mind of the Spirit," who always "maketh intercession for the saints according to God." I ought to be so confident of God's directing "all things, as to be able to say, I am certain all things work together for good. Is a soul in this state? Come what may - trouble, sorrow, disappointment, grief, whatever it be - all is peace, for it is resting upon God, and not (as in chap. 7) looking at itself.

Our very griefs then flow from the knowledge of God's immense love, and from the consciousness of all that belongs to us in Christ. Jesus fully knew, as none other, what the presence of God, what the enjoyment of His favour, was, and "groaned," because, coming from the presence of God, He found man out of it. The life which I now have identifies me, not with responsibility as "under the law," but with Christ, who has borne the judgment of a broken law for me. Instead of being wretched and miserable because looking at myself as under law, I enjoy the consciousness of redemption, rest in grace, and "rejoice in hope of the glory of God." But the moment we get a glimpse of the glory of Christ as ours, this world becomes to us a scene of misery and bondage.

197 This groaning on account of evil always associates itself with love. If for instance I see a saint sin, it leads me at once to the love and grace he is sinning against. It is the consciousness of divine favour which I have towards that saint which makes me anxious about him; and while I grieve at his sin, I have joy in God in the midst of my sorrow.

Well, beloved friends, if these things be so, if this be the place in which grace sets us, let me ask, Is it so with you? If God be pure love - nothing else than love to us; if there be no mixed feelings in Him, then if you have not full joy, if there is any hesitation in your souls as to your standing before Him, you cannot be simply resting in His grace.

Is there distrust and distress in your minds? See if it be not because you are still saying "I," "I," and losing sight of God's grace. You may indeed have faith, but you want simplicity of heart in looking at God's grace. It is better to be thinking of what God is than of what we are. This looking at ourselves is at the bottom really pride - a want of the thorough consciousness that we are good for nothing. Till we see this we never look quite away from self to God. Sometimes perhaps the looking at our evil may be a partial instrument in teaching us it; but still even this is not all that is needed. In looking to Christ it is our privilege to forget ourselves. True humility does not so much consist in thinking badly of ourselves as in not thinking of ourselves at all. I am too bad to be worth thinking about. What I want is, to forget myself and to look at God who is indeed worth all my thoughts. Is there need of being humbled about ourselves? We may be quite sure that will do it.

Beloved, if we can say (as in chap. 7) that "in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing," we have thought quite long enough about ourselves. Let us then think about Him who thought about us with "thoughts of good and not of evil" long before we had thought of ourselves at all. Let us see what His thoughts of grace about us are, and take up the words of faith, "If God be for us, who can be against us?"

The Prodigal with the Father

Luke 15

J. N. Darby.

<12021E> 198

I take this chapter because one finds that there are many sincere souls who are not in the second condition of this repentant prodigal - that is, when he had been kissed, and robed, and was in the house with the Father - they have not real peace with God. They are still lingering on the way; and if they know salvation is a real thing thus given, they are not living in the enjoyment of it. As to their state of mind, they have not eaten of the fatted calf, nor have they got on the best robe; they are not living with the Father on the ground of what the Father has shewn Himself to be.

It is striking the moment the Father comes, except the confession of the son, you hear nothing about him; all is about the Father. From the time of his confession the whole scene is the Father's mind, and the Father's ways - what His heart is, and what His house can afford; and that is the true Christian state, and what the heart has to be brought to enjoy. I take up that special point of view now. Many are sincere, yet are not on this ground, and the Lord shews us that this is so; we should ever cry, "Abba, Father," as having this conscious place with Him.

There are two very distinct states in the prodigal; only in the second do we really learn the father's thoughts and feelings, and not the prodigal's, but the effect upon him; and there he rests. We do not find judgment here, it is all grace. Judgment is a real thing, and the Lord will lay hold of the conscience by it; but it is not the subject here, salutary as it is. Neither is it the blood presented to God, as meeting that judgment, all true and important as it is; but God in justifying grace, and then the way the soul enters into the enjoyment of that grace. We never should lose sight of the other; but the side on which the gospel is presented here is not that judgment is outstanding, and that the blood is there to meet it, but the joy of divine love in blessing the wanderer brought back by grace.

And we must not confound this with the government of God. He may be angry even with His own child. It is different from the manifestation of His nature, so that there is no possibility of allowing sin in His presence. In the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed, and the wrath of God is revealed, and that from heaven; not merely judgments and punishment, not merely dealing with man, but the nature of God being perfectly revealed, so that He cannot have a single sin. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, and unrighteousness of men." In the holiness of His nature He abhors and rejects the sin, and in the righteousness of His nature He judges it. Hence, when we speak of the Christian state, we walk in the light, as He is in the light. It is not now certain conduct that has to be measured and dealt with. God has no measure with sin (there are indeed "many stripes" and "few stripes"). He is a holy Being, and there is positive rejection of all sin in His nature. Even in paradise, it is not now merely innocence; it came out previously; but man left that state and then judgment comes on him, and he is to return to the dust from which he was taken - present judgment that marked God's displeasure. It is dreadful enough to see that God may chasten His own; but to find that people are shut out from the presence of the Lord for ever, from God's favour, that is what is so terrible. There is no veil over the glory of God. If you have to do with God at all, you must deal with Him, not as under the law, when there was a veil and God was hidden, but now He has come out, and wrath from heaven has been fully revealed. This is not the side we have here, but the grace which goes out to seek, and how the soul is brought back to enjoy this grace.

199 We have the whole Trinity in this chapter, but not as a doctrine; the good Shepherd looks after the sheep; the Spirit seeks for a soul, and Grace receives it when it comes back. We find the activity of God in grace, in Christ, and in the Holy Spirit; and lastly, the way the soul is received by the Father. In the first two you have not the whole truth: you have in the last. The shepherd has lost his sheep; he goes after it wandering farther and farther away, and brings it back, while the sheep never lays foot to the ground. The woman cares for the silver piece, seeks diligently until she finds it, when there could be nothing that passed in it - the simple power of grace bringing back what is lost. Then there is another - thank God, not a new principle, but a most blessed and lovely one, that runs through it all, that it is not our joy to be saved, but God's joy to save!

The Pharisees and publicans murmured. It is a righteous principle, and some may have it in their hearts still, that people must be righteous for God. The Pharisee thinks he has righteousness for God; we have that described in the elder brother. You do not need to be a Jew to be a Pharisee - what the Lord speaks of as a whited sepulchre, full of all uncleanness. The elder brother is the Pharisee in all ages; it is the most hateful thing that exists. A Pharisee has no sense of sin, else he would know that he was a sinner; no sense of holiness, or of love; there is nothing more foreign to the heart and mind of God than his state; it is the most thorough selfishness, and not a thought of anything else - "Thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends." When he says, "Child, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine," he refers to the Jews; the law, the prophets, Christ Himself as coming in the flesh, the worship of God, the word of God, all He had was theirs. The use they made of it was another thing; they had got enough to be proud of it, but not to enter into the Father's heart; that was made known to the servants. "Thy brother is come, and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound." That ought to have touched his heart. He should have said, If my father is happy it must be right; but he objects to everything. The Father went out even to this Pharisee; but nothing could win the self-righteous man; his heart is unwinable by God! He had no sense of righteousness or holiness, or he would know perfectly well, that if all that was in his heart was brought out, he would be ashamed of himself and go and hide. The Pharisee has no thought of that; he is hypocritical, only making the outside of the cup clean, as if God could not see its inside as well as its outside. But if man's righteousness was the way to God, why should He have given His Son?

200 The Lord here takes up the way in which the soul returns to God, and He chooses the case of one who had gone to excess of riot as the prodigal eating husks with the swine. Many have not done that, but He takes this case to shew that grace reaches him there, and that is God's delight - the joy of God, to bring him back and receive him. Remark this - the moment the soul has got hold of what God is, the grace of God has found entrance into the heart. It is not feeding on husks which is the worst thing; nor is there any real difference in people; some are upright and honest, others are sunk in debauchery; but as regards the heart, when you come to the root of the matter, there is not one bit of difference. Suppose I was brought up among thieves and drunkards, I would be a thief and a drunkard. It is a great mercy to be separate; that is connected with circumstances.

201 Here, in the first act of the young man, the whole mischief was done. To turn his back on his father was doing his own will. Scripture says, there is "no difference" before God; there is in wickedness and vice, of course; but all have sought their own pleasure and their own way. When he crossed the threshold he was in will as much a sinner as when with the swine. There are differences among men; quite true. And man reaps what he sows. But as regards his state of soul, the young man was as much a sinner then as when eating the husks; and what is more, he was nearer returning when there; there was no pretence then that he was not perishing. It is the principle of all men, everywhere, to say, "Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me." We like our own will; we like to be free from God to do our own will. It is perfectly immaterial what it is; that is our history as men: "we have every one turned to his own way," and that brings these wretched fruits. That is what all are; some have come back; but looked at as children of Adam, you have your back upon God, and your face on your own pleasures. There is no return till that is confessed.

The Lord takes the case of one who has gone to excess. The point was, leaving his father's house, and his getting back there. Suppose a son goes off in wild wickedness from his father's house, he may not have been a thief, or the like, but he is always doing wrong, till he comes back; and nothing will be right until he comes back. "If thou wilt return, saith the Lord, return unto me," Jer. 4: 1.

Now, as to his return: "There arose a mighty famine in that land." Another thought as to the heart is, it never returns to God till there is a famine in the world. As long as people are in health, very rich and gay, they ruin themselves. When that is gone - when the natural pleasure gone, what then has the heart? It has spent itself, and is going to die! "Thou fool!" that is all the Lord has to say to that! (Luke 12: 20). He had got to Satan's world, and the heart finds nothing there to satisfy it. You see those that can spend their substance; and there is a certain gaiety of nature which seems like happiness; but leave such only for a day, and you will find how their heart has its canker at the core. There is in many a heart the sense that there is a famine in the world. Why are there so many concerts and crystal palaces? Because of the famine. They try to keep up their heart, to do without God; but it is all in vain; they cannot! They would not have to take so much pains to make themselves happy, if they were so. They may get on merrily, but all these "artificers in brass and iron" are but efforts to make a city without God, and sufficiently pleasant to forget Him!

202 When the famine was there, he began to be in want. That never turns the heart to God: "And he joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine." Drinking and pleasure and excitement did not satisfy; "and no man gave unto him." There is no giving there; there is selling oneself. When the heart is away from God, this want never turns it to Him, but to what satisfies the flesh. "He would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat"; a description of where he had got to, the sense of famine not bringing him to God at all.

"When he came to himself," there is a total change. He was like a mad man before; identified with the place where the famine was. The goodness of God comes into his heart, he says, "How many hired servants of my father have bread enough and to spare?" Not, I shall get it, or I would like to have it, or How should I be received? But the sense of goodness is awakened in the soul, and this produces a want of another kind - a sense of the blessedness of God! When the Holy Ghost works in the soul, there is always a want. I want more holiness, more grace, I want God. He sees blessedness with God, and would give anything to be back with Him. The servants had bread enough and to spare; there is goodness with God.

Wherever there is a revelation of self, and man is conscious of his real state, there is always a sense of the goodness of God. He is in the frame of mind you find at times in souls - Well, if I perish, I perish at the cross. It attracts him. Conscience is awakened; but the heart is attracted, "I will arise and go to my father," that is everything. He had turned his back on his father, left God behind him; now it is not that he has got to his father, but his face is turned towards him, and his heart too, and that is an immense thing! He has not peace yet; but it is an immense thing when God and the soul meet; when want of holiness and want of love is created, and there is a revelation that has attracted the soul to God. That which characterises him when he came to himself is, that he thinks there is goodness, and abundance, and plenty there. He did not know that he would be let in, but there was the goodness there to be let in to. "And I perish with hunger" - I have got away from God, and I am perishing as a man living without God - "I will arise and go to my father." The moment it is so, God and the soul have met. Orthodox as the Pharisees were, they had not God. Nicodemus says, You must be a teacher come from God; but the Lord says, You have not the principle which connects you with God; I cannot touch flesh; "ye must be born again." God and the soul have met, the quickening power of God gives consciousness that he is perishing, and there is a distinct result, "I will arise and go to my father," not I will get better, change my ways. He must change his ways; but that is not what is in his heart. "I will arise and go to my father." It is want of God that characterises him. The sense of love that makes the heart want God, a totally different thing from the desire to mend myself - that is the work of the Spirit of God. The next thing is honest confession - "I have sinned against heaven and before thee." It is often a long while before we get up to this and say, I have no title; and if so, how can I be there?

203 That was what the Lord was doing with the Syrophoenician. He said, "It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs." "Truth, Lord (she replied), yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table." I have no title; I am just a wretched dog; but there is goodness enough in God for those who have no title.

It may be a long process before the soul comes to that point of full blessing. Without a holy nature we cannot enjoy Him; but you cannot make righteousness or a ground of acceptance out of it. The prodigal has nothing to say to the blessing till everything is spent. The pride of the human heart finds it very difficult to get there. Some things are fit' for God, it says. Are you fit for God? I ask. It is not what is in God meets your case, but what is in you will, you hope, meet God's case. This is all wrong, totally wrong from beginning to end - "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord." You must come down; you have no title to anything whatever, and all depends on simple grace to those that are entitled to nothing but wrath.

204 Another thing, we have seen the young man's heart brought to turn to God. His eyes were opened, and God had met him; he had not yet met God. He acknowledged his sins; all quite right; the consequence is, he begins to reason how he will be with God when he meets Him. "Make me as one of thy hired servants." What does that prove? That he had never met God at all. Lowliness, confession, is all right; but making terms shews he had not given up all hope in self, but thought he might have some small place, some little corner in heaven. God's presence is there, and can you pretend to be fit for His presence with all these rags? - every proof of having been in the far country? With his heart drawn to God, he confessed he was unworthy, yet still hoped. All proved he had not got to his father. The father had met him and touched his heart in grace, but he had not, in conscience, come to God at all! That is what I press.

There was a work of God in the man's soul, a sense of sin, of perishing, of bread in his father's house; but this thought, because he had not met God, was all wrong; it was reasoning how it would turn out when he came. He had no terms to make with his father when he met him. You find numbers of sincere souls, who have seen the goodness of God and yet only hope in a general way; they have not met God to find out what God's thoughts are. They are reasoning from their condition, partly fearing, partly hoping for a poor servant's place. All proves they have not met God, though God has met them. He had met that young man. All perfectly true; but he was not judging from what God was, and had been; he had not given himself up as nothing but sin, so as to know what God was to those who have nothing but sin. "He arose and came to his father."

Now, in a certain sense, he disappears when the father comes in sight, and the whole blessing comes from, and is the result of, what the father is to this poor creature. All right his returning; but what is the effect of it? To bring him to his father with all the traces of the far country, in a condition totally unfit to go into the house. It would be a disgrace to have him in the house with those filthy rags - a perpetual dishonour. Then the elder brother might reproach and say, Look at this wretch; is he fit to be in the house with you? The effect of the experience of God's work in our hearts is to bring us to God in our sins. Did he not come in rags and nakedness the whole journey, just as he came out of the far country? Until we submit to that, we never get peace. We are saying, Make me a hired servant. It is not self-righteousness, but reasoning from our thoughts and feelings as to what God will be. But that is giving God the character of Judge; and if He is our Judge, it is everlasting destruction to us.

205 Are there not hearts who may read this, right in purpose, thinking of their state and condition, and how it will turn out when they meet God? Why not confess you have not met Him yet? (I do not say He has not met you.) You have never known Him. Why not put yourself just in the state the Lord is insisting on? "When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him." Now he comes to be kissed in his rags. The father deals in absolute grace with him just as he was. The effect of this kind of experience is to bring me to Him in my rags, and to find Him loving me, such as I am, in a condition totally unfit to be in the house.

But he did not bring him in in his rags, but "fell on his neck and kissed him." The father acted from his thoughts and feelings and mind, and the only effect of the wretchedness of the son was to draw out the compassion of the father! That is what I learn in Christ. "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us." The very essence of Christianity is that we have not to meet God as a Judge; and that because we could not He has come to meet us in grace. Sovereign grace has dealt with sinners, to shew that God in love is greater than their sins! The simple but blessed footing we are on with God, is not what we are for God (this has to do with government), but what God is for us. He "commendeth his love to us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." He does not look for righteousness, but He brings it; He will have the fruits of it afterwards; but the grace of God brings salvation. The very essence of Christianity (by which we too have to act in grace) is, not what God finds, but what He brings.

He is brought to confess what he is, but with the father on his neck; and he does not then say, "Make me as one of thy hired servants." Why? Because he had met his father, and he had acted as a father. He could not say, when he was kissing him, Make me a servant; it would be slighting grace! Ah! he had met his father, and knew his position. How? By being with him, and finding what his father was for him. The whole thing depended on what his father was for him.

206 Now, are you content, that your position and acceptance should depend on what God is for you, and not on what you are for God? Are you content to give up all title to His grace? If there is pride, and the old man still working, you will say, Must I not have this or that? Try your hand at it, and see what it will come to. The Lord wants you so to learn that you will never think of saying, Make me a Servant. You will then have learned the Father's heart, and your relationship, a son's place, because you have found it in the Father's house. Thus, grace has gone out, and righteousness has gone in! "Bring forth the best robe and put it on him." That which the father has to put on him is out of his own treasure (the young man had got his share before, he had nothing of his own); it was that which was put on him when he came back, that when he went in he might be a witness to the whole house of his father's thought about him; that it was the father's joy to have him there in honour. We come in, not simply with our rags off, but with Christ on; we are "made the righteousness of God in him." He brings us to His own presence in the fulness of His own grace; and He puts the best robe on us, so that all may say, There is a son the father delights in. There is nothing now about the son feeding on the fatted calf, but the father and servants. No doubt he did so; but this is the way God receives a person; it is His own delight to have him, and the greatest delight of God is Christ; and He puts that upon him. We thus have righteousness, and glory too, in due time.

Thus there is a total difference between God meeting the soul, and the soul meeting God. All the reasoning you find, how it may turn out, and the like, characterises the state when God is meeting it in sinfulness. It is experience we get when the son was on his way to the father. I may get on slowly, or get on quickly, but that is experience, and experience is not righteousness. You never find in Scripture, Being justified by experience, we have peace with God; it is "by faith." Faith in what? In what has passed in my heart? Then I may doubt about my own heart, Surely it is not what I ought to be; all that does go on in the heart. But it is not the father's dealing with the son - not a bit. Experience was there, but experience led him in rags to the father's presence - the rest is all what the father is!

207 Are you content to be on that ground; a mere sinner, to be put by the Father's grace into the Father's house? It is Christ, of course, who is the best robe, as my righteousness. Then the soul sits down and enjoys all the Father has to give. Ah! you will find it hard, there is so much selfishness in the heart, to bow to dependence on what God is for you. Strange to say it, but you will. If you submit to God's righteousness you will then have true holiness, but never until you have the certainty of salvation. How can a child have filial affections if he has not a father? An orphan is capable of them. So, if I am born of God, I have a nature capable of enjoying Him. But if I have not the sense of relationship, I cannot have peace. We have the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. If we look up to God, is there the consciousness that you look to a Father? Not a hope, but that your affections can go out on that footing, because you know Him as a Father? You cannot have blessed, holy affections which delight in Him as a Father until consciously in the position which that relationship entails. I do not say that you are not on the road.

Do not be merely satisfied with being saved. When first I am saved, all my affections go out, and I say, What a mercy! But I am uneasy when I see a Christian resting too much upon what he was as a sinner; that is not a healthy state. I believe we shall remember it in heaven. "The Lamb as slain" will be before us there, never to be forgotten. But if only there, and not occupied in thinking of what He is, I will not get on. A soul that is in the Father's house, is it not to grow up to know what the Father's heart is? I was outside, and He took me in to learn it there.

I would now ask you, Are you in the best robe? In Christ is your place. Is your heart there? The conscience must be cleansed, of course; but, is the place of your heart with the Father, living there in the affections which belong to that condition, or, are you uncertain? That is not a Christian state, though you may be on the way to it. Are you content to take your whole condition and blessing from what the Father is to you?

The Lord give you to see what you are, so that you may find you have a new place in Christ, and nothing to do with the old thing. The Father brings the son to His own heart and His own house.

"The counsel of peace"

Zechariah 6: 13

J. N. Darby.

<12022E> 208

This chapter, written after the return of the Jews from Babylon, and when they were seeking to rebuild the temple, was intended to encourage them in that work. It speaks therefore of Joshua, Heldai, Tobijah, Jedaiah (those who had come from Babylon), by name. But "no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation"; and although some event previously to take place may occupy the chief part of it, the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ is looked forward to as the ultimate point, the true consummation. So here after an allusion to the history of God's providence in the four great monarchies, and to the judgment of Babylon, the prophet comforts the hearts of those who were returned thence with a direct prophecy of Christ.

Christ is the great object of the love of God, and the Spirit of God in Scripture always looks on to Him. No matter what the substance of the prophecy, no matter what the circumstances of those addressed, He looks forward, seeing all things as they concern Christ, and His future glory The Jews, for instance, had many deliverers raised up for them of God in times of need (Neh. 9: 27) - "saviours who saved them out of the hand of their enemies"; but the moment the Holy Ghost begins to speak of these many "saviours," He ever looks out further: they were all but types of THE "Saviour" When Adam fell, and judgment came in, Christ is promised the woman's Seed, as the bruiser of the head of the serpent. After the trial of Abraham's faith in Isaac, the promise is made unto his Seed, "which seed is Christ." Again, "out of Egypt have I called my son," we are taught, referred to Christ. And so here: "He shall build the temple of the Lord; even he shall build the temple of the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne." It is "the man whose name is The BRANCH" who shall do all this. Zerubbabel is merely a type. Nothing is spoken casually, but all with a view to the ultimate purpose of the glory of God in Christ Whether it affect the destinies of man, of Israel, or of the church; all centre in Jesus; God's thoughts about Jesus are marked on all.

It must have been a great comfort to the saints of old to have future glories thus opened to them, for whenever the Holy Ghost had awakened spiritual desires in any heart, those desires could not be satisfied with anything then seen of temporal deliverance or blessing. Much had they to thank the Lord for - to sing His praise for what He had done; but there was always either the actual presence of evil, or the fear of danger and evil still. In the days of Josiah, when there was so great a returning to the ways of the Lord, and such a passover kept that the like of it had not been since the days of Samuel the prophet, yet even then was Jeremiah uttering denunciations against the evil of the people, and the Spirit of God, in denouncing their sin, ever referred to the new covenant, holding out the Lord Jesus as the One in whom alone the fulness of blessing was to centre.

209 And so with the church now. We have indeed greater blessings and clearer revelations, but still there is evil, for we are yet in the body. In times of the greatest revivals, there has ever been that mixed with them which tended to evil. We have surely much cause to thank God and rejoice, but nothing really to satisfy. We must still be looking onward to the future blessings in Christ. Never, till He appears, will the full desires of our hearts be given us; never, until we "awake in his likeness," shall we really be "satisfied." Nothing less will suffice, because the Spirit of Christ is in us. Constant dissatisfaction and constant thanksgiving meanwhile; for, if we know Jesus risen, nothing short of the full power of His resurrection can content. Our hopes run on to God's ultimate purpose of complete blessing.

And here we have unity of hope with the Jews. They, indeed, are looking for earthly glory - their city and temple being rebuilt, etc. - that part of the future blessing in Christ of which Psalm 72 speaks; and we also look forward to see the earth "filled with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah," whilst Christ's own proper portion in the heavenly glory is our peculiar hope. Both earthly and heavenly glories meet in Jesus, and will be manifested when He comes. He is the Head of both. "The counsel of peace" is between Jehovah and the Messiah.

But where is Jesus now? As "the man whose name is The BRANCH," the "priest upon his throne" - an earthly throne - He does not yet rule; peace is not yet established upon the earth, for Satan is yet exercising his power. But there is a throne upon which He does sit. He has sat down upon the "Father's throne" - "at the right hand of the Majesty on high," and this "when he had by himself purged our sins." There He is as the High Priest of His people. And thus is given to us a plain revelation of "the counsel of peace." Peace is our portion even now. We are set in the exercise of faith, by which we know and have this peace in our souls, whilst waiting for its establishment on the earth and the time of the manifested glory.

210 There is a "counsel of peace" which belongs to us, an assured peace, peace indeed in the midst of present trouble, but still God's peace. If it were not God's peace, it would be good for nothing. I may, it is true, have my spirit much disturbed, and know trial of heart; but still I have a title to perfect peace amidst it all - not only peace with God, but peace concerning every circumstance, because God is "for us" in it all.

Had not man been in rebellion against God, there would have been no need for "the counsel of peace." Adam in paradise needed it not. But man has rebelled, and, though its modifications may be various, rebellion against God is still the characteristic of the unconverted heart. Such was his rebellion, that peace between man and God seemed impossible. But now, wondrous grace! we see that there is not only peace, but a "counsel of peace" - thoughts of God concerning peace, thoughts which Jesus alone could meet. "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God!"

Supposing God had made peace with Adam, the peace could not have lasted: the enmity in the heart of man, or that produced by the power of circumstances thwarting his will, would very soon have broken it again. Look at Israel. They were placed in outward peace with God, owned as His people, favoured in every way; and yet what was the result? Continual murmuring on their part, constant rebellion. As to moral peace with God, they had scarcely undertaken to keep His law when they set up a golden calf to worship, and thus failed directly. And it would always be the same; it must be so for the very will of man is altogether wrong; "the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be."

But now "the counsel of peace" is between God and Jesus, instead of man, and hence security. It is not merely peace, but "the counsel of peace." The word "counsel" implies deliberate purpose. What solidity must there be in that peace which God had a "counsel" about, and all the engagements of which the mind of Jesus fully entered into and accomplished! I have said that peace is our proper portion as the children of God - peace both as to sin and as to circumstances. Now it is true that the latter we have not outwardly yet, but God is taking up all that concerns us, and has taken upon Himself to make "all things work together" for our good; and the knowledge of this gives peace (if we will use our privilege) in all circumstances, be they even those of trial, perplexity, and sorrow. Was it not so with Jesus? who can be so tried as He? "Consider him that endured such contradictions of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds"; yet He had always peace. And so might we: "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee."

211 But then it is most important to see that "the counsel of peace" is entirely between God and Jesus. The moment we begin to rest our peace on anything in ourselves, we lose it. And this is why so many saints have not settled peace. Nothing can be lasting that is not built on God alone. How can you have settled peace? Only by having it in God's own way. By not resting it on anything, even the Spirit's work, within yourselves, but on what Christ has done entirely without you. Then you will know peace; conscious unworthiness, but yet peace. In Christ alone God finds that in which He can rest, and so it is with His saints. The more you see the extent and nature of the evil that is within, as well as that without and around, the more you will find that what Jesus is, and what Jesus did, is the only ground at all on which you can rest.

God could no more rest in anything here, than Noah's dove could find a rest for her feet amidst the wrath and destruction that deluged the world. But Jesus comes in, and here - on this earth, where honour to God was wanting - here He glorified God. When God's eye rested upon Jesus, He was perfectly satisfied. Till that moment God had not seen anything in this earth of which He could say, as of itself, in this "I am well pleased." He had gone on, it is true, dealing with man in love and grace, but He could find nothing wherein to rest. "They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable: there is none that doeth good, no, not one," etc., was what God saw when he "looked down from heaven." But when Jesus was searched throughout, nothing was found but perfect love and perfect devotedness to God; even when forsaken of God, He still justifies Him - "thou art holy." Had it ended there, had it been only Christ's own perfectness, all the result would have been to shew out the more clearly our sinfulness and ruin by the contrast. But according to "the counsel of peace," He gave Himself. Peace was ever His; it was for us that He "made peace by the blood of the cross"; and thus is He, unto God, a "sweet savour of rest" for us.

212 Our peace is established in what He did, and "the counsel of peace" is "between them both." Jesus has accomplished that which God purposed towards us. In order to this, it was needful that He should "bear our sins," and this He did as the "sin-offering." He was made "sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." In the sacrifices, when the offerer laid his hand upon the head of the victim, there was in that act the complete identification of himself with the victim. Now there are two great characters in the sacrifice of Christ: the one, that of the burnt-offering; the other, that of the sin-offering. We lay our hands on Him as the "burnt-offering," thus identifying ourselves with Him. "Accepted in the beloved," all His perfectness, all His "sweet savour" unto God is ours. But then as to the "sin-offering," it is just the reverse with the hand laid upon the victim; it became identified with my sins, charged with my guilt.

Well, beloved, the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus had this double character. He has completely accomplished the purpose of God, all that which was in "the counsel of peace." This "counsel of peace" was not between me and God, though I have, as the fruit of it, the enjoyment of the peace. I had not to do with it in any sense; it was "between them both." All is done, and Jesus, both the accomplisher and the accomplishment, in proof that all is finished, has sat down on the throne of God.

But it may perhaps be added, Why, if the work is perfectly accomplished, is He yet a Priest upon the throne? He is not there at all as a Priest to work out righteousness for us: that He has done, and done completely: "this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God." His sitting down is the proof that He has nothing more to do in that way for His friends, and now He only waits "till his enemies be made his footstool."

213 But then, in order that we may have the enjoyment of these things, He is acting in another way as Priest. Having the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us, we consequently see many things in ourselves contrary to Him - many things that would hinder fellowship with God. Now here it is that the present ministry of Christ comes in. We need His priesthood in order to maintain our communion with God; we need Him in our daily sins, as it is said, "if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." We need the presence of perfect righteousness on our behalf before God; who has ever before His eyes, and that "for us," the accomplisher of "the counsel of peace," "Jesus Christ the righteous."

Here then is "the counsel of peace" which was purposed between God and Jesus. Here, and here only, have we peace. If ever our souls have any idea of rest except in that which is the perfect rest of God; if ever we are looking for peace anywhere else, be it where it may, we have got out of God's way of accomplishing peace, off the ground of this "counsel of peace." He has not called us into "the counsel," which really is entirely independent of ourselves - "between them both" - accomplished, sure, and everlasting. Nothing can ever touch it. God has publicly owned His acceptance of Christ's work, by seating Him at His own right hand. The Holy Ghost is sent to witness to us that Jesus is now "on the throne of God," having "by one offering perfected for ever them that are sanctified."

We may have a great deal of trial (we know we shall), trial from circumstances around, trial from within, exercise of conscience, and the like; but still we have the perfect certainty of God's favour; and "if God be for us, who can be against us?" With Paul we may reckon, because of His having given Jesus for us, along with Jesus upon everything. This is the true way to reckon upon His kindness - "Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God; and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds, through Christ Jesus." Observe, he says, "the peace of God." Again, the word is "be careful for nothing": if one single thing were excepted, God would not be God. Well, if exercised, and troubled in spirit, tempted to be "careful," let us go to God about it. Our wishes may possibly be foolish wishes: still, let us go and present them to God; if they are so, we shall very soon be ashamed of them.

214 We have need of this "counsel of peace," because all that we are in ourselves is enmity against God. I cannot go out of this "counsel" to look at my own heart for a moment: it is "between them both." Is the Christian to make Christ's cross less complete? On that alone his peace can rest. The moment we come to establish its perfectness, the moment we seek to add a single thing, we are adding to, or rather taking away something from, the perfectness of "the counsel of peace."

Who or what shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord? shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, these things shall, as means for mortifying the flesh, only minister to Christ's glory. Shall death? It will only bring us into His presence. Shall life? It is that by which we enjoy His favour. "Nothing shall separate"! He is "on the throne" as the eternal witness of peace accomplished, and thence He ministers it to us.

The Lord give us grace to look at Him alone!

Christ, or Antichrist

John 5: 17-47

J. N. Darby.

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There are three very important characters in which the Lord Jesus is presented to us in these verses:-

First, as THE SUBJECT OF TESTIMONY;

Second, as THE GIVER OF LIFE;

Third, as THE EXECUTOR OF JUDGMENT.

Now He stands in relation to all men in one or other of these positions.

First, He presents Himself as the SUBJECT OF TESTIMONY, but it is nevertheless as coming in the Father's name. "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that beareth witness of me; and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true," v. 30-32. His own witness was also true; but that which He states is, that He seeks not to glorify Himself, He demands not their confidence, He asks them not to believe. Just as He says elsewhere, "He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory; but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him." And this ever holds good. If a man is seeking to exalt self, he has a motive that is not truth - his witness is not true. At the same time there was a witness unto Himself, and as such He appeals to all the various testimony that existed for Him in the world. "Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth," v. 33. Again, "The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me," v. 36. Again, "The Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me," v. 37. And again, "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me," v. 39.

The Lord Jesus refers to these four witnesses: firstly, John; secondly, his works; thirdly, the Father; fourthly, the Scriptures: and yet He tells those to whom He spoke, "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life," v. 40. Presented with this full and adequate testimony to the consciences of men (not merely an abstract testimony, but that which was suited to their circumstances), they refused it all: they would not come to Him that they might have life. And mark the terrible conclusion, "Ye will receive" this evil one. "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive," v. 43. What a testimony against man!

216 Another character in which we find the Lord Jesus presented here is in LIFE-GIVING POWER: "As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will," v. 21. Life-giving is attributed both to the Father and the Son.

But there is marked distinction in that which follows, as to the third character of Christ - THE EXECUTOR OF JUDGMENT. "The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son," v. 22. As "Son of man," He has been dishonoured and rejected by men; therefore all judgment is committed into His hands, in order "that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father," v. 23. Here He stands alone. And see the point that is settled here.

When the Lord Jesus presents Himself as giving life, He also, and most graciously, shews us how we may count on the assurance of possessing life. Now this is of the very last importance. There is many a one that can with truth of heart own Him as the giver of divine life, who nevertheless is unable to say, I have that life. Our Lord does not leave the anxiety of such unanswered. After stating that all men (even those who had rejected Him, as we have seen) one day in His character of Judge should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father, He adds, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation [judgment]; but is passed from death unto life," v. 24.

The question is one of judgment or of life. We have seen that the Father gives life, and the Son gives life. We have seen, too, that all judgment is committed unto the Son. But here Jesus shews who is to come under the judgment, and who is to have life. This answers the question at once. He says, He that believes "hath," not shall have, "everlasting life"; and that such a one "shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life." On this basis all happy feeling before God, all joy, is founded. Here begins the exercise of all holy affections and ways. A child cannot love its parent before it is born (there is no need to reason about that), though it may love long before it can express it, long before there is intellectual explanation.

217 Here is the difference between the law and the gospel. Law puts a man upon the acquisition of life, it sets him to do before he gets life. All Christian holiness, all Christian affections, flow from the fact of having life. The voice of the good shepherd reaches the ear, and he who hears it, believing that the Father has sent the Son, has this assurance, he "shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." It would be to bring into doubt His own work were Christ to call such in question as to salvation. He ever keeps distinct His two offices of Life-giver and Judge.

It might appear that in verses 28, 29, He confounds the two. But is it so? No, He states a further truth. He had before been speaking of the quickening of the soul; and now He says, "Marvel not at this," there is going to be a resurrection of the body also. It is in resurrection that He will fulfil the whole effect and result of His life-giving power. There will be a "resurrection of life," and also a "resurrection of judgment." The two things are kept most definite and distinct. But the honour of Christ as "Son of man" is secured from all. We (those who have believed) do not need judgment to oblige us to render Him honour; we honour Him now as the source of life; He has quickened us, forgiven us our sins; through Him we have fellowship with the Father: He has done everything for us. The wicked shall also honour Him then.

There is a remarkable passage in Romans 8 in illustration of this distinction. The apostle, after speaking of the law, takes up the result of the work of Christ, and says, "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death," etc., and then in verse 11, "If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." That will not be true of the wicked at all; they will not be raised in virtue of the Spirit of Christ dwelling in them, they have it not. We see then, as it were, this great track of life. Christ is the Life-giver to His people; first to soul, and then to body.

The evidence to others of our having life is shewn in conduct, though that is not brought out here; but the proof and the assurance to my own soul is based on this, "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life." Whilst fruits will flow, and must flow, from faith in Christ, it is of the utmost importance, in the midst of the evil with which we are conversant, to have the ground on which peace rests as simple as possible; and this is just what God has made it. The work on which it is founded concerns all the Godhead. I see Christ coming out from [actually 'ever in'] the bosom of the Father, dying, and communicating life; that into which life so communicated brings, being all the Father's purposes in the Son, etc. The link to my own soul is as simple as possible, it is not a long process of reasoning which might tend to puzzle and perplex, but the evidence of the word, "He that heareth," etc. What is the effect of this? Christ becomes everything to us. Surely this is practical sanctification. If I wanted to describe a holy man, I should describe one who was always thinking of the Father's love and the Son's grace, and never of self.

218 Here then there is comfort and peace (and what a comfort is the settled certainty of salvation!) in this setting to our seal that God is true. It is not in the searching of my own heart, but in the assurance of the word of God. There is nothing like the simple certainty of faith. "He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true." I assume that I am a person in an anxious state of soul and wanting to get the certainty of life possessed. I look at the testimony of God. There I get absolute certainty. I say, God is true. This is faith. All that I discover in myself is not faith. I may be much exercised; but there is not one thing in my own heart that can in the least assist me in finding out anything about this life. Faith rests upon the testimony of God. When I have received and rested upon His testimony, it is important for me to examine myself as to my ways and the like; but I never go and search into my own heart for certainty as to whether the blessed Son of God has told me the truth, "He that heareth," etc. Observe, again, there is no searching any further than this: I believe on Him who sent the Son; in the presence of the Father and the Son, I have eternal life: who can give me more? Life may be fed indeed here, and glorified hereafter; but there is no searching any deeper. There may be exercises of soul in bringing to it; but the definition John gives of a Christian is this, "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us." "Hereby perceive we love, because he laid down his life for us." There is another point: the written testimony of God has a higher place than any other.

219 A few words more upon the difference between life-giving and judgment. Now it is that Christ gives life. When He comes as Judge, He will not give life at all, He will come for judgment. There is no confounding or mingling of the two things, either as to time or act. If judgment comes in before grace has given life, who can stand? Having seen the way of life, there is next the contrast of result, where testimony is not received. In the fall of our first parents we see sin in three distinct and principal elements. And these have continued to characterise man ever since. Man gives ear to Satan, or, in other words, is led of the serpent; exalts himself to be as God; follows his own lusts, and is disobedient.

Scripture gives us the development of this, in principle all through, and shews that it will be so at the end. Man, whilst in the enjoyment of blessing, listens to and trusts Satan. But mark the suggestion of the devil, "Ye shall be as gods." He can tell truth if it subserve sin. If we have the truth, nothing can harm us; but Satan can tell truth, a great deal of truth, provided he can only win attention by it and so deceive. See his temptation of our Lord. There he quotes Scripture, gives a promise of God, quite rightly applicable in a certain sense, had Jesus listened. The first Adam did so, and came by the ways of Satan to know good and evil. But it was by disobedience, and he continued not with God. Satan told not all the truth - he did not say, You shall be a lost creature. Lust worked, disobedience followed, and, consequently, exclusion from God's presence.

But testimony of Christ has another element in it. It is not merely that man is a sinner; there has been the rejection of God in grace. What was the question when Christ was in the world? Not whether man had sinned; but would man, a sinner, receive testimony from God in grace? If you traced the history of man from the beginning until Christ came, you would say, his mouth must be stopped. Satan's power over the heart is revealed throughout. Away from Paradise, instead of becoming better, Cain kills his brother. Then comes the deluge, sweeping away the whole race except eight persons; but afterwards they are as bad as ever. Noah gets intoxicated, Ham dishonours his father, and after that idolatry enters. Again, before Moses comes down from the mount the people have made a calf. Before the eight days of solemn purification are over, Aaron's sons take strange fire and offer before the Lord. In short, in all God's dealings with Israel as a nation, this truth is strongly marked. The principle of the heart is wrong. Nay more, the nearer man is to God externally, the worse is ever the character of his guilt, if there be not living fellowship with Him. When Jesus came into the world, though He could get joy out of the Samaritans, and out of a poor Syrophoenician woman, whose condition was as a "dog" in respect of Jewish privileges, "his own" were found full of pride of heart and "received him not." Judas was quite close to Christ, yet he betrayed Him. The development of evil is just in proportion to its nearness to good, if the power of good is not there. So with Christendom. The name of Christianity, where there is not the living power of it, is the very place in which the worst evil is to be looked for.

220 And observe, here, the awful manner in which conscience can deceive itself. "The chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood"; there had been no scruple in giving the money for that blood. The very same money wherewith they had bought Christ, they will not put into the treasury! What a picture of man's heart, of man's consistency - exact about external ceremonial points, callous as to moral depravity!

But as to the question of the reception of testimony. Into this world of sin and iniquity, however bad man might have been proved it mattered not, the Son of man came down in grace. His testimony rejected - "Ye will not come unto me, that ye might have life" - what is the consequence? "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." Here is a new form of evil. Man shall set himself up and be received, because he comes in his own name. And yet it is but the ripeness and development of his sin in Eden, the same in principle - only, after Christ; he then exalted himself to be as God - to act after his own will, though in reality he was the tool of Satan. The same thing shall come to pass again, testimony having been rejected, as it is said, "because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved," 2 Thess. 2. There will be a licence, and more than a licence too, for man to set himself up, to seek his own name - and "him ye will receive."

221 If you trace man's evil, you will find, it is true, a testimony to it bad enough, whatever the restraints God in His supreme power may have placed upon it. But there has been restraint, especially since the flood. Government met this point in the world, first, directly exercised amongst the Jews, and afterwards extended to the Gentiles in the four great empires, of which Nebuchadnezzar was the first head - the Babylonish, Persian, Grecian, and Roman. Passing over their general history, it will suffice to say, that the fourth of these empires had just come out in prominence when our Lord appeared on the earth - "There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed." The result of this, as well as of religion in man, was brought out in His rejection. All joined together - the heads both of civil and religious power - to crucify Christ. The cry of the Jews was, "We have no king but Caesar"; and Pilate, representative of Gentile dominion, knowing His innocence, acquiesced in their malice.

Another thing was brought out, upon the accomplishment of all this evil in man: a testimony unto the heavenly blessedness of those who believe in Him whom the world had rejected. "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." There are those who believe on a record given of God's Son, and eternal life belongs to them.

Well, now, if we find any religious form of evil, we find it here, in the profession of Christianity, not amongst the avowed haters of Christ. One special mark of the "perilous times" in "the last days," concerning which we have prophetic testimony, is the "having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof," the same thing in principle as amongst the Jews. The Pharisees were a religious people; they had the "form of godliness," but Christ, the "power," they "denied," Acts 3: 13. Wherefore the testimony against them is "Now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father."

One great principle of religious forms of evil is, that they are always suited to the flesh. There is a religious tendency in man: he will bow down to something. You may find a hard spirit here and there, rejecting everything; but, as a general truth, man must have his religion. The "form of godliness" is just suited to this. Nature, through it, seeks to satisfy its holiness, whilst at the same time man's will comes in - man is exalted. Whatever the flesh can look at, or do, or cling to, as man's works, ordinances, etc., all these things will be esteemed. If it be but a "form of godliness," though the straitest sect of the Pharisees, a great deal of truth may be held; there may be intellectual clearness of doctrine and the like; all this is within the compass of the flesh, and will be accredited by it. But there is one thing the flesh can never do - it can never trust simply in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ for eternal life, and have "peace with God."

222 The Spirit of God is the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of holiness. If truth (the form of it) comes to me without holiness, I cannot receive it as of the Spirit of God; and, vice versa, if there be apparent holiness without truth. There is always thus [this?], for the humble believer, a corrective or counter-check, whereby he may detect the evil - Satan's imitation.

But there is another thing testified of - the last form of wickedness - man's will exalting itself against God. The principle has been always the same, but now it will come out in full development. "The king shall do according to his own will," Dan. 11: 36. Truth having been rejected, this is the result. There will be a public avowal of independence of God, man acting against God, speaking against God, but at the same time, exalting himself to be as God; 2 Thess. 2: 4. Herein Satan's agency will come out in manifest display. It is not merely the "form of godliness" (itself ensnaring enough, and liable to lead astray), nor yet even man's will alone; no, it is declared to be a display of the "working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders," v. 9. Awful passage! And see what follows. When God's patience is exhausted, or rather has no more place, then He - yes, "God" Himself, "shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie," v. 11; "because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved." God says, If you love a lie, you shall have a lie. His dealings with the Jews, upon their rejection of Him, are the same in principle. "Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes," etc. Isaiah 6; John 12; Acts 28: 26, 27.

But we find exactly the same testimony given about the profession of Christianity, as about the profession of Judaism. The "mystery of iniquity" [2 Thess. 2: 7] had begun to work in Paul's time - "doth already work," says he; it is followed by the "falling away," or apostasy; and consummated in the appearance of Antichrist - "that man of sin." Satan's power, seductive power, and man's self-will, in independence of God, will terminate in this - man given up to the devil. But it will not be until the long-suffering of God has been tried to the uttermost; even as the sentence of judicial blindness on the Jews was pronounced 700 years before it was put in execution. At the present hour, that long-suffering has been 1800 years running on; but when the testimony of truth has been fully rejected, the doom will come.

223 People may deceive themselves, and say that these things are not to be looked for in a Christian land. It is just there, upon Christendom, that God's heaviest judgments will fall. After testimony God gave over the heathen to a "reprobate mind." (See Romans 1.) The Jew, with his special light, is given over to a fat heart. Where Christianity is professed, it is the same thing; a "form of godliness," the "love of the truth" not received, "pleasure in unrighteousness" - God gives over to "strong delusion."

Men love something. Trace the course of Judas: what was it that led him astray? He loved money, not so uncommon an evil. In this he was the world's prudent man - "men will praise thee when thou doest well to thyself." But observe the progress of corrupt nature; a little circumstance in John 12: 3, 6, may help us to see the connection. The lust there, Satan suggests a way to gratify it. Well, he goes on, and what is his next step? Satan puts it into his heart to betray his Master. Judas (it may be, thinking that the blessed One would have been delivered in some way, as at other times, and thus he get his money, and yet save his character) consents. Man will excuse himself by any folly. Sin has its progress with a defiled conscience. Hypocrisy now enters; he sits with Jesus at the table (goes on with religiousness), even after he had sold Him. Mark, too, it was "after the sop" that Satan entered, never nearer to Christ in form. Now he is hardened against even the relentings of nature, goes out and betrays the Son of man with a kiss. Here then is the progress of corrupt nature towards this fearful consummation - firstly, lust; secondly, a means of gratifying it in his office of bearer of the bag; all this goes on along with religiousness, in the very company of Christ, from day to day; thirdly, he is led to the ultimate character of his crime, at a time and in circumstances of most blessing to a true disciple; fourthly, the heart is hardened, so that the betrayal takes place even with a kiss, the token of affection. Sinning and religiousness go on together. Again we say, and here we have an illustration of it, that where the power of godliness is not, nearness to godly things is only the more dangerous.

224 Well, we have the solemn declaration that such shall be the history of Christendom. "And I saw three unclean spirits . . . which go forth unto the kings of the earth, and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty," Rev. 16. That day, when the long-suffering of God shall have closed, and shall have no more place, when in fact a longer delay would become the allowance of unrighteousness; judgment will then be according to this nearness. Its full tide will roll in upon Christendom.

We speak not of the judgment of the dead, but of the living. Where, then, is the resource from this dreadful progress and consummation of wickedness, in the place where righteousness is expected? It is not in man's will, for through that he is the slave of Satan; nor in forms of religiousness: Satan can enter in with the sop. Neither the one nor the other will keep him out. Man's natural power, his capacity to do great things, may be vaunted on the one hand; and on the other a reliance upon ordinances and observances may be insisted upon. For a time these may seem the most opposing schools, but a connecting link will be found in man's corrupt nature, managed by the craft of the great enemy; and at last both will subserve his purposes, who is to exalt "himself above all that is called God, or is worshipped: so that he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God." Where then is deliverance from the evil? where is the escape? The answer is most simple: In the fellowship of God's love. The place of special privileges unheeded, of special light, will be the place of special judgment.

A word in passing: Satan does not come all at once and say, I seek to turn you from God. He usually works by introducing that which would lead away from simplicity of reliance on the death of Christ - some "form of godliness" - and so ensnares. How are we to detect all this? In the first place the believer must be set in heaven (not in body but in spirit) in the presence of God Himself. That is now his true place. "The way into the holiest of all was not yet manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing." God was not revealed in His own full estimate of good and evil, before Christ and the cross. But now the holiest is open. The veil is rent. "The true light shineth." There is nothing between us and God. All is worthless that cannot stand in the light of His holiness. There were many things before which God did not approve, but which He permitted - Jewish divorcement, for instance (Mark 10: 5). But at the death of Christ the full light of God's holiness, against the darkness of man's fully developed sin, was brought out. The veil was rent from top to bottom.

225 Divine goodness had come into the world, and displayed itself with every witness: what had man shewn himself to be? A hater of divine goodness, in deliberate judgment. The full evil of the world, and, in the accomplishment of righteousness for us, the full grace of God, both came out at the cross. All the pains God had taken to reclaim man, as culture to a good-for-nothing tree, only resulted in his bearing more bad fruit, until the deliberate evil of his nature in hatred to God, was shewn in the death of Christ. This was the climax of his sin. But here also was shewn God's perfect love. Man's hatred to God come in goodness is one side of the cross, and the other is God in His highest act of love towards man in vileness.

God's own holiness has now come completely out. Since the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is no longer a question of coming up step by step to God. If man stand before God at all, he must stand in contact with the full light of His holiness. How did that light burst forth? In the absolute putting away of the sin of every believer, and that by the worst act of man's sin. The very sin that was detected by the light, that would have hindered the soul's approach, was put away through the blow that brought Jesus to the death; and now the sinner stands in the absolute and full enjoyment of God's love. Such is His goodness! The more the searching eye of God rests on me, trusting to the perfect work of Christ, the more, as it were, does He discover the perfect value of the blood of Christ. The clearer the light, the more is it to shew that not a spot or stain is on me. What does He see? The efficacy of the blood of His own provided Lamb - that which has put away my sin. The same light that detects the sin manifests its being utterly, and for ever, put away; yea, has burst forth and shone in the putting it away. Here then is the safeguard. It is the knowledge of God's full putting away of sin - peace through the blood. I can have no thought of getting up to God, etc., when standing where Himself has brought me, even in His very presence.

226 We are called unto holiness, but what character does Christian holiness take? Not the character of our own nature at all, nothing is recognised as of us. It is, "that we might be partakers of his holiness." Man's nature has been proved to be incorrigibly bad, it has hated and crucified Christ: God cannot own it, He seeks nothing from it. He has satisfied Himself in the cross about our evil; and now He says, Be partakers of my good. Here again is a safeguard for the saints at the present hour. Those who, through the teaching of the Spirit of God, have learned this great and blessed truth, and through grace walk in fellowship with God, will be preserved from all legal attempts at holiness. They say, We want nothing before God, but only to glorify Him in our bodies. They are Christ before God, and they know it. Nothing else is wanted; nay, God would repudiate anything else. It would be to call in question the sufficiency of Christ. Faith rests where God rests. What we have to do is to glorify Him by our life down here. But our walk down here is, nevertheless, not our standing before God in righteousness, though it be a testimony in man's sight to it.

Reader, have you rested where God rests? What does God think about Christ? Does your soul say, That is sufficient? God rests in Him as having made peace through the blood of the cross. Is that peace consciously yours? Salvation is the guard set up of God against the deceits of Satan.

Man's Responsibility and God's Promises

Galatians 3

J. N. Darby.

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There are two great points in this chapter:-

First, the effect of the law, when any one is under it;

Second, the contrast between law and promise, and whether it be by law, or by promise, that the blessing of the inheritance is ours.

In the early part of the chapter (I do not speak now of the first two or three verses), we are told that the effect of being under the law is to be "under the curse"; in the latter part, we find the blessings of the inheritance ours, not by law, but by promise: "If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Thus are the counsels of God brought out, and that in a manner that applies itself to the constant tendency of the human heart and its actings, which ever go to exalt man, and to debase God.

It is singular the way in which the human heart is continually reasoning within itself, as if there was no distinct revelation from God of His mind - searching and inquiring in order that it may conclude something about itself and God. Now it is quite we that the power of grace must work, in order that this revelation should be understood, but it is not merely in the unconverted man there is this reasoning. Alas! he often reasons not at all about it, but goes on in his own way, careless, reckless, and unconcerned. In the heart of the saints there is constant reasoning with regard to their standing before God. And, in all such cases, it is quite plain that faith is not in exercise. Whenever I begin to reason on the state of my own soul, faith is not in exercise. I do not say that the person is not a believer, but I say, faith is not in exercise. This is quite evident. Faith receives the testimony of God, and does not reason about it. There the difficulty lies. It is not that revelation is not plain, but that the heart of man is not subdued.

It is not a proof that faith is in exercise when I do not judge myself, because, when I judge myself, I judge myself before the Lord, in order to have removed whatever may be found within me that is wrong in His sight. Grace enables me to do this. But whenever there is any reasoning from myself as to my condition, faith is not in exercise. It is true this reasoning may follow upon belief in testimony (be, in that sense, a consequence of faith), but it is not faith. That is, I may believe there is a judgment to come, and that Christ can be my only Saviour (seeing there is not salvation in another, for "there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved"), and I may set about reasoning as to what will be my portion, whether I can say that Christ is my Saviour; but that is not, in itself, any right exercise of faith.

228 We shall find the testimony of the word of God to be most simple. Yet, wherever the natural conscience is awakened, there is a certain sense of responsibility to God (indeed that is, in a sense, the awakening of it) - the knowledge that God takes notice of all that is going on, of what we do, and the like, and that there is a judgment to come. Therefore the moment a man's conscience is so awakened (the grace of God not being known), he begins to inquire whether his conduct is such as God can approve and accept; and thence he draws some inference as to his own future happiness or misery. This is the natural state of man - of every man that thinks about the matter. But it is, alas! the real condition too of multitudes of believers in Christ, and of those even who have once known redemption largely. There is a constant tendency in the heart to turn again to self - to a condition in which man stands responsible to God. It is always the case when the soul has got out of the power of the testimony of the Spirit of God as to the completeness of redemption; as also when we have not come to a distinct knowledge of the hopelessness of our condition before God as men. I say to a distinct knowledge; that is, when the soul has not estimated truthfully the hopelessness of its case, that in the flesh good does not dwell and become fully satisfied that everything - all the practical righteousness, holiness, or graciousness of the saint - is consequent upon the introduction of that new thing created in us by the power of God because of the risen Jesus.

We get in these Galatians an example of this, where the soul, after having had the knowledge of grace in Jesus Christ "evidently set forth crucified among them," went back. They had "begun in the Spirit," and they now thought "in the flesh" to add to what Christ had done. That is, that they could, by that which is in man, and of man - the old man too - add to that which is of the new man, Christ. And that, I repeat, beloved, is the constant tendency of the heart. Wherever there is not the distinct knowledge of the hopelessness of man's condition before God, we go back to get from man something which may be added to what God has given us in the Lord Jesus Christ. John says, "This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." Now if we do not know that the flesh cannot in any way come in and take a share or part in it, we are constantly adding and connecting something of the flesh.

229 God began by giving "promise." And here there was nothing at all of man. But, because (as we shall see more especially in the latter part of the chapter, where the apostle speaks about promise from God - promise coming from Him when there was nothing in man to call it out, except, indeed, the ruin and need of man), when He had given the promise, before He had completed that which He had promised - redemption, before the revelation of Christ, He knew the constant tendency of the human heart to seek to satisfy its own feeling of responsibility, God gave the full extent of His demand upon it, with the consequence of failure. Because, I say, He knew what was in the heart of man, its tendency from the first - natural tendency (that is, until redemption and grace are fully known) to judge about itself by itself as to its future state; and also the pride of man, which supposes something in man which can be brought to God, or something from man which can be done for God - before He did anything for the accomplishment of His promise, He brought in the law, thus trying man in responsibility to the utmost.

It is quite right, most assuredly, to be what God has required in His revealed will. God has required and demanded a certain amount of good in me, and I have the plain revelation of God about it. Therefore I cannot act as if there were no revelation. It is one of the sins of the heart of man, that of "intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind," thinking he can approach God by some means of his own devising. God requires something that is not merely the work of man's hands, something real in the soul, something which has to do with man's relationship to Himself, and to his fellow-creature. There is this in the law - the direct requirement of God from man, of what man ought to be towards God and before Him. That is one way to talk up the law. And, further, there is the prohibition of what sin had brought in.

230 There are these two things: first, what God requires positively of man, expressed in the summary given by our Lord - "Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself"; and then, as the other part, the prohibition of what man was indulging in. The law presented the requirements of God, that is, supposing man was right practically before God; and took cognizance of what man was not, and prohibited it. And that is all the law did; except, indeed, to pronounce the curse, if there was failure in the things required.

Now as soon as this is tried - the moment we get here, and see the law in this light - we find man at once brought in completely hopeless and helpless. And for this very reason, that he has done the things God forbids. He is "ungodly," but not only so; he is, moreover, "without strength." This is his condition naturally; and the moment there is real desire, and the endeavour, to serve God according to the law, it is found out. Supposing he desires (which I assume and grace produces it) to serve God, and not to do anything forbidden in the law, he discovers the very principle of his nature to be all wrong. There is a law in his members, warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin, which is in his members, which has selfishness for its basis, and corruption for its object. It is in himself. Hence the reason that we so often find persons crying out, "O wretched man that I am!" Moreover, when he comes to see what is in himself, it is that which brings him down into despair. It is not his past sins - he could easily suppose God might forgive them, nay, perhaps, that they are forgiven, put away, when he was first converted. The trial is not there. But when he feels the principle of those sins to be in himself - the principle that produced them there still and working in him, now that he lives and "delights in the law of God after the inner man" - it is this which casts him down. And cast down he remains until he apprehends the ministry of grace.

Now, beloved friends, you see God has given law for the prohibition of evil. And, taking it in that point of view, He gave it to man already in sin. It came in after two things, evil and the promise. It was a thing "added because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made" (v. 19), neither the original condition of man, nor the purpose of God about man. It "came in," it is said (though its elements, no doubt, are everlasting and eternal truth), "by the bye," added because of transgressions. "The law entered, that the offence might abound," Rom. 5: 20. Hence we are taught, that its object was to make plain and evident - to discover that perverseness of the will of man, which would never otherwise have been discovered - the inclination, where there is the knowledge of good, and the desire after good, to do evil; and, therefore, the hopelessness of man's case before God. Man is concluded under sin (v. 22). That is the effect of the law. It was quite clear that man delighted in sin. Natural conscience sufficed to shew there was sin and guilt. But then the law came in and was added to these, "that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God," Rom. 3: 19.

231 What is said here? "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse," v. 10. Mark the force of that expression. It is not, as many as are living in sin, neither yet, merely, as many as are have broken the law (though that is the reason of it); but "as many as are of the works of the law." How universal the statement! It is quite true that man is under "the curse of the law," because he has been the breaker of the law; but it is all who are of the works of the law who are under that curse. The law was not given to prohibit lust, until man was a wilful creature - a being in whom lust was found - until after sin had entered. I am not now speaking of the law respecting Adam's not eating the fruit, but of the law given by Moses (v. 19). Coming in at that time, it pronounced the curse upon every one "that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them." It took this ground.

And even the very notice in the scripture before us is remarkable. The apostle says, "for it is written" (v. 10), that is quoting Deuteronomy, where we find (chap. 27) that six tribes were to stand upon mount Gerizim, to bless the people; and six upon mount Ebal, to curse. But where the details are entered into, there are no tribes mentioned for blessing - the blessing is not heard at all; it is only the curse.

Again, "the law entered that the offence might abound" (not that sin might abound: God could not do anything that sin might abound), that is, that the sin already in man's nature might become positively and definitely "transgression." The law did not produce sin, but only manifested it. Let us look at what the apostle says in Romans 7, "What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law; for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained unto life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good." Again, we read in another place (I merely quote it now as regards its application to this part of the subject), "The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law," 1 Cor. 15: 56. Directly the law bent down on the conscience, it proved man to be altogether wrong. Every thought that man had was detected, and the will refusing to submit, its acts became transgression, so that sin by the commandment became "exceeding sinful." It produced moreover a great deal more lust in the heart than there was before.

232 We all know this to be the case. There is a familiar illustration of it constantly seen in our own houses. Request your children not to do a certain thing: let it be only not to look into a box (no matter what), and you find that they all long to look into it. So it is with grown-up persons, they will perversely wish for the forbidden thing, and, what is more, though they may be ashamed of it - ashamed of the expression of it before men - the inclination is so great, that, if they could but do it and not be seen, they would not be satisfied until they had. Just so with the law.

And now, beloved friends, if that is what the law is, if all who are "of the works of the law are under the curse" - is that the law for me, to have any righteousness through, in the sight of God? Never; because the law acts on a nature which is already evil, and therefore it can do nothing but lead to the righteous judgment of God against all that is brought out in and from that nature.

233 What more could God do? (it is not the subject of this chapter, but I would just advert to it) - what more than give right directions, a revelation of what He required from man? There is another thing that He has done. He sent light into the world. This is something added, as it were, to the requirements of the law. The law cursed, but here (in Christ) was life shewing light to all around, and that man hated, because it proved his deeds to be evil. It was the adaptation of light to every possible state in which man's nature could move. I am not speaking of communicating life; but take man in any condition, and he is without excuse.

Well, beloved, this is the effect of the law as revealed from God. It took up fallen man with the knowledge of good and evil, and did not touch the power he had to meet its requirements, and therefore, necessarily, it brought the curse. The apostle reasons, "If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin," v. 21, 22. Mark that word "all": it leaves out none. It might be said, If you go and take a man without the ordinances of God, and put him under the law, the effect is known: but there are helps and ordinances; put a man with them under the law, and he can get life. That was precisely Israel's case. It pleased God, in Israel, to test whether man could get the promises, if under the law with ordinances. It has been proved to the contrary. God says (Exodus 19), "Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself." It was not until He had ransomed them out of Egypt, and brought them into the wilderness as His "people," that He gave them the law - not until He had brought them unto Himself. Then He says by Moses the mediator, "Now, therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed," etc. (v. 5). And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord, "All that the Lord hath spoken we will do." The law was given on this ground. Then commenced the trial. And what was the consequence? Failure.

"The scripture hath concluded all under sin." And that is what the gospel more fully brought out. The gospel supposes it. Man, no matter what you call him - a heathen, a Jew, or a Christian, with every ordinance you please - is man, and the Lord deals to man the "curse." Man should be what man is not. And therefore that is what the law of God must do, and did. If God gives a law, can He give that law to suit sinners, or Himself? Is God to come down to give the requirements such as would suit the sinner as a sinner? - and, if so, what sinner? - where would you draw the line? - to a heathen, who is corrupt in all his thoughts? - to a Jew, who looks merely to outward things? where can I find a man to whom I might adapt the law, if it is not to be what God requires? If God gives a law to sinners, He must give the full demand of His holiness. That is what the conscience of man recognises as fitting. There can be no intercourse between God and the sinner on the ground of what God requires, without His either sanctioning or condemning sin. Sanction it He cannot; therefore, and necessarily, all He has to do is to condemn. Law can never go beyond that. No matter what man is called, God deals with man as he really is. And now, what does the apostle put here in the stead of law? "Promise." There he rests the hope of the soul. "Promise" was long before the law. All hangs upon the faithfulness of God. This is the reasoning. A mediator supposed two parties, God and man, and therefore failure, as it depends on the stability of both. Not so promise, as it depended on the stability of God only: "God is one."

234 If I make you an unconditional promise, a simple promise, to-day, I have no right to say to you on the morrow, Oh you did not do so and so, and therefore the promise is nullified. Certainly not. No! you would reply, you promised me the thing unconditionally, not if I behaved well or ill; and therefore it is mine. These "promises" were made after sin came in, but before the giving of the law. Sin came in before ever "promise" was heard of. When Adam had failed in the garden, before anything was said to Adam of the foulest sin in his mind, after he had said, "the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat" (he had not only committed sin in disobeying God's command, but he had dared to reproach God); before anything was said of that, as soon as the evil was traced up to its source, God, in pronouncing sentence on the serpent as the author of it, gave "promise." But He did not give "promise" to Adam in sin - to man in that condition (now the law was given to man in that condition), but in the last Adam. Before there was the slightest dealing on the ground of responsibility, "promise" was made in Christ, as the Second Man, the "Seed of the woman." Not a word of it was spoken to Adam personally, yet it was that on which his soul might rest, on which faith could lay hold.

235 Well, before the Second Man came, before He was revealed, the law was given to shew the effect and consequence of man's being under responsibility. "The law was added [came in by the bye] because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made." "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman [the seed came], made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons."

But there was another step, then, which was this: the promises made to Abraham and his seed (chap. 3: 17) were confirmed of God in Christ. When Isaac had been offered up (in figure) and raised (in figure), God spake and said, "By myself have I sworn, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee . . . and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed," Gen. 22. Now Isaac was not the true "seed," Christ, the true "seed," was typified by Isaac, in whose offering the promise was confirmed. "He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ," v. 16. The promises are settled on Isaac, after (in figure) he had died and risen again from the dead; and that is what the grace of God has done for us in Christ. Christ came here and lived, accomplishing in the face of Satan, all that the spiritual man could offer to God in his life. But "except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Though Christ Himself, as man, might have had the promises, yet He could not have taken up anything with us except through death and resurrection. He could not have had connection with man in the old Adam. Well, He dies, and (having accomplished the work of redemption, done everything, set aside the consequences of responsibility for man, as risen from the dead, in the power of a new and endless life - "the seed" to whom the promises were made) He takes up these promises.

As men, we were under responsibility, and, therefore, under the curse, for we had sinned. Yes, though, through grace, able to say that we are "heirs according to the promise," we had sinned. There was no difference in this respect between ourselves and any poor Jew or Gentile, we were all "by nature children of wrath, even as others," "fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind," Eph. 2: 3. The state of soul was the same. Perverseness of will was there - the determination to do our own will, and the pleasure of doing it, instead of the will of God.

236 Christ took all this upon Himself. He charged Himself with responsibility, instead of putting man under it. He underwent, to the full, the last effect of sin, as the result of the wrath of God, and of the power of Satan, as well as of the weakness of man. He bore the curse. He went down into the grave. But He was still the "holy One," and (though He might imputatively take sin) it was not possible that He could be holden of the cords of death. Therefore He rose again - head of a new family of men, a new world, a new creation - heir, according to the purposes of God, of all the promises, and heir for ever.

He has accomplished everything - all that was needed for the remission of our sins, and, besides that, broken the power of Satan under which man lay, in the very seat of that power. Through death He has "destroyed him that had the power of death," Heb. 2. Most blessed truth! Christ has put Himself into the condition of man in death, the last stronghold in which Satan held man captive, by the judgment and under the sentence of God Himself. He rose out of it, and became the source of life, and heir for us of all the promises. Grace has found its way into death, and "out of the eater" has brought forth sweetness.

If we look at death, the Prince of life has tasted death; if, at the power of Satan, Christ has broken and destroyed his power; if, at the wrath of God, He has borne it all, drunk the cup to the very dregs. "All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me." "Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves," Psalm 88: 7.

But, further, He is the righteous inheritor of all the promises; as it is said, "All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen," and we, through grace, can add, "to the glory of God by us." How then did we come in? As heirs together with Him in life - united to Him - one with Him. Our standing before God is in Christ - the Second Man, as having no more part in the flesh, though we have as yet to struggle against it. Death is abolished. Life and incorruptibility are brought to light by the gospel; and that, because the responsibility question has been settled in the death of Christ.

237 But it is "by faith." How blessed this! - how true of God! - how blessed for us! By faith we receive all the promises in Christ. By faith we find everything done. It is only to believe. Faith produces all manner of fruit in us, there is wondrous power in it, but still it is only to believe: that is all. Just as though you had been deeply in debt, and some kind friend had paid the amount, and, when that was done, had sent you word. The person comes and tells you that your debts are paid, and you believe it. Now your believing produces joy, and gladness, doubtless, in your heart, but, of course, it does not in any measure go to liquidate the debt. So as to salvation, the debt has been paid, Christ has finished the work, and the believing soul enters into all the blessed results (v. 22). Faith is exercised upon that which has been already accomplished. "It is of faith, that it might be by grace, that the promise might be sure to all the seed." Nothing redounds to the glory of the creature. It is a person simply depending upon the truth of God.

When the soul is made hopeless in itself (and this must always be the case when the conscience is really honest under the sense of responsibility), it turns to see what God is. The more the truth of God's requirements is known, the more wretched that soul becomes. The end of all is seen in that exclamation of the apostle, "O wretched man," etc. I am a man, and therefore a wretched being, one having the curse resting upon me.

God, in the gospel, sees man wicked, miserable, rebellious, lost; but He sees him according to His infinite compassions. The Lord Jesus has begun altogether a new thing, not demanding what man is required to be before God, but accomplishing what God is towards man - grace. We find in Christ, it is true, and to perfection, what man is required to be before God; but more than that, what God is towards man. Grace came by Jesus Christ. So that the moment any person, let it be a convicted sinner, stood before Christ as to what he was, he found Christ to be grace. If he came as what he was not, Christ laid him bare; but, if he came as what he was, then no matter what he was, a poor helpless sinner, a wretched adulteress, or the thief upon the cross (that was not the question - the question was, what was Christ, who came not to judge, but to save), all was grace.

238 Having found Christ, we have found one who has all the promises of God. And, since He took those promises as a consequence of what He had done in putting away sin, there can be no further question about sin before God. Our sins are necessarily left outside, because Christ Himself has borne them all; as it is said, "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." He stood in our place, and took upon Himself our iniquity, and bore the judgment due to us - went down into the grave, but rose again from the dead in the power of a new and endless life, and ascended up on high, even unto the Father's presence, as our representative. There He stands - we stand there in Him; as He is before God, so are we, holy, unblamable, and unreprovable in His sight, partakers of His life, joint-heirs with Him of all the promises.

This, beloved friends, is our position before God; this our standing in Christ. There is an entirely new headship in the second Adam. We are presented in a new character to God, such as man never had before - man without sin in the presence of God, the very pattern of God's mind and delight. We find difficulty, it may be, in apprehending it, because of the weakness of the flesh. The moment I look at myself, I have another man full of failure. But I stand there as having had sin for ever put away. The knowledge of this gives peace; and we worship. Make sin what you please, let it take what form it may, you cannot mingle the state of man under law with the condition of the new, the heavenly, man in heaven

The Lord grant us to know what we are in His love.

The Church, an Habitation of God through the Spirit

Ephesians 3

J. N. Darby.

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There are two great ideas in this epistle as regards the saints. The grand thought all through it is the grace of God towards them; but, as regards the saints, there are these two ideas about the church: firstly, its hopes; secondly, what it is now meanwhile.

It is looked at, on the one hand, as having a certain place in glory, and as enjoying the inheritance; and, on the other, there is this second point, what it is even now before it gets there. And this last gives it, in a certain sense, a higher character of communion and fellowship in blessing than is contained in the glory itself which it expects, though doubtless the other will not then cease. You will see these two things in considering the prayers of the apostle (chaps. 1 and 3).

We shall be in glory before Him, as children (that is the expression), to bring out the glory of His grace, who had predestinated us according to the good pleasure of His will - "holy and without blame before him in love." And here we have, "In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit" - before Him in glory - and God dwelling in us.

We will just consider a little, beloved friends, how it is that the church becomes thus the "habitation of God." It is of the deepest importance to us. I said that the blessings connected with this are in some respects superior to what might properly be called glory. And this is important, because we find that, even now, this blessing is brought to us. In glory we shall be able to enjoy it better, but we have it now.

At the end of chapter 1, where the apostle has been speaking concerning God's purpose about the saints, the thought is the "exceeding greatness of his power," and he prays. See v. 17-23. At the close of chapter 3 we have a prayer founded upon the other point I have spoken of. See v. 14-21. The character of this prayer is higher, and it goes farther than the former. There are two titles given to God in this epistle. In the one He is called the "God of our Lord Jesus Christ," because Christ is looked at there as the glorified Man, who has been down here, suffered, died, and been raised again. In the other He is called the "Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," because Christ is not thus looked at as the risen and glorified man, but as the Son of God.

240 Now the prayer in chapter 1 is founded upon the first of these titles (v. 17), and is connected with the glory of the risen man. In chapter 3, the apostle bows his knees unto "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named," and, therefore, he looks more at intimacy of communion, and to our being "filled to all the fulness of God." It is not God giving us knowledge of the inheritance, but God filling us with Himself.

We find these subjects, and the distinction between them, all through. In the one the Lord Jesus Christ is considered as man, whom God has raised from the dead, and there the church is looked at as "the fulness of him that filleth all in all"; in the other as the Son of the Father in the power and unity of that relationship. and so of the divine nature; this latter point being more especially connected with our being "an habitation of God through the Spirit."

There are two points in this expression, beloved friends: one, that of our being the "habitation of God"; and the other, that this is "through the Spirit." He is not speaking of our dwelling with God (although that is true), but of our being "an habitation of God." He says, "ye are builded together," etc. And this is evidently a different thing. It is a different thing, our having glory together with Him, and God's dwelling in us. This is, I repeat, evidently a most peculiar and special blessing.

God came down to talk with man (Gen. 3) - man already fallen; and "they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day." But God then had no "habitation" on earth. God's Spirit had dealt in power in various ways in the history of man; but the moment the people are called out, it is, "The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation," etc. (Exod. 15: 2.) This is the first thing we find in the song of Moses.

David had the same thought; 2 Sam. 7. He would not dwell in a house of cedar, whilst the ark of God dwelt within curtains. But the Lord answers him and says, "I have not dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle." "But Solomon built him a house." Having settled His people in the land, the "habitation of God" was built - a carnal worldly temple, but it was the "habitation of God." And then, when the Lord Jesus came into the world, this truth applied properly to His Person. He says, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." He is regarded as the temple of God. Therefore God was then dwelling (in Him) with man, in the midst of the sorrow and evil into which man had fallen. Well, here it is the church (v. 22).

241 Beloved friends, it is touching to see the place which God takes (referring to the passage I have quoted about David's thought of building a house), according to the state of His people. God always takes the place that suits His people: a marvellous thought, but a most gracious one on His part! If His people are enslaved under burdens as in Egypt, He becomes their redeemer. If they are a journeying people and in tents, He dwells there Himself. He takes the same place as His people, for He is to be the centre of their blessing, and leads them by the cloud. This He did up to Solomon's time. When Joshua comes in and has to fight with the Canaanites, He presents Himself as "captain of the Lord's host," Josh. 5. When the people are settled (settled as far as they could be in their fleshly condition) under Solomon in fulness of peace and in blessing, God builds a settled house. And God dwells among them. Whatever the circumstances His people are in, God takes a place suited to them.

The place that God takes to dwell in now (until His people come into the rest) is, properly speaking, a tent or tabernacle. It is surely just as blessed, but, so to speak, more movable. In glory it will not be so. While we are on our journey, it is a tabernacle, not a temple, but still God dwells among men. His own grace has built "an habitation" for Himself. I am speaking, let us remember, not at all of that place of glory into which we are to come before God, but of that other thing, that God will come and dwell down here upon the earth.

When Jesus was in the world, God's presence was there. And it was that which was the centre of all blessing. They gathered around Him. Well now, it is the same thing with regard to the church; God dwells upon the earth in the church, as a "habitation," though not visibly, not in manifested glory. And this comes to be of the last possible importance. If it is really true, that God dwells on the earth in a "habitation," evidently the "habitation" wherein He dwells must be of the greatest importance. And this remains always true. Failure though there may be, still the church is His dwelling place. Until Christ came, or, at any rate, until Lo-ammi was pronounced upon Israel at the Babylonish captivity, God dwelt there, and the blessing of the people and the guilt of the people were in respect of God's dwelling. If it was a question of idolatry, "they have set (He says) their altars by my altar." So when He is going to judge the people in Ezekiel, He goes on, and shews the prophet what they were doing in the temple. It might be the ancients of the house of Israel in the chambers of imagery; or women weeping for Tammuz or the men at the door of the temple of the Lord between the porch and the altar, with their backs towards the temple of the Lord, and their faces towards the east, worshipping the sun; but it was in the temple. This was the place to which sin referred itself. Having stated this general truth, I would now just see here how this "habitation" is brought about.

242 All the first chapter of the epistle, as also the beginning of the second, is taken up with the other point of which I spoke, that is, that God has raised up Christ from the dead; as it is said, "according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when," etc. God is here in power stepping in (not merely a judge having satisfaction, but in His own power stepping in for the accomplishment of His purposes) to deal with man looked at as under the consequences of sin. It is not only man in evil that is looked at in this epistle responsible to God, and having to find that which meets his state in the cross (we see that in Hebrews, and elsewhere, it is not specially treated of here), but it is God acting in His own power (when man was on this ground - in utter ruin) for the deliverance of man. Christ takes this place. He descends into the lower parts of the earth, making Himself responsible for the consequences of sin. He descends into the whole consequences of sin - He comes down from the throne of God in the perfectness of divine love, humbles Himself, takes upon Him, and comes down into, the consequences of sin where man had brought himself.

Marvellous and blessed truth! Where we were looked at as sinners, "dead in trespasses and sins," Christ has come down - and put Himself there. Alas! the judgment of those who reject Christ! they will find the full consequences of sin in themselves. But that is where faith first sees the full consequence of sin - in Christ. Sin was fully matured (man had behaved lawlessly without law - the law had been broken - Christ slighted and rejected); and He then enters into this place, and goes under the full power of the consequences of sin We see Him brought down into the weakness of man under the power of death - Satan's power (though He could not be holden of it), and under the wrath of God, into "the dust of death."

243 All that which the heart of Christ felt and suffered is told out wonderfully in the Psalms: whether it be from the hiding of God's countenance, or from His enemies surrounding Him, or from Satan's power, or from God's waves and billows going over Him, all is freely expressed there. Occasionally we find this breaking forth in the gospels, but it is more especially given in the Psalms. What the gospels present to us, generally speaking, is the perfect walk of Christ - of Him, who, by virtue of His living by the Father, and His perfect obedience and love, was always towards man, what man needed in order to approach God; man could see all that, while His thoughts about that which pressed upon Him were hidden within His own heart. "I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!" Constantly His soul was straitened, whilst, if you look at Him among men, they were not straitened in Him; all was grace and love still. He shewed forth the great principle of the offering up of Himself as man to God. He had power to take that place, and He took it. Though without sin, He suffered all the consequences of sin, even to "the dust of death"; He went down into it. But there He could not remain.

Having thus perfectly glorified God, it then became a question what God should do for Him. And we read, "He raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places," etc. "He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things." Having descended, in the perfectness of love and obedience, to the dust of death, He went thence back to the throne of God and is set above all. And thus, whatever exercise of heart there may be, or whatever the evil and rebellion of unconverted man, faith knows perfectly that from the throne of God down to the uttermost consequences of sin, and from the uttermost consequences of sin up to the throne of God, Christ fills all things. There is not one thing to the eye of faith, from the throne of God to the dust of death, and from that up to the highest point of glory, that is not filled with the redemption power of Christ. The love of God has come down into the place of the sin and ruin of man; and faith rests in that love, and in the full accomplishment of redemption, as shewn out in that He who went down into the dust of death is now at the right hand of the throne of God. "He that descended," etc. Woe be to those who reject this! but that is what faith knows about the work of Christ. He has gone down into the dust of death, and the "exceeding greatness" of God's power has raised him from the dead; chap. 1: 19, 20.

244 That is the redemption power of God. The results, it is true, will be brought out afterwards; God is waiting, and souls are being gathered unto Christ; but that is the redemption in the power of which we stand.

Well, now, the consequence of that is seen in the second chapter: "You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins"; and then too (because God has done it for us in Christ), He "hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." The great result of this salvation will be our being with Christ in the glory by and by; but even now, by faith, we can see ourselves "in Christ Jesus" (not "with" Him, as has been observed) there. I know that the redemption power which has visited me touched me, and has taken me up, when I was "dead in trespasses and sins." I know that this has not stopped short of the throne of God itself. It has united me to Him who is at the right hand of God, and has therefore placed me there "in" Him, as having the same life, the same righteousness (God's righteousness now), and hereafter the same joy, and the same glory.

This would have been true if there were but one saint. But there is a further thing. The apostle goes on to shew that, looked at according to the largeness of the purpose of God, Jew and Gentile (whatever the distinction between them, and that of God, "in the flesh") were on one broad platform of ruin - "among whom we all had our conversation in times past, in the lusts of our flesh," etc. Having taken that ground, he says, "remember" where you are - "He is our peace," etc. (See v. 11-17.) "Peace" having been made, the dealings of God with man down here on the ground of redemption are begun. Christ sat down on the throne of God, having completed the work - the peace being made - redemption accomplished. He could not go farther than the throne of God. He has carried the "wave-sheaf," the first-fruits of redemption-power in His own Person up to the throne of God.

245 Well, on this the "peace" that is "preached" is based. And here I would just for a moment (supposing there may be some here who have not peace) notice how it is that He preaches peace. He does not come and say to man, You have to make your peace with God. He preaches peace. He does not preach a peace to be made - a peace that is not made. He preaches peace, a made peace. He has "made peace through the blood of his cross," having sat down at the right hand of God, the whole work being accomplished, so that He is "expecting until his enemies are made his footstool," Heb. 10. He comes to Jew and Gentile, no matter to whom, and preaches peace - not a progressive work, but a peace completely made. The soul may be a long while struggling under the sense of unanswered responsibility, it may ding to the law, it may mistake the work of the Spirit for the work of Christ, be looking for results in itself (we naturally look to our own righteousness, and even the saints often mistake holiness for the ground of peace), and the like: all that may take place in the soul, but it does not at all touch the perfectness of the work of Christ, or alter the strain of what Christ preaches as being at the right hand of God. Blessed thought! It is simple enough, and there is nothing more suitable. For, as we shall see (without the thought of holiness having anything to do with the ground of peace), holiness flows forth as the consequence of peace. Wherever there is simplicity of faith, there is peace. That is the first point - perfect peace, independent of anything in ourselves. No matter what we were, Jew or Gentile, sinners or honourable in the earth, it is a peace that has been brought to us in Christ. The next thing (and that as a consequence) is, that "through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father," v. 18.

"Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners," etc. (v. 19-22). Christ, having wrought this redemption, having ascended to God, having sat down at the right hand of God, having gathered us together, makes us, thus gathered together, "an habitation of God through the Spirit." It is not God merely acting in certain men; it is God dwelling in the church down here, as gathered through the word of the gospel. The church is the place of God's presence on the earth. He has set us in redemption, and He comes and dwells in us. When the church was gathered together with one accord in one place, at Pentecost, the Holy Ghost came down and dwelt there, the result of the accomplished work of Jesus. And this is a real thing. I am not speaking now merely of gifts, but of the presence of God Himself.

246 Now it is quite clear that the presence of God down here must be of the last importance. His "habitation" is that which He possesses, which belongs to Him, and nothing that does not recognise the fulness of this blessed cost of salvation, can be. It is those who are His redeemed ones, brought together by the peace which Christ preaches, those who have, through Christ, access by one Spirit unto the Father, that come to be the place where God dwells.

There are many places in which the Spirit of God could act. We find the expression, "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards him," 2 Chron. 16: 9. If we turn to certain dealings of God as assuring the work He established by His Spirit, for instance the laying the foundation of the temple by Zerubbabel (Zech. 3, 4), we there find mention of these "eyes of the Lord." So in Ezekiel's throne (chap. 1: 18; chap. 10: 12), the operations of God in His governing power in the world. See, too, Revelation 5: 6. All this is the activity of energy of the Spirit of God. It might act in glorious power, or it might act in silent energy, but in all it is the activity of energy of the Spirit of God going out and dealing in the world, and is quite another thing. I am not speaking of that. We are "an habitation of God through the Spirit," in grace to us: it may be a tabernacle, but still it is "an habitation of God" - the place where He dwells, where He lives, so to speak, where He has taken up His abode, where He can have around Him the things that suit His presence, that in which He delights. Beloved friends, this is what we are; we may have dishonoured it, but that is just what we are made, and in this world - the place where God dwells.

Now to take a simple example of the effect of this (I said a simple example, and yet it is a very important one), let us look at the case of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5). That was not a question of gift. Peter said, "Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?" God was there; there was no gift exercised at all; and Ananias and Sapphira fell down dead. They had had the folly and madness not to understand that God was there, and therefore, when they came and brought only part of the price of the possession, lying to God (it was not to Peter and John they were lying), God shewed the indignation of His presence, and they fell down dead. There was wonderful effect in this: we read, "And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things," etc. The fact was known that God did "in very deed (as Solomon speaks at the dedication of the temple) dwell with men." It was the real presence of God - the church was there, having God dwelling in it, and acting in it, by the Holy Ghost - and He proved it; His presence sanctified the place.

247 Well now, beloved friends, that is always and constantly true. As I have said, we may have grieved the Spirit, dishonoured the house, and been unfaithful (that alas! is also too true), but it depends upon the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. What is the consequence of redemption? It is not merely that I have peace individually, nor yet that we are heirs together of glory, nor yet that we have access through Christ by the Spirit to the Father; besides all this, it is the ground on which God dwells down here. It is in virtue of the accomplishment of redemption by the Lord Jesus Christ that God can come down here, and make His "habitation," that He can comfort and strengthen those who are within (not merely act in providential power without), that He can be at home in the midst of His people. This, His being at home in the midst of His people, practically sanctifies us; it involves great responsibility: His house should be according to His holiness. "Holiness becometh thy house for ever." But, at the same time, it becomes the source of our power and blessing.

Suppose, for a moment, God was here, and we were all His saints (the Lord grant it may be so!) and all the saints of God that are in the world were here (which is not the case, God forbid that it should be!) is it not quite evident that the eye, the ear, all would refer to that, that every movement would be consequent upon God's being there, the presence of God governing and stamping its character on the whole? Again, if that were the case, supposing we could say that God was there, and all the enemies in the world were raging about us, beloved, would not the one thought be, that God was there, and that it was God's concern? He would be the strength, the help, the confidence of the soul. Yes, and that was so beautifully shewn when the Jews came back to Jerusalem, and were in fear of their enemies. The first thing they built was - what? - a high wall? No, they built an altar. God was their confidence and strength.

248 Well, we are "builded together for an habitation of God." And see what a blessed truth is connected with this. On what ground could God come into our midst and dwell with us? It is not on any uncertain ground. It is upon the ground of God's perfect and entire complacency in the church - His perfect delight. It is not God's coming down to call us, as He did Adam after the fall, in order to find out that he was lost. Neither is it God's coming down, as He did to Sodom and Gomorrah, to see whether the cry that has gone up is such as it seems to be. Neither is it God's coming down, as He did to Israel, to put to the test whether He can stay. He comes down on the ground, and in consequence of, completed redemption - of peace being perfectly made. His presence is the witness and evidence of accomplished redemption. He says, as it were, I have so accomplished this redemption, I am so pleased with you, so satisfied because of Jesus, that I am come to dwell with you, to make My abode with you: you are to be My "habitation." What a character does this give to the church! What manner of men ought we to be?

But then there is another thing. If we are the "habitation of God through the Spirit," the consequence is, not merely the favour of God, but all the consequences of this favour. The Holy Ghost comes down as the witness and testimony of the fulness of the Father's delight in Christ and of our joy in Him. "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come," etc. (John 16: 13-15). He ministers (I am not now talking of the instruments) to us these things. He has all "the goods (as it is expressed of Eliezer, Gen. 24) in his hand," to minister the comfort and strength of what belongs to us as the bride of Christ, the true Isaac, unto whom the Father hath given all that He hath. And that is the case in the midst of infinite difficulty and trials (in that sense more blessed than if there were none). This is one of the present special blessings of redemption, one that we shall not know or want in glory; we shall have the full result of redemption there. But it is not merely to be brought into glory, to be at home in perfect peace in the presence of God and with God. Redemption is so perfect, that, before we get into glory, God by His Spirit can come and dwell with us here, in the midst of our weakness, and because of our need.

249 As the apostle speaks in the Philippians, "What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ." Paul was tried, persecuted, taken as a prisoner to Rome, and they were going on preaching Christ of envy and strife, supposing to add affliction to his bonds, etc. Well, all this, he says, will "turn to my salvation," etc. His soul thus being fed and nourished by the Spirit, everything in which he found trial and exercise of heart became but the means really of working out of him that which was contrary to God, in order that his sympathy might have free course, and his soul joy only in Christ.

Again, beloved friends, in speaking of the sympathy of the Spirit of God with the saints, and in the saints amidst a groaning creation (Rom. 8), he says, "Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities," etc. (v. 26). Here I find the Holy Ghost taking notice of certain trials, sorrows, weaknesses, difficulties, and the like, of everything, in short, that can press upon the heart of the saint, and that even when it "cannot be uttered," and "groaning" is its only expression. It is the groaning of the Spirit of God in such a poor feeble heart, that it does not know how to express it. But it is said, "And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth," etc. (v. 27). That is what He has found there - "the mind of the Spirit." It is not merely that human feelings are brought out, but that the things (the very trials and sorrows) that would have produced human feelings, have now produced, if I may so say, divine feelings - feelings "according to God," which go up to God, and which God can answer; so that they become the means by which He pours into the heart all the fulness of His consolation, not perhaps taking them away, but shewing that He Himself is the sufficient blessing of the soul, because He dwells with it, and makes Himself the portion of it. Now if we look at the way in which this meets us where we are, and what we are, this is how it works. He comes down into all our circumstances, and, for a poor trifle of affliction, I get to find (not the thing set aside, but) God Himself taking the place of our sorrow.

250 In the prayer in chapter 3 the apostle loses himself, as it were, and no wonder. After he has said, "I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," he adds, "that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love [that is what God is - the divine nature], may be able to comprehend with all saints [taking in the whole unity in which the Holy Ghost dwells], what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height" - he has now got into the infinitude of all God's thoughts and purposes of blessing, and he cannot say of what. Just as the groanings could not be uttered, so the thought cannot be uttered. It is God that has come in, and Christ fills all things according to the power of redemption, from the throne of God, down to the dust of death, and from the dust of death up to the throne of God. Having all things, and filling all things (he says), here I am placed, in the midst of this infinitude. And then he adds, "and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge." He could go to no place, but there he found infinite love and infinite power - the love that brought Christ down, and the power that took Christ up again.

This meets all the exercises of the heart. If brought down, even (as Christ came down) into the dust of death, the Holy Ghost comes down to the poor man, who feels this power of death in his soul, and dwells in him, and carries him up, by the knowledge of redemption, into all the fulness of God Himself.

Well, that, beloved, is the result of the dwelling of the Holy Ghost down here, consequent upon redemption accomplished by Christ. The Holy Ghost can come and bring peace to our souls, and the effect of that peace to our souls is to make us pass through all the evil around "according to the power of God." When the apostle speaks to Timothy, he says, "Be thou a partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God."

251 Where shall we stop? The soul rejoices in that which must be the joy and gladness of the heart which knows God has come down to dwell in it, the immutable blessedness of God's presence. Then, whatever the circumstances in which we are placed, if they be only those of sorrow and trial, what is the consequence? God ministers of the fulness of the sympathy of His love to our souls; and thus they become, so to speak, as a door, or a chink, to let in God. All the riches, "the unsearchable riches of Christ," are ours. And Christ fills everything. There is not anything we can think of, but we find there of the fulness of Christ. If we think of death, we see Christ there - of sin, we do not know what sin is fully until we see Christ "made sin" - of God, it is only in Christ we can know God - of man, it is only in Christ we can see man raised to the height of his blessing - of peace, it is through Christ we know the peace of God - of life, Christ is our life - of glory, it is all in Christ. There is not anything, no matter what we think of, whether in creation, or above it, or between God and man, but we must think of Christ in it all. He is the "head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." We can turn our thoughts to no one thing in which we do not find the fulness of Christ; and by the power of the Holy Ghost our souls are brought into the joy of this fulness, as that to which we are, through living union with Him, everlastingly and perfectly united.

There is another point which I have not touched upon, the practical effect of this. What would the effect be on our souls, if we really felt we were "builded together" etc.? if we felt that, in the whole world, Christians were in truth the dwelling-place of God? What a thought should we have to act upon as to everything! That by which the church of God has been corrupted, ordinances and the like, would disappear as clouds before the presence of the sun. And what thoughts of glory should we have - what thoughts of holiness - what peace as to practical circumstances - what jealousy of grieving the Holy Ghost - what love toward all saints - what joy - what confidence! How we should (not in pride, but in the sense that God was there) mock at all our enemies (Isaiah 37: 22, 23) - how live and act among men, as "sons" and "heirs" of God! What power for everything, in short, would be ours, if we remembered the completeness, the peace-giving completeness, of redemption, and could really say, that God was dwelling with us!

252 This is our portion; and whatever our weakness and infirmity (and alas! it is very great), whatever our failure, still it remains true. We may grieve the Spirit, we may weaken the consciousness of our joy, but still God is with us. The Holy Spirit dwells among us.

May the Lord give us to know and to own what this presence of God in the earth, and that with men, is by reason of the redemption which is in Christ Jesus!

Carnal Confidence, and the Confidence of Faith

Numbers 17; and 18: 1

J. N. Darby.

<12026E> 253

"Behold, we die, we perish, we all perish. Whosoever cometh anything near unto the tabernacle of the Lord shall die: shall we be consumed with dying? "When the children of Israel cried thus unto Moses, the feeling they expressed was not exactly dread of an unknown God - that which the sinner has naturally on his conscience when first awakened, but a dread resulting from haughtiness of spirit, the flesh having intruded itself into the presence of God. And this is what is constantly found where there has been a high bearing before God. The consequence of God shewing Himself to one in this state of soul is to cast him down into despair. The fear of the natural conscience when first awakened, on the other hand, though painful, most painful, is still salutary.

When there has been a going on altogether without God, I do not call this a high bearing before God, though it is so in another sense. We all know how many people go on carelessly, day after day, and year after year, without troubling themselves about God, seeking joy and pleasure in the world, sunk in listlessness, oppressed with cares, or engrossed with business: a thousand things fill and occupy the natural heart to the exclusion of God. Sometimes it does cross the conscience that there is a God, but, so far from His being the object of their life, He is not their object at all - "God is not in all their thoughts." There may be these secret misgivings (God often works thus in the hearts of those whom He afterwards calls to Himself, although not producing fruit through it at the time); and, when the soul is converted, the remembrance of such appeals aids in bringing to a consciousness of the total and entire perverseness of the will of man. Where there is open and notorious sin, it is an easier thing to reach the conscience, just as the Lord said to the Pharisees, the religious people of the day, "The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." Often, in the course of a comparatively blameless life, there have been these calls, and God, in the riches of His goodness and forbearance and long-suffering, has been despised.

254 When conviction of sin comes, when the Spirit of God sets a man in consequence in God's presence, he finds out both; what he has been doing, and what he is. He finds out that he has been treasuring up unto himself "wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God"; and more than this, he finds out also that his natural condition is a condition of sin and rebellion against God, and that he cannot remedy it. Now, whilst this state of soul is ever painful (and it often drives a man nearly to despair), it is salutary, a blessed thing. Wherever there is a clear sense of our position, there is to desire to go to God, though with the consciousness of having no title to be there. Just as with the poor prodigal - "I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." So also with Peter, at the feet of Jesus - "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" There is this consciousness of unworthiness before God because of having recognised His holiness, and that He ought to be holy; but there is also the desire to go to Him - a seeming inconsistency, but that which is really of the Spirit of God. It is very natural, where the Spirit works, to desire to go to God, because we feel He is needed by us, although conscience says we are unfit to be there. The heart is turned to God; it sees His holiness, sees that He ought to be holy, and so takes God's part against itself. There is no desire that He should be less holy, that it might, so to speak, slip into heaven; and therefore it justifies God, instead of seeking to condemn Him that it may justify itself - that which many a poor sinner does, that which Adam did when he said, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat." Instead of justifying self, there is the justifying God and condemning self. Thus the heart is set right. It has not yet, it is true, learned redemption - what God has done for it in Christ; it is occupied with its state before God as a present thing, but this is salutary. There is not the peace that God does give and will give; still the heart is set right.

In grace God had raised up priesthood to meet the need of His people. But there was assumption on the part of these Israelites, that, because they were His people, they could take a place before Him otherwise than on His ground. They had abused the privileges conferred upon them - murmured against God - made the golden calf - said it was better to go back to Egypt - despised the promises; there had been a long course of failure and rebellion, and at last it rises up to what is called the "gainsaying of Core." Whilst in this fleshly state, they assume that they can draw nigh to God. "And they gathered themselves together against Moses, and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them; wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord?" (See chap. 16). Here is haughtiness in the presence of God. And this is very apt to creep into our hearts - a taking up in the flesh the privileges of the children of God. It may not be manifested in the gross aspect of this scene; but is there not often the feeling of being able to come near to God because it is our privilege to do so? Now it is clearly our privilege, the privilege of all saints; but it is a sad thing if as a consequence of that nearness, when the soul has got out of His presence, it goes on haughtily and carelessly, still talking about its nearness.

255 We find another instance of haughtiness in the presence of God, in the case of Cain (Gen. 4). When God said to Cain, "Where is Abel thy brother?" he replied, "I know not: am I my brother's keeper?" answering God flippantly. But the moment God shewed Himself as God, saying, "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground, and now art thou cursed from the earth," in came despair. Wherever there is haughtiness of heart before God, and God shews Himself, there is despair; the language of the heart is, "Behold, we die, we perish, we all perish." We get here a great principle: even in the man who is a Christian, there is no realised ground of confidence, and the heart sinks down in despair.

A Christian has always the ground of being perfectly happy before God, because he is perfectly saved. This is the right state of a Christian - that of confidence, not in the flesh (carnal confidence), but confidence and joy before God. A state of want of confidence and of uncertainty as regards himself is a state in which the Christian may be found; he may pass through it, and that even because of a certain work produced on the soul by the Holy Ghost, but it is not his proper state. What the Holy Ghost gives is certainty. Wherever there is uncertainty, it results from the working of our own hearts, even though in connection with (and, in a sense, grounded upon) what is really the work of the Spirit. I may believe that God is holy, and seeing sin in myself, may begin to reason on my own worthiness, as to whether I can, or cannot, come to God; whether I can have anything to say to God. There may be the desire to go to Him, but then I do not know whether He will accept me. This is not faith; and yet it is constantly the state of soul in which Christians are found. It is not properly a Christian state; it is reasoning upon things known by faith, things found out through faith, but it is not faith. We find in the word of God, that the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin - that by the blood of the cross He has made peace - that our sins and iniquities are remembered no more - and, if faith is in exercise, we are happy, we get peace. Faith is the simple-hearted reception of what God has said.

256 Unbelief is not a Christian state. It is, alas! that into which the Christian may fall, but it is not a Christian state. Uncertainty cannot be therefore recognised as a proper position of the soul, admitting that it may pass through it, and indeed, that it generally does. But then Christian certainty is certainty in, and not out of, God's presence. Inasmuch as it is certainty founded on faith in what He has said, it is always certainty in His presence. Faith is at rest there. All else that comforts, strengthens, gives us liberty in what we do in the world, is based on what we are in the presence of God. The blood is placed there - on the mercy-seat - in God's sight; and therefore, because we know this, we can say that we are justified from all things, that it is impossible God can impute sin to us. The blood is under His eye, and not our sins.

But there is quite a different state of soul from this, a confidence out of God's presence. The soul may think and reason about the ground of Christian confidence, and Christian privilege, just as did these Israelites that they were owned of God. Theirs was a carnal confidence. It was just the taking up of general principles of truth as to God's dealings with His people, and then going on in fleshly assumption. This brought them to murmur and rebel. They came up with confidence that the Lord was with them; but the Lord gave directions respecting Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and interfered in judgment upon their ungodliness. And then we read, "But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses, and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the Lord," (v. 41).

257 Now what is the remedy of the Lord for this? He sets up priesthood, as the only ground on which He can go on with them. He says, as it were, 'I must have clear and plain evidence what My power is, in order to make cease from Me the murmurings of the children of Israel; but then, if I give this evidence of My power, it must be in grace; to deal with them on any other ground than that of grace would be for destruction.' And such must always be the case. If the Lord were simply to come by the power of His actual presence, it would bring confusion into the soul. Sometimes we see this on a death-bed for a little moment. In what the Lord thus does in bringing the soul into His presence, He puts it under a shade of the power of that which Christ went through - just a shade of it.

The truth is, that, in the way in which many believers are occupied in daily life, they little realise the presence of God. It is not that they have not peace, but that they never fully estimate what the flesh is before God. One learns this from intercourse with Christians, and specially with those who have been long Christians. They know very little what it is to find themselves face to face with God. They may have been awakened under convictions of sin (perhaps terrible convictions), and have got peace to their souls; but since that there may have been the going on comfortably with certain things, without a realising of the presence of God, so that if it were to come on them, they too would be "consumed" with terror. It is well for us to remember that certainty as to salvation is the proper, the normal state of a Christian. I repeat this here, just to shew that what I am now saying is not meant to deny it at all; but still I say that if God were to meet such persons, real Christians though they were, in the present power of what He is as God, it would produce trouble and distress. This ought not so to be. It is quite clear that, if it is the case, we are not really living in His presence, and that is the place where we are privileged to be. There is a constant tendency in our hearts, when out of it, to be taken up with certain things that are grounded upon what is truly our relationship to God, and to carry on these things without realising His presence. Now, if confidence goes along with this, it is a most hardening thing. Confidence, I repeat, ought always to be the portion of the believer - the confidence of faith. God does not withdraw this, but we may lose it. Whilst there is a going on with confidence, and we are not walking in the presence of God, the conscience not being sincere, there exists that which is mining the very foundation. We may go on in joy, but if that joy is not joy in the presence of God, there will be a breakdown some time.

258 Now that is what I mean by "carnal confidence" - not the confidence of an unconverted person: there is that, but I do not mean it: I mean the confidence of one whose peace and hopes are rightly based, but maintained without walking in the presence of God. It is a right peace, right hopes, a thing rightly founded, that which is really his own (the proper condition of a Christian is always to have it); but still it assumes a carnal character in the heart when it is carried on without God; that is, when it is not continued in by walking in His presence. The consequence is, that the moment the Lord appears, no matter in what way, let it even be in grace, His presence comes to be terrible. These people had not realised the power of it in God's presence, and therefore they broke down in despair, and said, "Behold, we die, we perish, we all perish."

Now I do not say that it will come to this point in our hearts, but (the same thing in principle) it will be for discouragement, for loss of confidence, and for distrust of God. Suppose you, a real Christian, had been going on in carelessness, and carrying this carnal confidence along with it; and one were to speak to you even of the intercession of Jesus, if there was a sense of God's presence through this to your soul, it would not be a cheering and strengthening but rather a discouraging thing, and the soul would break down. Our place with the Lord is to walk with joy, but it is joy in the Lord. Enoch "walked with God." Can you say you are walking with God? I do not ask if you are doing that which is openly wrong; but would the presence of God alarm and distress you? Our confidence, if we have any, is a fleshly thing, when that is the case.

Do not rest in such a condition: it is not what God has called us to. He is all grace, grace to us according to our need; but it is with Him, and in His presence, that we find and enjoy His grace. Moses sang (Exod. 15: 13), "Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed. Thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation." And that is what He has done for us. He has brought us home to Himself. And what then? He has put His Spirit into our hearts, that it may be our home. You know what it is to be at home: we act so differently there - no other place is like it. We are at home when the Spirit is working in our hearts, giving the joy of our portion in the presence of God. We may have to go forth into the world to labour, to exercise ourselves, and to be engaged in a thousand different ways; but when we get back again, how great the change! We only go out to come back. There we are at home. How comforting, how establishing the thought! It is a terrible thing to be saying, instead of this, "Behold, we die, we perish, we all perish; whosoever cometh anything near unto the tabernacle of the Lord shall die" - when God's presence, in the place of being the home of our hearts, is terror and distress. I have no doubt, that you will find hundreds of Christians, who, instead of feeling away from home when they have got out of God's presence, are at ease. But it is, I repeat, a terrible thing, not merely because it is a wrong thing, but because God is grace. We are called to be "at home" with God. The Lord Jesus Christ, when about to go back to heaven, said to Mary, "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God and your God." We ought to be as much "at home" in spirit there as He. Was it not with joy, with confidence, that Jesus said He was going to the presence of His Father? He came forth from God's presence to act in love in the midst of this ruined world, and He went back when He had finished the work that had been given Him to do. And was it not, in a certain sense, with the feeling of going home? But He says, "unto my Father and your Father; to my God and your God." What a blessed thought! That is the church's place; we are called to be "at home" with our God and our Father - to the blessedness of His house. No matter what the world may be, we should be there at home - happy home! - as truly there in spirit, and as happy there, as Christ.

259 If that is what is given us in Christ (and God gives nothing less), do our souls realise it? We may be measuring fitness, but God cannot measure fitness. If He receive at all, it is for Christ's sake; our title is based upon what Christ has done. We may be going through many an experience; but God does not rest on our experience. Nay, He has not to do, in that sense, without experience at all. If He receive us, it is for Christ's sake, it is as Christ, it is all Christ. It can be nothing less, and nothing short of that. Having adverted to this, let us now turn to God's answer.

260 After all the murmurings of the people, after the rebellion and gainsaying of Korah, this is the manner in which the Lord takes away the murmurings, by priesthood in grace. 'I must conduct them' (He says) 'by Aaron's rod (not by the rod of Moses) to Canaan. This people have not only been found in bondage in Egypt, but in rebellion and sin in the wilderness; and therefore the only way in which I can deal with them is by priesthood.' There is no possible hope of leading us up into the heavenly Canaan except we are put under the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ; and therefore it is said that Christ is a "Son over his own house."

It is "his house"; that is the first thing. How does He deal with it? Suppose we find a house that is not ours to be a bad, dirty house, we may bear with it - not so if it is our own house. The way that Christ deals with that which is His house (it is His interest, so to speak, to do so) is to have it clean. We are put under the priesthood of Christ; this is God's arrangement for the purpose of dealing with sin in the "house." "If any man sin," a Christian man: what then? He is guilty and gets condemned? No such thing. That would be the reasoning of the heart where there had been "carnal confidence"; it would get alarmed and uneasy, and say, "We die, we perish," but what is the truth? "We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." The sin sets Christ to work; that is the effect of it, not to leave it there (of that we are quite sure), but on the same principle that, if we find uncleanness in our house, it would not make us reject the house but get rid of the uncleanness, so Christ is occupied in love in removing the sin. It is the priesthood of Christ that leads us up into the heavenly city.

But the next thing to be noticed is, we are priests in God's house, and the thing therefore which we have to bear is the iniquity of the house. "And the Lord said unto Aaron, Thou, and thy sons, and thy father's house with thee, shall bear the iniquity of the sanctuary; and thou and thy sons with thee shall bear the iniquity of your priesthood." This is true of all the church. We are God's sanctuary - "the house of God" (1 Tim. 3: 15). So of the individual saint, "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" (1 Cor. 6: 19). It was not allowed to have anything defiled in the camp, much less in the "sanctuary." We are brought now to dwell in the sanctuary of God - to minister in the priesthood of God. This involves responsibility. Thus have we to judge about sin; and not as though we were under law. This is where God has brought us - the position in which we stand towards God, and what we have to bear. It is no matter of attainment or of maturity in Christ: you may have been converted yesterday, or you may be a "father" in Christ, and therefore able to understand it better; but that does not affect the question: there might have been a young priest or an old priest in the sanctuary, but the young priest would have to bear the iniquity of the sanctuary and of the priesthood, as much as the old one - as much as Aaron himself.

261 God, in the riches of His grace, has made us His "sanctuary;" our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost; we are priests in His house; and iniquity must therefore be judged accordingly. If the sense of this does not produce joy in our hearts, we cannot be on our right ground. If we do not know what it is to be in the sanctuary of God, we do not know what it is to be a Christian. I do not say we are not Christians, but we do not know what it is to be a Christian. If we do not know what it is to be priests unto God, we have never yet got into our proper place before God.

There is another remark. Suppose we have, through grace, the consciousness of being priests, I ask, Is there not, as a necessary consequence of this (not the feeling, "Behold, we die, we perish," but that which takes the place of it), holy confidence, confidence before God? He says, I will not deal with those who come into my house as a judge, as though they were under law; it is "you and your sons," etc. If God has people in His house, He will have them there as priests. If we are saying, "Behold, we die, we perish, we all perish: whosoever cometh anything near unto the tabernacle of the Lord shall die," we have got back under law. We are listening to the reasoning of our own hearts, and that is not faith. The moment we begin to reason thus, we are under law; faith is not in exercise, and therefore we must be under law. This "Behold, we die, we perish, we all perish: whosoever cometh anything near unto the tabernacle of the Lord shall die" - is all law. Now what is the Lord's word, or rather what is the silence of His word about it? It does not know such a man as the one who is saying this: his doing so is just a proof that he is not a "priest" at all. He does not know what righteousness is, in coming into the presence of God; he does not know what grace is; he will neither come into the house, nor perish - he is not in a condition to do either.

262 If the Spirit of God is working in the heart, He produces a sense of dread in bringing out of that condition: but if we then distrust God, we shall never get into His presence on that ground. There is no answer to us, except that we are in a wrong and untrue condition altogether. God may bring us out of it, but He does not own us in it. Let us remember that it was "carnal confidence" that had produced, as we have seen, the feeling here; and it may be that the same thing is working in our hearts. Where there is "carnal confidence," it takes us from under the consciousness of grace, and puts us for the time under the power of law. Nothing meets us there, nothing can meet the case, no, not even the intercession of Christ.

To conclude: we are brought, through wondrous grace, into the sanctuary of God, we are made priests unto God; and that is the way in which we are to judge of good and evil. We are always to judge of good or evil, according to the condition in which a man is; we do not expect our servants to be sons; neither our sons to be servants. And if we are merely judging of good and of evil according to natural conscience, we are not going on Christian ground at all. This is the question we have to ask ourselves: What is it that becomes a man who is God's temple? what is it that becomes a man who is God's priest?

Do we shrink from being set in this responsibility? If we cannot say that we like to be there, or that we have such an interest in God's glory that we desire it, if we are speaking about our weakness, we have not the confidence of grace; we are saying in a little degree, "Behold, we die, we perish." It is the same thing in principle: I speak not of the extent of it. Why is it that we are thus afraid? Just because our hearts are not strong in the full and simple confidence of grace - present grace: as it is said, "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand." Though Christ has died and put away our sin, yet we have not full confidence in God's grace, we think He is not all grace; that is what is meant by the "present grace." God loves us with the most perfect love; He cannot deal with us on any other ground; He loves us at this moment, just as much as when He gave Christ to die for our sins. He is love, and nothing else, to us. He is not double-hearted. What we are standing in is grace. When the soul is confident of that, 'O now' (it says) 'let me have this holiness, let me enjoy this holiness of the sanctuary.' If it is all grace, it does not say "we die, we perish." How can we die, where all is grace?

263 What we want is the full blessed, clear apprehension that we stand in grace. Our hearts will then have joy and courage. That which will enable us to act aright is, not what we have called carnal confidence, the going on in the common-place joy of certain truths, but the certainty and joy of God's presence. Do we know God's presence as the practical home of our hearts? Oh what joy is there in this! Of one thing be sure: coming to Him in the name of Jesus, you will find it to be the real, blessed, secure home of your hearts.

For ever blessed be His name, He has said, "Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out."

The Marriage Supper of the King's Son

Matthew 21: 23 - 22: 14

J. N. Darby.

<12027E> 264

If all things were not entirely out of course, every principle of human nature astray from God, there would be no need for all the painstaking on the part of God of which we read in these chapters (and that after all with such strange results), no need of these, in one sense, sorrowful and assiduous efforts to call people back unto Himself. We might have supposed, as we sometimes see in the case of a self-willed child, that the moment the father's voice of love and entreaty was heard, instant obedience would be produced, because a sense of relationship was there. But no; these constant efforts, this "changing of the voice" (as Paul has it), serve but to shew that all sense of relationship between man and God is gone. That voice touches no spring, there is not a chord upon which He can act - the echo of the heart is gone. Where there is the appearance of an answer, it is but hypocrisy. I am not saying that God cannot change the heart, but that there is entire alienation of the heart from God. The Lord in these chapters goes through these various efforts and their result in a very full and distinct manner indeed, both as regards the responsibility of man and the actings of His own grace; and He does it in the simplest way by appealing to man's conscience just as he is.

We read, "And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority?" (v. 23). God comes into the world to do good, and man asks by what authority God does good in the world! Jesus had been shewing His power previously (v. 12-14), but now He was quietly teaching in the temple. They were vexed to see the veil of hypocrisy drawn aside, and the finger of God put forth in the cleansing of the temple from these things by means of which they had made it a house of merchandise, and therefore they ask Him this question. The Lord appeals to no miracle - He has done plenty, but He appeals not to miracles. "Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one thing, which if ye tell me, I in like wise will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, whence was it; from heaven or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him? [for John bore testimony to Jesus]. But if we shall say, Of men; we fear the people: for all hold John as a prophet" (v. 24-26). That is, He at once, by means of the question which in divine wisdom He puts to them in reply, brings out the real state of their conscience. "And they answered Jesus, and said, We cannot tell. And he said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things" (v. 27).

265 Thus, at the very outset, He puts this great truth before all, that the conscience of man is bad in not submitting to the righteousness of God. And that is the case always. Man cannot deny that things come from heaven, but he will not believe. If pressed to the utmost (look at the extreme case of infidelity), men love darkness rather than light, just as it is said, "Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind," etc. (Rom. 1).

Having laid down this in direct application to their own conscience, He could now tell them that which follows, "But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not; but afterwards he repented and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him" (v. 28-32).

In this first parable the Lord puts a case according to the difference there is between formal righteousness and the repentant sinner; between the person who goes through the world decently, desiring to make a fair appearance, and the one who, acting against all the dictates of natural conscience, sins wilfully, and then repents.

In the second son we have that which is descriptive of the general character of 'decent' people. They go on quietly and in outward order, professing to own the will of God, and to serve God; they say, "I go, sir," but after all, from morning to night, and from night to morning, they are occupied in doing their own will and nothing else.

266 In the other son there was the positive delight in doing his own will (just, alas! the description of the wilfulness of the human heart: he said, "I will not"), delight in breaking through all righteousness as it regarded the relationship between himself and his father, but withal the consciousness of this, and the owning afterwards that it had been broken through (not merely that he had done a wrong thing, but that he had disobeyed the father), and repentance on account of it.

There was no regard in the self-righteous Jew, with all his profession, for the righteousness of God; but the publicans and the harlots believed John. Now there was no regard in the former for the ordinances of God; in the latter there was no regard for the common decencies of life, but when they heard the ministry of John, who came in the way of righteousness, they repented; and this repentance, touching the root of all sin, referred itself, not merely to acts of sin, but towards the Person sinned against. The one decently owned God, and left it there. The others indecently and outrageously sinned against God, but "repented, and went." They recognised not merely certain particular faults, sins in conduct, but sin against God, that they had failed in rendering that which was due to God. We see then that the only repentance which God owns is that in which there is the recognition of sin, and the recognition of Himself as the One against whom we have sinned. The state that the publicans and harlots were in brought them to this certainty, that if God spoke, they had nothing to say for themselves, there was nothing which they could do, except indeed to put their hand, as Job says, upon their mouth, and say, "I am vile." And this they did, whilst the scribes and Pharisees remained as insensible as possible, not only to God's word, but also to the full operation of God's grace; they were as insensible to it as if there had been no such thing. This is the first part, the first case of God's dealings with man, brought before us by our Lord here.

We next get certain dealings on the ground of responsibility, then dealings on the ground of grace: the one in the latter part of chapter 21, the other in the early part of chapter 22. First, as to responsibility the Lord says, "Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a wine-press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: and when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it" (v. 33, 34). It is quite clear that this applies to the Jewish people in the first place; yet as to the general principle of the parable it is true of all who have heard the name of Christ and have refused to believe in Him. It is not merely a case of relationship, as between a son and a father (that we have seen before), but it contains an appeal to the conscience of persons on the ground of certain things God has done. It was God that had planted the vineyard, hedged it round about, digged the winepress in it, built the tower, let it out to husbandmen. He had put this vineyard into the hands of certain persons, and having done much for it (everything that He had done for the Jews, as we see in Isaiah 5: 2, almost in the same words), He naturally looked that it should bring forth grapes to Him. So it is, as to the general principle, in Christianity. It is not a question of natural conscience merely; God had let something out to husbandmen. This was a new thing. He did not leave men to the light of their natural conscience. He had taken the greatest possible pains with them, done everything, so that He says, "What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? and then, putting them on the ground of responsibility, He comes looking for fruit. We shall see just now that God has abandoned this ground. He produces fruit, but He has abandoned the ground of seeking for fruit.

267 God had done everything possible for the Jewish people as His vineyard, and then the thing that He naturally looked for from them was that they should bring forth grapes. He sent the prophets first (the way the prophets are looked at here is, that they were seeking fruit), "and the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son," v. 35, 37. We find Christ Himself taking them up upon this ground. He came (though not as to ultimate result or purpose) to seek for fruit in His vineyard (it is not a question of grace), and having come to seek fruit, they say, We will get rid of this Son. "When the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him," v. 38, 39. The end of responsibility, and of all this patient dealing of God with the Jewish people on that ground was, that they were glad of the occasion to kill the Heir, in order that they might seize upon the inheritance. "When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen? They say unto him, he will miserably destroy those wicked men," etc. (v. 40, 41).

268 Here then again we mark this great principle, that in whatever way God looks for a response from man He finds none. There is such a thing as God's looking for fruit from that which He has planted and nurtured in the world, but there is no fruit to be had from man towards God. The husbandmen's will was entirely against it. They did not recognise the authority of God in His vineyard: they liked to have it for themselves. The will was entirely and absolutely wrong. The truth was, the husbandmen were opposed to the planter of the vineyard, and therefore the relationship was not owned, etc. The effect of the ordinances God had given was only that of bringing out the enmity and hatred of those to whom He had entrusted His vineyard. The Lord ends this part of man's history with the question of seeking fruit and finding none. He places man in a certain religious position, giving him many external advantages, and looks consequently for fruit.

Now, beloved friends, there are many hearts looking at that as their position: the ground they are dealing upon with God is that of seeking to return fruit. They feel that God has given them certain spiritual advantages, opportunities of hearing, and the like, and that therefore they ought to return fruit to Him. And so they ought. But then, although such are not in a condition of soul answerable to that of the husbandmen who killed the heir, they have mistaken, and that altogether, the ground on which God is dealing. And it does not stop here, I for the soul may even deal with Christ Himself as with one who is seeking fruit, just as much as with the law and the prophets. It sees in the perfectness of Christ a claim, in the love of God a claim. It thinks that if God has so loved as to give His Son, if Christ has so loved as to shed His blood, there must be this claim of fruit from it to God. Most truly there is, in one sense, but claim does not produce fruit. Surely there must be fruit found in every believer; but if we stand before God on the ground of having to meet His claim, it is all over with us. It is a very different thing whether there is the claim of fruit, or whether fruit is produced through the work of the Spirit on the soul.

269 And further I would say, that where there is honesty and sincerity of heart, and the conscience is touched with the testimony to the love of God, seeing the infinite greatness of that love as manifested in the Son of God having come down from heaven to die upon the cross, in the way of claim the only effect is to make it say, Well, it is all over with me if there is no return! And so it is all over with it on that ground. I repeat, the soul sees the love, but it sees also the infinite claim that that love has upon it, and therefore that all is over with it, and it feels no hope. All this is upon the ground that God is claiming fruit. There is the sense of God's amazing love in giving His Son to death for sinners; the soul sees His graciousness in this, and feels that it ought, in return for this love, to produce the fruit that God is looking for, but that it does not; consequently all this exercise of soul ends in nothing but the sense of deserved condemnation and judgment. Claim on a person always results in judgment to that person, if he is unable to meet it. If God is dealing with us in the way of claim against us, the result of that is to bring us in guilty in not having answered at all to the claim which God has against us. We have made of the love of God in Christ a severer and more terrible law than that given by Moses, when the soul puts itself under claim to that love; and therefore we feel condemned and get into despondency. The Lord has tried man by the law, and it has ended in nothing but judgment. The more you elevate the claim of God, the more you elevate your own condemnation. If you put the love of God in the place of law, the greater the love that has been manifested, the more guilty are you in rejecting the claims of that love.

In the beginning of the next chapter the whole thing is changed. It is not claim at all: God is presented as dealing on different ground altogether. "And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said, The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come," v. 1-3. True, they would not come; but it is not at all the presenting of certain claims on the conscience of men. It is something the king is doing and inviting to. He tells them that he is going to glorify his son, and therefore that he must have around the marriage-table of his son all that which would make the marriage glorious and blessed - what is suited to the glory of that son. It is all grace. How clear that everything in a case like this comes from the person who makes the feast. There could be evidently no such thought as that of the guests invited having to provide the entertainment. Why, it would be an insult to the king. There can be consequently no thought of claim here, or of the allowance even of the guests bringing anything towards the feast, neither the thought of a suitable return on the part of those invited. Everything is done on the part of him that invites; and, I repeat, all such other thoughts would be a positive insult.

270 This parable then brings before us, not the question of God's dealing with the natural conscience of man, neither that of the owner of the vineyard looking for and not receiving fruit (the Lord has closed that altogether with the last chapter), but that of the king acting according to the riches of his own house in order to glorify his son.

This was the very thought of the king in preparing the supper. Was it merely that he was going to make certain people comfortable? No; it was about his son. And in order to glorify that son he must have full blessing at the table - what shall I say? happy faces around it, hearts without one care, without any shade of anxiety upon them, free from every suspicion of his love. The "marriage" of his son must be honoured in having all these things accompanying it.

The application of the parable is as simple as possible: and that is the ground on which God is dealing in the gospel, and not as claiming fruit. I do not say He does not produce fruit, but it is not a ground of claim in any shape. Man has failed altogether, not only in not producing fruit, but also in not owning the claim which God has upon him; and if he does own the claim, he gets into despair on account of it. I have put that case. But now all this is over, entirely over, and God is set forth as glorifying Himself in having others made happy around His Son.

If I speak one word, or have a thought about claim, in connection with the ground of my standing in the presence of God (though I admit the principle most fully), it destroys the whole ground upon which God is acting in the fulness of His grace. It is quite clear that one who had allowed for a moment the thought of having to provide his share of the feast could have no real sense of the honour of the person who invited him to the feast (the man who had brought it would have been kept at the door); there would have been the entire undervaluing both of him who had made the supper, and of the supper.

271 And it is also true, moreover, that if a guest who had been invited by the king were a rich man, and sought to come in in costly raiment of his own providing, or, on the other hand, a poor man, who attempted to wear his ragged garments, it would in either case have been an insult to the king, a despising both of the "robe" provided and of the thing invited to. He who invites to the wedding is the only one who can provide the guests with a garment suited to the occasion. All is entirely set aside, both as to the thought of our capacity (because of anything we are in ourselves), to come in, and as to the fear of our state shutting us out. Our blessing depends on one single thing, the sufficiency and the grace of him who invites.

"Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage. But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise: and the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city," v. 4-7. Here again we get a notice of the manner of God's patience, and also an evidence of what the heart of man is. Just as the Lord had taken them up (the Jews) before on the ground of God's claim to fruit through the ministry of the prophets, and by His Son, so now He takes them up on this other ground of the invitation to the "marriage supper," "and they made light of it."

"All things are ready" (that is, there is nothing more to be done); this was specially the message when the apostles went out after the crucifixion. The feast was ready. The principle of man's heart is seen, not only in despising the claim, but in slighting the grace of God, and in killing His witnesses. The carelessness that would make a sinner despise the king's grace is exactly the same thing in principle that would make him kill the Son. "They went their own way," both in one case and in the other.

272 But then we have this blessed truth: God did not give up one particle of the fulness of His love, or of the blessedness of His purpose as regards His Son. He is dealing upon this ground, I must have people around me, and blessed there; I must have the "marriage" of my Son honourable. Yes; God, so to speak, must have His house filled. "Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all, as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests," v. 8-10. Now there is the present going forth of the gospel into the world - the great character of the gospel.

The first principle is the full outflowing of grace, the activity of God's love going out into the world and bringing in to partake of the blessings which Himself has provided. His love goes out in simple grace to find "good and bad," as it is said, to partake of the goodness of His house. That is the principle God is acting on in the gospel. It is quite clear that He provides everything. He is not claiming fruit but providing blessing.

"And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: and he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth," v. 11-13. Here we find a sad fact: not the principle of God's dealing, but a fact. One case is sufficient to shew the principle. The "wedding garment" was there, the provision for the guests' blessing made by the King. He takes notice of all present, and Christ was not possessed by this individual. The only effect of his being there was to make it more distinct than ever, to prove the more, that he had nothing to do with the "wedding," for he had not on the "wedding garment." He might have had the most splendid garment; but whether his raiment was splendid and costly, or the vilest rags in the country, those of the poorest beggar, it mattered not - it was not the "wedding garment."

273 If our souls are not in the spirit of the "wedding for his Son," there is a clear proof that our hearts have not entered into that which God is doing. There is the principle of the whole matter in the question, "How camest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment?" He has given up the ground of claim in dealing with us; He is asking for nothing; and more than that, He will receive nothing from us. We cannot pretend to go and carry Him anything; if we do, we insult Him.

Have our souls entered, beloved friends, into God's great thought? He is thinking about His Son; His heart is set on glorifying His Son, and that by the joy of those who are brought in to the "wedding." A soul not in the spirit of the "wedding," the nearer it might be to the Son, the more in company of those seated at the table, the more manifestly would it be seen that it had nothing to do with being there. Were the guests at this table merely for the purpose of feasting? Surely not. They were there for the wedding of the Son, and to do Him honour. Unless our thoughts and spirits are clothed with Christ, the nearer we be, the more evident would it appear that we have nothing to do with that feast. To be there, and present at the table, we must be able to enter into the one thought that is governing (so to speak) God Himself in all His counsels; and this is the glory of His own blessed Son.

In going to a wedding, the man who only thought of the feast would not have entered into the spirit of the thing; and the man who took something towards the entertainment would but insult the maker of the feast: nobody wanted anything of him. The effect of understanding rightly that God is glorifying His Son Jesus is to make us put aside every thought but that. Let us be the most vile and wretched sinners in ourselves (as Paul says, "of whom I am chief"), all anxiety will be taken from our hearts, everything of uneasiness, and uncertainty, because the invitation is there. And it is God that provides for all in the house "the wedding garment," a robe suited to His own presence. Supposing the king's invitation had come to some poor man clothed in rags, should he have said, Oh! that cannot be for me; I am a poor man! That was the king's affair; or, I cannot enter the king's palace as I am; my garments are not fit for his presence! no matter. That, I say, was the king's affair, and it was the king who had invited him. He would go on the king's invitation the moment he believed it; for the only thing that was necessary to fit him for a seat at the marriage table was that which the king himself had provided, and he would count on the king for it.

274 Beloved friends, that is all we have to do. "They which were bidden were not worthy"; but the house must be filled. Surely we shall daily learn more of the blessings connected with the King's house, and we shall count it blessed to be there; but the whole affair is, God is glorifying His Son Jesus, and we have nothing to do but to rejoice in His grace. It is He who has thought of the "wedding" for His Son, who has thought also of the dress of the guests (providing everything needful to fit the guests for their presence at it); and we have nothing to do but to have done with ourselves, and to think of the worthiness of Him who has invited us.

Our title to be at the feast is the invitation of Him that is glorifying His grace in the "marriage" for His Son. What an unworthy feeling for one instant to call this in question! He gave His Son; He sent His Son into the place of our sin and misery to bear that wrath upon the cross which was due to us; He has raised Him again from the dead. What do you fear? Are you hesitating about your own worthiness, saying, Oh, but my state of soul is not such as befits one who is called to the marriage supper of the King's Son! No matter, in that sense, what the state of your own soul is; "they gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good." No matter, if invited by the King, whether the invitation meets you in the "highways" as a beggar, or as a prince, so to speak. What is it you are doubting about? Has God made a mistake in inviting you? Surely you are not worthy to be before the King; but He has called you without expecting to find any worthiness in you; He knew what your unworthiness of heart was before He called you.

He is calling sinners by a love that has been proved stronger than death. The Son of God went down into the dust of death for sinners, the Son of God went down under the power of Satan (though He could not be holden of it) for sinners, the Son of God went down under the power of the wrath of God for sinners. What more could have been done? Christ is risen again, and is alive at the right hand of God. "All things are ready; come unto the marriage!"

God invites on the ground of what has been done, and not on that of anything yet to be done. The only question we have to ask ourselves is, whether or not our hearts have submitted to His righteousness. Surely what He gives is that which produces fruit. When at the "marriage supper," the King desires that cares and sins and anxieties should be all forgotten; He will have around His Son happy faces, hearts free from distrust and free from doubt. Everything can be forgotten, save that we are there. If you see this, beloved friends, I do ask you, Are your souls happy? Do your faces shine with gladness now, as those who know that their place is to sit around that table?

275 God's heart is set upon the glory of Christ in connection with the joy and blessing of those whose hearts have submitted to His righteousness, and He has provided for it. If your hearts are occupied with the glory of Christ, you will not be thinking in one sense of what you are, or of what you were; your thoughts will dwell upon the blessings into which you are brought through grace, of which Christ is the source and the centre in the presence of God.

Wilderness Grace

Exodus 17

J. N. Darby.

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Those who are familiar with the study of this part of scripture will remember that the history of Israel from the Red Sea to Sinai (that is, from the time of their deliverance out of Egypt until they placed themselves under law) contains an exceedingly remarkable testimony to the grace of God.

At Sinai Israel took up the promises of God on the condition of their own obedience, and then their entire failure was manifested. But up to that moment all God's dealings with them had been in grace. Though there was continual murmuring and unbelief and disobedience, He did not chasten for these things as afterwards, when they had taken a stand before Him on the ground of obedience. It was an immense transition in their history.

The law "came in" as it were (though of course it was perfect in itself) "by the bye," between the promises and the accomplishment of the promises, to shew what the condition of man would be if he stood on his own ground before God. The law was not before the promises, the apostle argues (Gal. 3), "that it should make the promise of none effect." Promise was given first. And "He to whom the promises were made" came after the law. Meanwhile the law entered in order to manifest what man was, and the effect that would be produced on man when placed on the ground of obedience to the known will of God.*

{*"All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient." These words (the response of the people with one voice, when Moses had taken the book of the covenant and read in their audience, Exod. 24) were the complete confounding of two very distinct principles, which man has been continually mistaking and confounding since the fall of Adam - responsibility and power. Man is responsible to keep the law perfectly, but by the fall he has lost the power. This the natural heart cannot understand. One man denies his responsibility, and another assumes his power; grace, and this only, puts a man right on both points.}

It was needful to do this, because of the constant tendency of the heart to put itself under law, in spite of repeated failures; not that God's promises of grace were not simple and clear, but because of this natural tendency of the heart of man. Supposing my conscience to be awakened, I must know that it is my duty (that I ought) to please and obey God. The effect of this naturally is that I expect God would accept me on this condition. Till a man is brought to feel his really lost state, this is very natural. It is quite too late to talk of pleasing and obeying God when we know ourselves to be lost sinners.

277 Now God, who is wonderfully painstaking with us for our blessing, sent the law, in order that this tendency of man's heart, and his utter worthlessness, might be shewn out, and proved to man.* But before He did this, He had made known abounding grace, pure grace, flowing from His own thoughts and purposes, without any reference to the feelings of man about Him, or any condition of man's obedience.

{*See Romans 3: 19.}

So that those whose hearts were opened to believe the promises could rest in peace upon them all the while they were learning more of their own sinfulness through the law. The very starting point of all God's dealings with us is pure grace, suitable to sinners, whose state He knows, and therefore knows how to meet.

There was no promise given to Adam before he fell. He needed none; he was happy in his innocence and then present condition. And after he had sinned, the promise given was not made to rest on anything in him. The Lord came down to the garden, saying, "Adam, where art thou?" that he might be made to feel what the condition was into which sin had plunged him: and he answered, "I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself." The Lord did not give a promise to Adam (for He could not, in the state of sin in which he was, without dealing lightly with sin; neither could He leave Adam without promise, unless He cast him into remediless despair). What God does is to bring in "the seed of the woman" - the second Adam. There was not a word of promise to Adam personally: the promise was made to the "seed of the woman" in pronouncing the curse on the serpent - "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." This was a promise for Adam, one on which his soul might rest, one faith could lay hold of - no promise to Adam in his sin, but a promise of blessing in and to Christ. And it appears that through grace Adam did rest on this interference of God, for he afterwards speaks of Eve as "the mother of all living."

278 This was developed onwards and onwards till we come to the history of Abraham; where it is revealed still more definitely: "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." Isaac was only the type of Christ. "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ." Thus Christ was the Seed to whom the promise was made; Gal. 3. "All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen," and we, through grace, can now add, "unto the glory of God by us."

The promises were not only made to Abraham (Gen. 12) and to his seed, but confirmed to the seed through resurrection (Gen. 22). This was shewn in Abraham's being commanded to offer up Isaac, and his receiving of him again from the dead "in a figure" (as the apostle speaks, Heb. 11). Christ takes the promises, not as on earth incarnate, but as risen from the dead. Without His death and resurrection we could have had no part in them, for God cannot bless people in sin. "What concord hath Christ with Belial?" It is impossible that there could be communion between God and the sinner in his sins. If the Lord Jesus had not died and become the source of a new life to the sinner, we could have had no portion with Him in these promises. After the resurrection of Isaac there was a confirmation to the seed of the promises made to Abraham. "By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven . . . and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." This is referred to by the Spirit in the Epistle to the Galatians.

As to blessing, unless we speak of the presumption of our own thoughts about sin, we must look to Christ in reference to it. All the blessing is Christ's; it belongs to Him; and to us only as having our portion in and with Him. It all rests on promise, without any reference to the state of man. Our strength and comfort is in seeing this, that it flows down from God as the expression of His thoughts towards us. Just as water reaching a thirsty man, the water has only to do with the thirsty man as it regards quenching his thirst; it does not come from, but merely to, him.

There was then the sentence of punishment pronounced on the serpent, and the promise given to the Seed. All is of grace, and in Christ.

279 The Lord having settled this great basis of truth, that all is of grace in Christ, and established in resurrection, He began to manifest His ways more in detail; and that first, amongst His own people Israel, the seed of Abraham after the flesh. He began to shew, not merely His grace in giving His promises to the Seed, on which faith might lay hold, but His own considerate love in caring for the need and sorrows of His people. When once it was completely settled that the promises came simply from God and from His love, then He shews that He can consider all the need of His people, and take every possible thought about them and their sorrows, saying to Moses (chap. 3), "I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them," etc. He took notice of every circumstance of their trouble and sorrow.

Having sent this message to them by the hand of Moses, that He knew their sorrows, and having touched their heart in this way, giving them confidence in His love in spite of their sinfulness, so that "the people believed, and bowed their head and worshipped," He does not pass over their sin. He cannot help seeing their evil; and if He is to have them in communion with Himself He must take notice of their condition towards Himself as well as towards Pharaoh; that is to say, that of being sinners. God and sin must be always at variance: we ourselves feel it to be so. When quickened and convinced of sin, the first expression of our hearts, like that of Peter's,* is "Depart from me, for I am sinful man, O Lord." We see at once, as he did, that God's holiness cannot, ought not, to allow of sin. There is always great ignorance in us when we say this, though it is a very true feeling; for it is as though we thought that the Lord did not know a great deal more of what is in our hearts than we do ourselves. A moment's consideration in the case of Peter would have made him feel, The Lord knew that I was a sinful man before He came into my ship; and yet He came: surely then I need not shrink from Him.

{*See Luke 5.}

280 The Lord gives us confidence in Himself by taking the start of us about the knowledge of our sinfulness. Jesus said to Peter, "Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men" - planting him at once in confidence in Himself, because shewing him that though He knew quite well he was a sinner, yet His purpose was to make him the means of saving sinners. It was as much as to say, You need not shrink from me; for if I could not meet you in grace and put away your sin, I could not of course make use of you to save others.

In bringing Israel into direct fellowship with Himself, God shewed, by putting the blood on their doorposts (chap. 12), that when He executed judgment on Egypt He secured deliverance from it to His people. And just so in God's dealings with us; the judgment that has passed on Christ because of sin is the security of the church (of every believer) against judgment. When the soul apprehends the Lord Jesus as the one offering for sin, it has confidence in God; and that on the very ground of His knowing thoroughly our sinfulness. It is impossible that God should pass over the blood of the Lord Jesus, and impute to sinners those sins which He has washed away. He cannot impute sin to a believer without condemning the value of His blood-shedding, and virtually denying the efficacy of it. And if that be true when He judges men by-and-by, it must be true now. Faith knows that death is God's own sentence against sin, and that it has been executed on Christ in the sinner's stead. Faith "sets to its seal that God is true," and receives His thoughts who has said about the blood-shedding of Jesus, "When I see the blood, I will pass over."

But there is another thing: it is not merely that God says, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people, I know their sorrows," etc.; there must be also His power put forth in delivering. This is shewn in the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea (chap. 14), and to us in the Lord Jesus having "through death destroyed him that had the power of death," Heb. 2: 14. In the cross Satan put forth all his power and energy against the Prince of life; and he did it successfully, arraying both Jew and Gentile against Him (it was "your hour and the power of darkness," Luke 22: 53); but in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus the mightiest power of Satan was destroyed for ever. And so with Israel; God had taken up the cause of His people. It was not merely that He had given them peace through the blood sprinkled on their doorposts. but He Himself had entered into conflict with their enemies, and Satan's power in enslaving them was completely gone. We may have been brought to see the sinfulness and evil of our condition before God, and the power of the blood of Jesus in satisfying the holiness of God; but we do not know liberty till we see God for us in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

281 What was the effect of deliverance to Israel? and what is the effect of our deliverance from the bondage of Pharaoh (Satan looked at as such)? To bring into the wilderness, and not at once into Canaan. Being in the wilderness implies all sorts of trials. It may seem strange to sight, that they who had just been singing the song of triumph and deliverance (chap 15) should be allowed to be three days in the wilderness without water; and then, when they came to water, should find it so bitter that they could not drink of it. But God permits these trials, in order that we may see our own need and prove His faithfulness. From the Red Sea to Sinai Israel proved the grace which belongs to us now. Let us ever remember, when speaking of the wilderness, that though there is trial in it, and plenty of trial, it is the place of the ministration of grace. The Lord's previous dealings were, as I may say, preliminary: He brought Israel into the wilderness in order to have them quite alone with Himself, that He might teach them what He was; as He said afterwards, "Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself," chap. 19: 4. He lets us pass through these trials that we may thoroughly understand that all is from God there. The eagle's wing never tires or fails. It is either the most blessed triumph, security, and victory, that we enjoy, or it is nothing. It is wonderful how our hearts cling, not only to the thought of our own righteousness, but to the practical denial of our not having any strength in ourselves. Many have peace in Jesus, who do not see so entirely that they have no strength, either for service or conflict. Well, they learn it in the wilderness. Our journey through the wilderness is the weaning us from trusting in ourselves, in order that we may trust only in God.

282 The first thing God taught Israel in the wilderness was, that they could not get a drop of water except He gave it to them. They were kept without it three days; and when they came to water at last (when there was something within reach that man seemed able to grasp), they could not drink of it, it was so bitter; until the Lord shewed Moses a tree to cast into the waters, which made them sweet. The Lord causes that which was death to become the means of life, as Hezekiah says, "O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit," Isa. 38. In death to the flesh there is life to the spirit.

In chapter 16 the Israelites want bread and begin to murmur again. The Lord deals with them in grace and gives them bread. But it was such bread as shewed them, morning by morning, that they must depend on Him. Had He withheld the manna one day, they would have had nothing to eat, for they could not keep it till the morrow; "it bred worms, and stank." The Lord will not allow us to lay up anything (no, not even grace) in store that would tend to lead us into independence of Himself: it will turn to evil if we do. He shewed His people perpetual grace in His dealings towards them; but He never took them, nor can He ever take us, out of the condition of dependence on Himself. The manna was the type of Christ; as the water was of the Spirit.

Soon after (chapter 17), in journeying from the wilderness of Sin, we find the Israelites murmuring again because they had no water. "Wherefore the people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us water that we may drink." But new murmurings only bring out fresh grace (for they had not yet come to Sinai): God gave them water. His grace abounded where their sin abounded. The more they murmured, the more in one sense they got.

I would just remark in passing, that it is sin not to have confidence in the Lord, not to be quite sure that He will help us, whatever the need may be, when we are walking in His ways. It is recorded of the children of Israel as sin, that they tempted the Lord in that which they said here, "Is the Lord among us, or not?" (v. 7). When we are going on wickedly and wilfully, and say, "Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us" (Mic. 3: 11), this is quite a different thing. Our God will indeed be with us, if His children, even then; but to chasten us. Whenever there is real need in the wilderness, it is sin to doubt whether God will help us or not. If we are not as sure of water in the midst of the sandy desert as though we saw rivers of water running through the country, we are tempting God.

283 This is the force of that expression of our Lord to Satan, "It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." Satan wanted Jesus to try by an experiment whether God would be as good as His word. Had He done so, it would have implied a doubt. His answer was, "It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." Tempting the Lord is doubting the supply His goodness in giving us all that we need.

The supply of water and of manna to the Israelites did not take them out of trouble. They drank and were refreshed: there was the gathering up a little strength, and then Amalek comes and fights against them. It was but the preparation for conflict. So those who feed on Christ as the manna, and have in their souls the well of water springing up into everlasting life, have still the wilderness and conflict with Amalek.

In that sense we have to do with Satan, though we are entirely delivered from his bondage. We are never more under the power of Satan, as Israel was under the power of Pharaoh. (If Israel binds itself to Amalek, it is its own fault.) It is said to us, "Sin shall not have the dominion over you; for ye are not under law, but under grace." But we have to fight with Amalek though delivered from Pharaoh. When we have been brought into the wilderness, and fed and refreshed through this grace, Christian conflict begins. We are called, like the Lord Jesus, never to doubt the Father's love; but was He out of conflict? No, it was just the very thing that set Him in it. The being delivered from the bondage of Satan, and the being ranged on the Lord's side, is that which brings us into conflict; and in this the Lord never lets us be taken out of dependence on Himself. The moment we forget this we shall be overcome. Satan can never make us his slaves again, but we may be beaten and wounded by him. In every detail of our lives there is no blessing but in dependence on God. Whenever self-dependence comes in, whenever our own wills are working, there is failure. If in speaking to you now I were to cease from depending on the Lord in doing it, all blessing to my own soul would cease. "Without me ye can do nothing," John 15: 5. Neither can I speak, nor you hear, to profit without dependence on Him. If a Christian gets out of dependence on the Lord, he will be beaten by Satan in conflict. Yet we ought not merely not to be beaten by Satan, but ever to be gaining ground upon him. Whether it be in winning souls to Christ, or whether it be in making progress truly ourselves in knowledge, or in holiness, or in love, we are gaining ground on Satan's possessions. We have been delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son. As Satan takes possession of my heart by ignorance, then every step I make in the knowledge of God is gain on the possession of Satan. He uses our flesh too; so that to mortify and keep the flesh in death is gaining ground upon him. But every inch must be won, every bit of knowledge gained, by conflict. In this conflict we are directly and hourly cast in dependence upon God.

284 God did not put Amalek out of the way of Israel - they must fight with him: and it is just so with us. "And Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men, and go out, fight with Amalek; to-morrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand," v. 9. This is very different from what we get in chapter 14, "The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace."

See what the Lord had said to Moses concerning Israel (chap. 3: 8); that He would "bring them up out of the land of Egypt unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey." Now where are they brought? Into the wilderness, to thirst for water, and to fight with Amalek! They had not reckoned on this (v. 3). And thus it is often with the saints of God; when they have had joy, and have sung the song of triumph, in being delivered from the power of Satan, they are afterwards astonished at finding themselves not in Canaan but in the wilderness. Jeremiah found the Lord's word the joy and rejoicing of his heart (Jer. 15: 16), yet afterwards he was so discouraged that he says, "O LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived": of course this is only a strong expression of sorrow, "thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me. For since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the LORD was made a reproach unto me, and a derision, daily. Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name," etc. (Jer. 20). When the saint finds what the road is, he is apt to forget the end, where there will be fulness of joy and blessing. The Lord desires to purge out that which would hinder our blessing and keep us from having our hearts and hopes set upon the end, and to humble us.

285 Moses,* Aaron, and Hur go up to the top of the hill, and Israel under Joshua fights in the plain below with Amalek (v. 10). They fought the Lord's battle: but it is not sufficient even to be fighting the Lord's battle unless the Lord stretches forth His hand to help them. Otherwise "Amalek prevailed." Israel might have reasoned on the manner of their fighting, on the strength of the enemy, and on ten thousand things; but after all, their success depended on Moses' hands being stretched out. It is very hard for us to see ourselves and Satan to be as nothing, and God to be everything. The moment we get out of dependence on God, we find out our own weakness; though we have this comfort, that under whatever circumstances, through the priesthood and the righteousness of the Lord Jesus, our blessing is substantially maintained for us, and this until the going down of the sun. "And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun," v. 11, 12. Enemies were as nothing when Israel had the power of God with them. The day is won - "Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword."

{*Moses held in his hand "the rod of God" - the symbol of the power of God, that which had worked the defeat and destruction of Pharaoh.}

"And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah-nissi (i.e., Jehovah my banner): for he said, Because the Lord hath sworn that Jehovah will have war with Amalek from generation to generation," v. 14-16. I dare say many of us have thought, when we have seen the necessity of dependence on the Lord, that one good battle with Satan, and all will be over; but no such thing, we have security and the certainty of victory, but no promise of cessation from conflict whilst in the wilderness. God has promised that He "will bruise Satan under our feet shortly"; as He said to Israel that He would "utterly put out the name of Amalek from under heaven"; but still "Jehovah will have war with Amalek from generation to generation." Till Christ comes, and Satan will be bound, and we shall have the full result of victory, we must reckon on conflict (not on slavery to Pharaoh, but on war with Amalek), but with the comfort of knowing that it is Jehovah who makes war, though it is through Israel, and Israel therefore has to fight. It is the Lord's battle against Satan - there is our comfort. but still a battle which we have to carry on; hence we are kept in an unceasing state of dependence. The moment it was not so, Israel were put to the worse.

286 As it regards the accusations of Satan, the blood on the door-posts is the eternal answer to that. As to slavery to Satan, the Lord Jesus has delivered us from that; we have stood, the living ones, on the other side of the Red Sea; and we "shall see" Pharaoh and his host "no more again for ever." What we find in the desert is, grace, conflict and the Lord having war with Amalek from generation to generation. We are to be kept, moment by moment, in a state of dependence, yet reckoning on the constant grace and help of God. There is not blessing and joy and comfort where there is not dependence on the Lord exercised. It is not enough for victory that in the battle we have ranged ourselves on the Lord's side. You will find the tendency of the flesh, whether in praying or preaching or anything else, is to get out of dependence on God. We may be saying true things in prayer or in testimony; but if we are not realising our dependence on the Lord, we shall not have His strength in the battle; and the Lord must make us learn our dependence on Him, through weakness, and failure, and defeat, because we have refused to learn it in the joy and confidence of communion with Himself.

Victory is turned to worship in the scene before us. "And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah-nissi - the Lord is my banner." When victory does not tend to worship, we and God part company as soon as the victory is achieved. How sad to see victory often leading to mere joy, instead of still greater dependence on, and delight in, God!

May we trace out, in all these paths of His wondrous ways, still more and more of the depths of His divine love!

The Passage of the Red Sea

Hebrews 11: 23-29

J. N. Darby.

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We have in these verses a little picture drawn by the Spirit of God, of the ways of God in bringing up His people out of Egypt, by the hand of Moses. And we may say it is just a picture of the deliverance of the church from the power of Satan, of the salvation of God and the means by which it is brought about.

Verse 23: God had taken the tenderest care of Moses in his infancy. So in the days of our natural estate, God's care has been over us in a thousand ways.

Verses 24-26: A word here as to guidance through the providence of God. Many cling to providences, as though they were to be the guide for faith. Nothing could be more remarkable providence than that which placed Moses in the court of Pharaoh, but it was not the guide for the faith of Moses. Brought up as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, mighty in words and in deeds - there providence had placed him. If ever there was a remarkable providence, it was the case of Moses. After having been hid three months of his parents, till they could hide him no longer, he is put in an ark of bulrushes among the flags by the river's bank. Thus exposed and crying, the babe attracts the attention of Pharaoh's daughter, who with her maidens is brought down to the place just at the moment. She has compassion on him, listens to the suggestion of the young woman his sister, gives him in charge to his own mother to be nursed for her; and he becomes her son. The first thing he does, when come to years, is to give it all up. Had Moses reasoned, his reasoning might have had great scope of argument; he might have said, God's providence has placed me here; I can use all this influence for God's people, and the like. But he never thought of such a thing. His place was with God's people. He did not act for God's people merely; he did not patronise God's people; his place was with and amongst God's people. God's providence had given him a position which he might relinquish; but it was no guide for conscience. There may be the most plausible reasoning about the thing; but when the "eye is single," the "whole body will be full of light." Moses saw in his brethren (though a feeble people) "the people of God," and he identified them as such with the glory of God. This is what faith always does. They may be in a feeble and failing position, or they may be in a blessed position; that is not the question: faith identifies the people of God with the glory of God, and acts accordingly.

288 The children of Israel were in a very bad condition: still they were "the people of God"; and the first thing recorded of the faith of Moses is, that he took his place amongst the afflicted people of God. If reproach was on them, it was "the reproach of Christ"; and he "esteemed it greater riches than the treasures in Egypt." He reckoned with God, and this kept his soul clear of every other influence. He looked right on: "Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee," etc. The light cannot shine down along another path.

Verse 27: Faith had brought Moses into a straight line with "the recompense of the reward"; and when in that path, faith enabled him to identify himself with God, to look up to God as his power. At once came "the wrath of the king." But the same faith that saw glory for him at the end of the path saw God for him all through the path. This is the secret of real strength. What unbelief does is to compare ourselves and our own strength with circumstances. What faith does is to compare God with circumstances. Take the case of the spies; Numbers 13, 14. They said, "all the people of the land are men of a great stature; and we saw the giants there, the sons of Anak, that come of the giants; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." If the Israelites compared their stature with that of the Anakims, they had no business there. What said Caleb and Joshua? They stilled the people, saying, "They are as bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the Lord is with us: fear them not." That is, they compared these sons of Anak with God; what matter then whether they were giants or grasshoppers? They spoke the language of faith. It was no reasoning about circumstances; it was just simply saying, Greater is He that is for us than all that can be against us. God was there. That is what makes the path of faith so simple. How did David reason? He did not go and reason about the height of Goliath and about his own smallness of stature; he brought God in. There is an "uncircumcised" man, he said, defying "the armies of the living God" - right, and very good reasoning!

289 When the glory set before us leads in the way of the promises, and we take our place with the despised and afflicted people of God, the world will not like it, and the "wrath of the king" will be the consequence. Now this is always a thing feared and trembled before, until God becomes clearly known by the soul as a God for it. When Pharaoh pursued after the children of Israel (Ex. 14) with all his chariots and his horsemen and his army (he had let them go from serving him, but there was no change of heart towards them), the Lord allowed the people to be shut in between the pursuit of Pharaoh (the power of evil) and the Red Sea. They were quite shut in; and then he says, "Fear not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord," etc.

But if God is coming to deal with sinners, He must deal with them as what He is - a holy God. Let them be Israelites or let them be Egyptians, He must deal with them as what He is. The judgment of God against sin must be met. God's purpose was to save Israel, and in doing this He was about to judge Egypt: But then, He says, if I come to deal in judgment with the Egyptians; if I come to deliver my people; I must come such as I am; and I must therefore raise the question of sin. And it is always so. When God deals with the heart, if there is a question between it and Satan's power (and when the soul is freshly awakened, the miserable consciousness of Satan's power, the slavery of Satan's service, will often have more real power in producing exercise of heart than all the fear of the consequences of sin), that is not the first question. God never begins there: He does deliver from it; but He never begins there. He begins by raising a question between Himself and the sinner.

The children of Israel had fallen into idolatry. They were worse than the Egyptians; they had the promises of God (Gen. 15), and were worshipping the idols of Egypt. But they felt not their sin against God. They groaned under their taskmasters, and sighed by reason of their bondage. Well, in all the tender commiseration of His having seen the affliction of His people and His being love, God came down and spake to Moses as to about to deliver them. But if judgment against sin was coming in, Israel must be secured from that judgment, or it would fall on them as surely as it did on the Egyptians. The question was not whether Israel could stand in the presence of Pharaoh, but whether Israel could stand in the presence of God.

290 Verse 28: God told them (see Exodus 12) to take of the blood of the paschal lamb, and strike it on the two side-posts and on the door-posts of the houses wherein they dwelt. "For," said He, "I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast . . . and the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt." The destroying angel passed through the land. In the darkness and dead of night he did his work. He knew no difference between the houses of the Israelites and those of the Egyptians, unless marked with the blood. Over such a house he passed; he saw the blood on the lintel and on the door-posts, he looked no further - he entered not into the house.

All God's dealings with sinners must be upon the ground of His holy judgment of sin. But then, in the case of salvation He awakens the soul to the sense of this; He says, Judgment is coming in, and there is the consequence of it. And then He puts upon the lintel and the door-posts the blood. Before God sets us out on the journey He makes it evident that He has settled the question of sin; that the demands of His justice have been perfectly met. God will not go on with us until the question between Himself and us is settled. He may deal with us in grace, but He does not set out with us on the journey until that is done which entirely satisfies His moral being. Before Israel began their journey God had passed through the land, and over them, in judgment. They had feasted in the happiest confidence under the protection of the blood of the lamb.

Before we commence the walk of faith, the question of God's judgment of sin must be a settled question. All that which is properly speaking Christian life, the path of experience, the life of faith, is based on God's having passed over us. He cannot pass over sin. What He does (working faith in us by His Spirit) is, He shews us the blood. Having awakened us to the consciousness of sin, before we are even beginning the journey of faith, He teaches us that He has settled the question about it once and for ever. "Your sins and iniquities I will remember no more." Then He becomes a God for us by the way. Faith sees and apprehends (not that there is no sin, no judgment, but) that by God's own work and word the question between itself and God is a settled question. Blood has been put between the soul and God - the blood of God's own Son. Never was there such a judgment of sin. I may see myself to be the vilest of sinners, but I see that which has perfectly met the demands of God's justice. "The blood shall be to you for a token," etc.

291 But then the soul has been accustomed to be a slave. After the children of Israel had seen the blood upon the door-posts, we find them trembling before the power of Pharaoh. They were on the road, but they were not out of Egypt. They were still in Pharaoh's territory. They had the knowledge of deliverance from the judgment of God that had fallen upon the firstborn (of the blood of the lamb as having met and sheltered them from that), yet they were still in conflict with Pharaoh. At the appointed time they set out on their journey. Leaving the world, they forsake Egypt, the place where they had been slaves; and Pharaoh, the prince of the world, pursues after them. Then comes dread and dismay. Till we know that the death of Christ has emancipated us from the country of Satan, we never know full rest of soul. Satan can make some claim on us till we can tell him that we are dead and risen with Christ. Because they had been slaves to the power of Pharaoh, and because they dreaded Pharaoh (and there is no wonder), they had not the faith that says, "If God be for us," etc. Pharaoh was stronger than Israel; but God was stronger than Pharaoh. When they lifted up their eyes and beheld the Egyptians marching after them, they were sore afraid. And they said unto Moses, "Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness." They were here in a worse condition as to their feelings than ever before. And it is so often with saints. We have need of the power of God with us and for us, and to know it too (as well as that when the judgment of God was against us the blood satisfied His judgment) in order to fulness of peace. I may have seen the virtue of Christ's blood to screen from judgment; but it is quite a different thing to have a constant settled certainty that God is for me.

292 The first thing, when God has awakened the soul to a sense of sin in His sight, is the question how it may be secured against its righteous judgment. Then it sees the blood on the door-posts, and gets peace. Therefore if I lose sight of the blood, God is still, to my soul's apprehension, a judge. Now that is not at all the proper place for a believer to be in. There is the justice of God, and "without shedding of blood, is no remission." If I can say that the blood which has been shed has satisfied that justice, I can see that God is no longer a judge - His justice has been satisfied. But if on the other hand His justice has to be satisfied, God is still a judge.

The Israelites got so terrified, distressed, and dismayed, so under the power of evil which was against them, that they got into the practical question in conflict whether God or Satan was to have them. And so constantly it is with saints. We have been such slaves to the power of Satan that we have not a consciousness of redemption to God. There was Pharaoh (Satan to us), the power of evil, pursuing them, and driving them up to this point, till death and judgment (of which the Red Sea is the symbol) stared them in the face. The question must be settled, if they could get through death and judgment. They could not get out of the difficulty by their own strength: the Red Sea was before them, and they could not get through it; Pharaoh and all his host behind them, and there was no escaping by another road. They were quite shut in, and brought to the sense that there must be a deliverer or it was all over with them. All this was exceedingly alarming in itself, but it was God's way of delivering. "And Moses said, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will shew to you to-day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall see them again no more for ever." You can neither go backward nor forward; you must just stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. "The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace."

The Lord steps in, and puts Himself between Satan and His people. "The angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them: and it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these; so that the one came not near the other all the night." Before He gives the comfort of deliverance, He always takes care that Satan does not touch us.

293 What comes to Israel then? Verse 21: The very thing that seemed to be their destruction becomes their salvation. "And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided, And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left." It was no battle for Israel against Pharaoh. "And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. And it came to pass, that in the morning watch the Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, and took off their chariot wheels, that they drave them heavily: so that the Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel: for the Lord fighteth for them against the Egyptians. And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen. And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians fled against it; and the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them: there remained not so much as one of them. But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore."

Death is the wages of sin; there is no escape; the Red Sea must be passed. "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." There is not one into whose hands this may fall, looking at it as our natural portion (I am not now speaking of Christ taking it for us, as He has for all those who believe; as it goes on to say, "So Christ was once offered," etc.), but must come there. It is the natural consequence of sin. No matter whether Egyptians or Israelites, death and judgment overtake all. The Red Sea must be passed. But if met in grace, as it was by Israel, we shall see that this very thing is our full and unmingled deliverance. There poor Israel stood and looked at the eternal overthrow of their enemies. When the Egyptians were Iying dead on the sea shore, they were safe, singing the song of redemption. True, the wilderness had to be passed, Amalek to be fought with, and the like; but they were out of Egypt. They were singing the song of deliverance in simple-hearted confidence; Egypt was left, and left for ever; the power of Pharaoh broken; not an Egyptian to be seen.

294 And now about the "assaying" to pass the Red Sea: it is that, alas! which many are doing at the present hour (in a better spirit indeed than these Egyptians, yet with an equally terrible result to themselves). I am not now speaking of the avowed enemies of God, though we are all by nature enemies of God; neither of those who are pursuing after the people of God; but of those who are "assaying" to pass through death and judgment in their own way. Just because they are in a Christian country and amongst Christians, they hope! with the name of Christ to get to heaven in company with the people of God. But each must pass through all that is in God's road there. If we have got up to the Red Sea, death and judgment must be passed; and where shall we be with all our Egyptian wisdom and learning, with all our chariots and horsemen, before death and judgment? Death and judgment must be passed through. If we are "assaying" to do this without God for us; if the question of death and judgment be not already and altogether settled (as it was for Israel when "by faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land"), it must be our destruction. People confess they have to die, and that after death there is a judgment, and that they must stand in that judgment; but if they are "assaying" to do this in their own strength, it must be then positive and infallible destruction.

We must all, converted or unconverted, give up the world. The veriest votary of the world must sooner or later give up its vanities and its pleasures, its hopes and its interests; he must give them up. The only difference is this, that the Christian gives them up for God; the worldling gives them up because he cannot keep them. The king of Egypt gave up Egypt and Egypt's court, as well as Moses; but there is this difference, that the king of Egypt gave it up for judgment, Moses gave it up for Christ.

295 The very hopes people have will be their ruin. They see God's Israel going to Canaan, and they hope to get there too. But they are going to heaven in their own way, and they are going to heaven in their own strength. What does the Psalmist say? Give thy servant a favourable judgment? No: "Enter not into judgment with thy servant? for in thy sight shall no man living be justified." They are hoping that it will be all well with them in the judgment; they take the name of Christ upon their lips, and think to get as safely to heaven as real believers. But they must pass through that which brings out into full light, clearly and evidently, what they really are; they must pass the barrier God has set in the way; they must go through death and judgment; and there, there will "no man living be justified."

God's rod of power was stretched out when Israel was passing through, and there was no sea (except as a wall on their right hand, and on their left, shutting out Pharaoh). Where do we find the ground of the confidence of faith? It is altogether of a different sort from that of the mere professor. That seal says the believer, I dare not go through it; I dare not put a foot in it, except at the bidding of God, and then there is no sea. Because people call themselves Christians, the mischief is that they expect to get through as well as the real people of God. Because the way has been opened to faith, so that faith can tread it, and walk through as on dry ground, they think they can go too. The path is opened to faith, and there is not a drop of water there; death is gone, and judgment is gone - all is over: it is dry ground, and God has made it so; but it is the people of faith alone who can tread it. That which is dry ground to Israel is sea to all besides. Let the Egyptians attempt to follow, and things take their natural course: death and judgment are there, and there shall be no man living justified. The believer has no such thought as that of going to stand in the judgment. When God steps in between him and Pharaoh, what does he see? The "salvation of the Lord." The very thing he dreaded becomes his security. Christ is there in the deep. He sees the judgment of God in all its weight and in all its power borne by Christ. "Deep calleth unto deep, at the noise of thy water-spouts: all thy waves and thy billows have gone over me." The waves and the billows of the Red Sea have gone over Christ. There I have seen death and judgment; I have seen the Son of God sweating great drops of blood because of my sins; I have seen the Son of God crying, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" I have seen Him made sin, bearing the judgment due to sinners; yes, I have seen all the weight and terror of those waves; but they have passed over Christ. It is the thing that saves me, is death; it is the thing that saves me, is judgment. Grace has found its way into death, and it is all "dry land." God takes me there, and says, "Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord."

296 I see this great and full salvation in a risen Christ; and what I get is, that death is mine. "All things," the apostle says, "are ours"; yes, death is "ours." Satan has meddled with death and judgment, and his power in death is completely broken. Like Pharaoh, he has been overcome in the last stronghold in which he held us captive. "Through death" Christ "has destroyed him that had the power of death," etc. Have the waves of the Red Sea, the billows of the wrath of God, gone over Christ? He has abolished all that was against us. Satan has come and meddled, and what has he done? He has put Christ to death; but the triumph of the prince of darkness was but the display of his defeat. He has come and grappled with Christ, put forth all his strength against Him, struck Him with the whole sung and power he had in death; but Christ has risen out of it on the other side, beyond his reach; and now, morally, death has no power for the believer.

As the captain of salvation Christ had come down and put Himself in the place of those over whom Satan had the power of death by the judgment of God. If He has taken their cause in hand, He must be treated according to their circumstances. He stood there, and felt all the weight and horror of the place. Knowing the terrors of the wrath of God, the bitterness of the cup He had to drink, He prayed that if it were possible the cup might pass from Him. But love had brought Him there: "by the grace of God" He tasted death. God has settled the question. All the account against me, the ground of Satan's accusations appealing to the righteous judgment of God, is gone. God's wrath has all passed over. The moment we come up on the other side of the Red Sea it is all done; we have only our song to sing - "The Lord has triumphed gloriously," etc. The Egyptians whom we have seen to-day we shall see again no more for ever.

297 Israel could sing this song before they took one step in the wilderness; they could say, "Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation. The people shall hear, and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina. Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away. Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of thy arm shall they be as still as a stone, till thy people pass over, O Lord, till the people pass over, which thou hast purchased. Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established. The Lord shall reign for ever and ever."

There was all possible difference marked now between poor Israel who had God for them, and the Egyptians who (with a great deal more human possibility of getting through) were driving on in the carelessness and folly of their own power, to be met and brought to a stand-still by the power of death and judgment; just like poor unconverted people, who, because they see Christians going to heaven, are "assaying" to go also; but without the knowledge of the blood (that which can alone settle the question of death and judgment, so that they should have God for them to step in between themselves and Pharaoh), as having been sprinkled on the houses in Egypt. To all such the very place of salvation will be the place of ruin.

Israel never sang this song when it was merely a question of blood on the door-posts. They did not sing it till they had taken four of five days' journey from the place of their bondage, and had been shut up between the Red Sea and Pharaoh. They were on the road, they had journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, and from Succoth to Etham, and they were encamped before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. They had left Egypt, and had brought over all the malice of Satan against them. But the power of God was with them and for them, and it was simply, "Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord" The controversy was between God and Pharaoh (not between Israel and Pharaoh); and it was soon settled. God would have us broken down to this. They had seen the blood upon the door-posts (there was not any question of sin between themselves and God; weak, feeble, and failing, they might be, but their sins were blotted out); they had set out in good earnest from Egypt, with their kneading-troughs bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders. Now they sing of accomplished redemption. They had the desert to tread, where there was no way, nor food, nor water; the manna had to be gathered day by day, and if the sun was up it was all gone. Spiritual diligence is needed: "The diligent soul shall be made fat." But they were redeemed, and they had God with them, and God for them, to lead and to guide them in the way.

298 Well, beloved, have our souls seen this redemption? Have we been brought yet to the Red Sea, and to feel that we could not tread the path opened to faith in our own strength; that if we attempted to do it we should be drowned? And have we found that it is no sea, but dry ground, that there is not a drop of water left there? If we have known the blood of Christ as our only hope before God, looking at Him as a judge; if we have known that we must leave Egypt and tread the wilderness on our way to the promised rest, we may still be in measure unable to say, "Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed," etc. That does not mean that we are not on the road, but that we do not know, properly speaking, God to be for us. We may as sinners have looked simply to the blood; but if we have not fully understood the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ as emancipating us from the country and power of Satan, we have not stood still to see the salvation of the Lord. The waves and the billows of God's wrath have gone over the head of Christ; and He has made it to be no sea. He has come down into the very place of wrath on account of sin; and He has risen out of it, and all is over. The thunderbolt has come on the head of Christ, and the storm is over for faith. Nothing gives such a sense of the horribleness of sin, nothing is such a testimony to the judgment of God against sin, as seeing Christ under it; and yet nothing is such a testimony to the love of God towards the poor sinner.

Balaam, hired of Balak, and used of God

Numbers 22 - 24

J. N. Darby.

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It is a wonderful thing to see the way in which, through the overruling power of God, the efforts of Satan against the people of God only bring them out the more distinctly in their own place of blessing.

We find in these chapters the connection of the name of God with the power of Satan. Some of the instruments which he uses may be, and some of them may not be, conscious that it is Satan's power which actuates them. Nothing could be greater confusion than that which here passes between Balaam and Balak.

Balaam, we know, was a thoroughly wicked man. (See Rev. 2: 14; 2 Peter 2: 15, 16; Jude 11.) Nothing could exceed the wickedness and perverseness of his ways. And yet he is called a prophet; as it is said, "Who loved the wages of unrighteousness, but was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking with man's voice forbad the madness of the prophet." We know that he was acquainted with and used enchantments (chap. 24: 1); and yet, when he comes to Balak, he says, "Lo, I am come unto thee: have I now any power at all to say anything? the word that God putteth in my mouth, that shall I speak," chap. 22: 38. Balak was looking for the power of evil against the children of Israel, God's people; and yet looking for it from God; chap. 23: 27. There was a sort of looking to the power and intervention of God, although God was not known; and thus all was confusion.

And so in the world; even where Satan is working, and where in those who are intelligent in evil he is looked to as working, there is often a certain vague looking to God. Thus there is complete confusion - man's will being Satan's will, and yet with a certain owning of God.

Chapter 22: 1-6. We see the enmity of the world against the people of God brought out, and especially against the power of the people of God. God's power was with His people, and this drew out the enmity of Satan. When the Son of God came into the world, the whole energy of Satan's power and enmity was directed against Him; so afterwards against the apostles, those who had "turned the world upside down," Acts 17: 6. But God's power was with and for His people See the song of Moses; Ex. 15: 14-16. God had redeemed His people with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm from the power and bondage of Satan, and had brought them to Himself; Ex. 19: 4. When this is the case, Satan seeks to force others into an open opposition to the people of God. Their presence becomes intolerable to their enemies. But the effect of it all is, to bring out God's people as being under His eye and care. The very wish that God should curse Israel only brought out the more His distinct blessing upon them "And he [Balaam] took up his parable, and said, Balak the king of Moab hath brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the east, saying, Come, curse me Jacob, and come, defy Israel. How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom Jehovah hath not defied? For from the tops of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations," chap. 23: 7-9. Here we find the effect of Satan's opposition was to bring out into the clearest manifestation that they were not of the world.

300 So long as Israel were living in Egypt, there was nothing at all that drew out the thoughts and feelings of Balak and Balaam against them, or that made them intolerable to the world; but the chief point of the testimony to their blessing is that they were a peculiar people, separated from all other people unto God, according to that word, "Jehovah hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people," Deut. 26: 18.

Verse 11 and onward: Balaam, at the suggestion of Balak, seeks to curse Israel from "another place." He tells Balak, "Stand here by thy burnt offering, while I go and meet  -  yonder." He does not seem to know whom he was going to meet. It is all the most thorough and perfect confusion He says, "While I go and meet  -  yonder." But there Jehovah meets him, and puts a word in his mouth proving the firmness of God's purpose concerning His people. "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? Behold, I have received commandment to bless." Balaam would gladly have altered this testimony of God; but he says, "He hath blessed, and I cannot reverse it."

Then comes the testimony to the completeness of God's justification of His people: "He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel." This is not a mere abstract statement of truth. Israel had acted so failingly and unbelievingly during their wilderness journey, as to bring out from Moses, the meekest man upon the face of the earth, the expression, "Ye have been rebellious against Jehovah from the day that I knew you," Deut. 9: 24. The result of the judgment of the man of God about them after forty years' experience was, that they were a stiff-necked and rebellious people; but the judgment of God in reference to their justification was altogether opposite to his judgment of the moral condition of the people.

301 It is most important in applying this to ourselves to draw the distinction clearly between these two things; the judgment of the Spirit of God within me as to what we are practically, as to the evil of the flesh, etc., and the testimony of the Spirit as to what God's judgment is in reference to us in Christ. We often find the soul forming through the Spirit of God a righteous judgment about itself, and forgetting that the ground on which it stands before God, the resting-place of faith, is what He has wrought for us in the Lord Jesus. The Spirit of God judges sin in me by virtue of its character as seen in the light of the holiness of God, but it makes me know that I am not judged for it, because Christ has borne the judgment for me. It is no question of examining the details of either good or evil that we find in ourselves; it is altogether a question of the efficacy and value of Christ's work, and of His acceptance. We either stand under the broad condemnation of God, sinners dead in trespasses and sins, or are "accepted in the beloved." Although it is most important that we should judge ourselves, as it is said, "If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged," etc. (1 Cor. 11: 31, 32); yet this is quite a distinct thing from the judgment which God forms about us through the work of Christ. At the end of a long course of failure in the children of Israel, after their perverseness has been fully proved, God "hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel." Where the soul of a believer confounds the judgment of the Spirit within and about himself with the judgment of God through the work of Christ for him, there can be no peace.

"Jehovah his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them." The distinguishing mark of the people of God is, that He is in them and among them. (See 1 Cor. 14: 25.) The utter feebleness of the saints is shewn wherever this is not the case. It is a blessed truth, that God has for ever saved and justified His children; but this is in order that He may "dwell among them," Ex. 29: 45, 46.

302 "God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn." I dare not meddle with them, Balaam says; I have too much understanding of what they are, to do so; they are connected with God, with His strength and power. "Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!" According to what time? The time when Israel was faint and weak, discouraged by reason of the length of the way, and none of their enemies on the other side of Jordan conquered. Their enemies were much mightier than they (Deut. 7: 1, etc.), and yet he says, "What hath God wrought! Behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion: he shall not lie down until he eat of the prey and drink the blood of the slain." The moment he sees them under the eye of God he says that.

"And Balak said unto Balaam, Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all. But Balaam answered and said unto Balak, Told not I thee, saying, All that Jehovah speaketh, that I must do? And Balak said unto Balaam, Come, I pray thee, I will bring thee unto another place; peradventure it will please God that thou mayest curse me them from thence And Balak brought Balaam unto the top of Peor, that looketh toward Jeshimon," etc.

"And when Balaam saw that it pleased Jehovah to bless Israel, he went not, as at other times, to seek for enchantments, but he set his face towards the wilderness. And Balaam lifted up his eyes, and he saw Israel abiding in his tents according to their tribes; and the Spirit of God came upon him. And he took up his parable, and said," etc. (chap. 24: 1-9). He now begins to look at the people of God themselves, and sees Israel abiding in their tents in their own proper loveliness The sight of the fairness of God's people thus is the occasion of the Spirit of God speaking as He does (v. 5 and onwards), "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel! As the valleys are they spread forth," etc. He looks at the people of God themselves, and sees their beauty in the vision of the Almighty. There were Israel occupied with their own foolish thoughts below; and this scene was going on above.

303 So it is with us, beloved friends: we are occupied with our own (ofttimes) foolish thoughts; the accuser is speaking against us; and yet nothing can prevail, because God works for us. I am not now speaking of God justifying us, but of much more; and that is, the beauty of the order, and the never-failing source of refreshment of God's people -  all my springs are in thee." God brings this out most fully through the evil desire of Balak and Balaam.

We see in these chapters, man working according to Satan's will, and yet looking to the power and the intervention of God. Hence all is confusion: and it will ever be so. But the moment the children of God get into their right place before God, there is no confusion, no perplexity: the path is as simple as possible.

May the Holy Spirit enable us to realise as our own that peculiar feature of the church of God, and that which is the power of their holiness, and of their comfort too: "The Lord their God is with them, and the shout of a king is among them."

The Rejected Man

Genesis 3

J. N. Darby.

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It is a good thing, seeing the great levity of our hearts, that we should all of us sometimes look at our origin, at what we were, and at the actual corruption of the stock whence we are derived. Thus shall we see what God has done, and the revelation He has made of Himself in what we are.

The Israelite was instructed to remember the day that he came out of Egypt all the days of his life (Deut. 16: 2); and the confession made by him when presenting his basket of the firstfruits of the land was this: "a Syrian ready to perish was [not I, but] my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous; and the Egyptians evil entreated us, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage; and when we cried unto Jehovah the God of our fathers, Jehovah heard our voice, and looked on our affliction, and our labour, and our oppression; and Jehovah brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders: and he hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey," Deut. 26: 5 -10.

Our first father hath sinned. Thus the fountain was defiled. Evil has abounded, and sin has taken its free, full course. We learn in all this scene in the garden what has distorted the natural conscience, in circumstances so plain that we can say what they are. Now it is hard to learn what we are, because that which has made us sinners in heart has made us sinners in understanding also. As the conscience is affected and renewed by the Holy Spirit, so is it perverted by sin. There may be a false standard of good and evil, and thus blindness through that (as a law of darkness), as well as corruption of heart. Paul says, "I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, which thing I also did," etc. (Acts 26: 9-11). And the time was come, the Lord forewarns, when those that killed the disciples would "think they did God service," John 16: 2.

The book of Genesis gives us, in the first dealings of God with man, the first grand elements of truth with exceeding freshness and energy. All that was said by Satan to Eve (except "Ye shall not surely die," v. 4), was in a certain sense true. That was not true. And this is the way he deceives. He does not present evil in its own hideous garb, but in a plausible, insinuating manner. He can tell truth if it subserve sin - much attractive truth, so that he win attention by it; but he never uses it to lead to obedience. Both that which was spoken by Adam and Eve, and that which was spoken by Satan, shews the exceeding deceitfulness of sin. Where God has not His place in the soul, in the assertion of our independence, our weakness and inconsistency open the way to the guile of the enemy, and the mind does not see its departure from truth. "I said in my haste, All men are liars," Ps. 116: 11. So again, Micah 7 (where there is every kind of corruption), "The best of them is as a briar: the most upright is as a thorn hedge . . . . Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide: keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom," etc. They had departed from God. To learn what sin is to any purpose is to learn the source from which we have departed. We have departed from God.

305 Notice, the first thing introduced here is the subtility of Satan. It was not flagrant open sin and wickedness when Eve replied to it; it is not, I am the devil come to deceive you. He puts the present pleasantness of the thing, and with subtility inquires, "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" The Holy Ghost does not say the devil was wicked, but He says, "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"

The woman entered into conversation with him, and she was clean gone. This questioning what God had done was a calling in question of His goodness and love; just the temptation to mistrust God. 'Hath God said so and so?' is in effect, 'Well, do not believe Him, He has kept back something worth the having.' The moment Eve entered into the discussion, and parleyed with the serpent, God was altogether gone from her; and all was gone.

She ought to have said, Why ask me? Surely He hath done whatsoever it hath pleased Him to do. A right mind would have rejected the temptation at once; a true heart would have fallen back upon God. "He that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not," 1 John 5: 18. Satan "touched" Eve. He had got his question into her mind, and she had departed from her strength; for God had lost His place in her soul. When Eve began questioning God's goodness and answering Satan's question, she was putting herself above God, and judging God, and thus putting herself into the hands of Satan. Had Eve been worshipping God, Satan could not have "touched" her; but, judging God, she took the place of independence and thus Satan had power over her, and, being wiser than she, he deceived her.

306 We cannot judge God's ways without judging God: we may adore Him in His ways, but the moment we judge or question that which He has revealed, we get above God, we make ourselves gods, and put God in the place of the creature as subject to us. This brings our souls under the power of every one that is more clever than ourselves; we are in their hands, and they can do what they please with us. Now the devil is more clever than we are (the woman was no match for him). Therefore we ought to keep God ever in His place of God in our souls, lest Satan should make gods of us, and set us judging God Himself. If God be displaced, we get into the place of those who are irresponsible, and as creatures become the prey of any more cunning than ourselves.

The soul, when first awakened, finds its place before God. It may not all at once have peace and joy, but this at any rate it learns - to submit to God, and to be willing to be taken up anyhow, so that God will but have it at all. How does God keep this His place in our souls? Because it is the constant aim of Satan to slip in between God and our souls. In order to meet Satan, we must get into the place of entire responsibility to God. God did not hold His place in Eve's mind, or she would not have been questioning His love, and judging Him: there was the want of submission. And may it not be that there is the want of submission in us, that our minds are questioning and judging, and not submitting to God's righteousness?

Notice also that Eve was in full recognition of God's command. "And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die," v. 2, 3. There was the clear and definite knowledge of what God had said to her. So with ourselves. We have all heard about God, and about His way of salvation; yes, many of us have before our minds much of scriptural knowledge. But this did not put Eve beyond the power of Satan. Neither will it us - it may only the more immediately put us into the hands of Satan. We all know what God has said about our sins (we may not believe it perhaps: that is another thing), that "there is none righteous, no, not one." We all know that Christ came to save the lost; but then, if we do not know that we are lost, this knowledge, remaining without faith, does not take us out of the hands of Satan, but really gives Satan power over us. We must have delivering power from God before we can be out of Satan's power. We must have conviction of sin before we are off the ground of sin.

307 The very moment that Satan got Eve to listen to one breath of his suggestions, that moment he took God's place in her soul. You cannot suppose she would have parleyed with the devil, and have listened to him as to somebody speaking to her as her friend, if she had not had confidence in him. So that she did trust in Satan. The truth is, she held not with God, but with Satan. She looked upon Satan as a better friend than God. Eve was not content. Now the enemy of our souls may not be met by the simplicity of truth, because of the want of simplicity of our minds.* Her reply was truth, but it was truth not held in communion with God. She thought God had kept back something that was competent to make her happy. It was not a settled thing with her, that God knew and had provided all that was needed for her happiness. And have we no desires for anything not actually given to us? There was distrust that God had power in Himself to make her happy, and therefore she was desiring and seeking it somewhere else. This was the beginning of it all. Thus led to man's willingly subjecting himself to the dominion of Satan. And now we see the world bent on providing itself with pleasures apart from God.

{*According as our minds are not spiritual, and in any sort affect anything not the object of the Spirit, to which they are not led by Him, therein the simplicity of truth fails to keep them, and the power of the enemy can avail itself of its subtility against them. If there were any measure of positive though mixed spirituality, apparent rejection of the word would not be possible. But Satan does not so proceed: he does not therefore propose disobedience, but modifies obedience, proposes preliminaries to it, or substitutes something instead.}

308 And how is it with you, dear friends? Let me ask, Is this your case? Are you wanting something that God will not allow you to have? Man naturally does not believe that God is competent to make him happy, and therefore he desires the things of the world, supposing that they can make him happy. This to the end is the subtle state of the flesh, even in God's children; not trusting God to make one happy. It is a mercy, in a certain sense, that man must earn his bread with the sweat of his brow (for God is not mocked; and when He said, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground," etc., what a store of accompanying sorrow and toil came in as the result of man's disobedience!), since that prevents the giving up of our poor race to the unbounded gratification of their desires away from God.

When the soul is distressed or cast down, that is not in itself sin. But sin comes in when there is distrust of God. Satan gets entrance for his full power in the soul the moment there is a shade of distrust of God. God will be trusted in the confidence of His love. Eve had the highest place in the world; she was surrounded by blessing, and possessed of actual happiness (man's state in Eden was one of actual happiness, though not of spiritual power such as the saints now have); but the very moment she felt distrust in God's competency to make her happy, it was all gone. Distrust in God is the positive condition of every natural man: all are seeking their happiness in something or other, if they are not trusting in God to make them happy. It is a solemn thought that one-half of the world is employed in providing the means of pleasure for the other half.

Satan was trusted by Eve. If God is not trusted, Satan most certainly will be. Man, standing alone in his independence, is not independent, but the slave of every man,* the slave of sin and Satan. Like Eve he trusts Satan rather than God. She hoped on his authority that there was a doubt about the fulfilment of God's threatenings. God had said, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," chap. 2: 17. He said, "Ye shall not surely die," impugning the truth of God's word. And so he says now. Men say in their hearts that sin will not bear the consequences God has said it will - "The wages of sin is death," Rom. 6: 23. No man could go on if he believed what God said, instead of believing Satan. The happiness of man is faith in Satan's lie in this respect. They are proceeding in the same course, listening to that old detected lie of Satan. But God has said, "Ye shall surely die," and there is an end of all pleasures. So that all the devil can do is to hide the consequences of sin. He could not keep men going on if he did not keep out of their sight that truth, "Ye shall surely die." It is not that terror of it would change their hearts; but if they did really believe it they would not have one happy day here. Where is the earthly happiness these words will not blast - "Ye shall surely die"? But men believe what Satan says, and disbelieve what God says. "The lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life," have present enjoyment connected with them - man rushes to take the bait, willingly selling himself to Satan, though in so doing he is morally conscious that he is not acting according to the commandments of God. Observe, I am not here speaking of gross sin, but of disbelief in God Himself.

{*Look at the state man is really in, as regards the trust he puts in man rather than God. If his neighbour should ask him to do anything, though his conscience may tell him God hates what his neighbour wants him to do, still, rather than disoblige his neighbour, he will sin against God. He finds it harder to refuse his neighbour than not to walk with God; it would distress him more to refuse him either in going to ungodly places of amusement or gratification, or indulging in known sin. I say it would distress him more to refuse his neighbour to join in such scenes and diversions than to break the holy commandments of God, and to despise the sacrifice of God's Son.}

309 Let us see the next step. God has lost His character in the heart of man; all man's confidence in God is gone: and Satan the liar and arch-deceiver is believed. Now the devil can say whatever he likes, he having the confidence of the heart instead of God "God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, they your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil," v. 5. He began by insinuating that God knew the fruit would make her happy, but grudged to give it; then he questioned the truthfulness of God; now he adds, ye shall be as gods," tempting man to assume the privileges of God Himself.*

{*Thus there were three things in which the devil desired that man should dishonour God; first, as to His grace; secondly, His truth; thirdly, the majesty of His Godhead.}

How entirely had Eve forgotten every thought of God? Her soul should have recoiled with horror from the proposition. "What, I account myself as God! I take this glory to myself, and cast off God! Am I to set about being a thief - to take from God His glory, and become like Him - I, creature, and indebted to Him for everything?" How different the way of Him who, "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant "! etc. (Phil 2: 6). But when we are once away from God, we have no spiritual sense of sin at all. Eve had no sense of the sin of leaving God out, and making herself the centre. And this is ever the result of exalting man, of looking at God's ways through man's telescope. Dependence is true exaltation in a creature, when the object of it is right. It looks up, and is exalted above itself. See David (Psalm 8) the greatest philosopher. But Eve was so willing to get rid of God that she sought by robbery to make herself equal with God. She may not have known the extent of the presumption of her confidence in Satan's lie: but the secret of it all was this, that she had forgotten God, and thought only of herself - she had got self as a centre, and God was not in all her thoughts. When God is not our centre, all that by which we can exalt ourselves becomes the motive and principle of our hearts.

310 "The man is become as one of us, to know good and evil." This is God's account of fallen man: Satan never deceives by a mere abstract lie. But supposing Eve could have known that it was the truth, it would have been only an added deception, because it would not have been the truth in power in the conscience. Her heart having departed from God, her then seeing it to be truth would only have added to her darkness. I am doubly blind if the truth does not lead my heart towards God and put me under God.

Eve goes on in the way of sin. "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat," in positive and known disobedience to God's command, acting on the present enjoyment without any regard to consequences. And now she becomes the active instrument of sin, "and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat," v. 6. The man was not deceived (1 Tim. 2: 14); but more shame to him in following the woman (who was deceived), contrary to the truth of God. Natural affection often becomes the means of drawing the heart away from God.

311 "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked: and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons," v. 7. Here we find conscience at work, not conscience towards God, but that of shame, the conscience that drove out the accusers of the adulterous woman; John 8. The guilty pair have the sense of the shame of their nakedness, and they seek to hide it the one from the other. The divine work in enlightening the conscience gives a man to see the guilt of sin, the exceeding sinfulness of sin; but sin has its shame as well as its guilt, and the natural conscience always seek to hide the shame of its sin with some fig-leaf covering.

This is no proof of conversion; it is only the main proof that man has got into a bad conscience, and cannot get out of it. Adam and Eve dare not look at each other, nor yet to God. They cannot bear the condition they have got into, and they cannot change it, therefore they hide it. But do not mistake this for repentance. Shame merely drives them to hide from, and excuse themselves to, God. And so with ourselves: as long as the shame of sin continues, we try to hide it, to get away from it; but it only drives us farther and farther from God. It is not a divinely-taught conscience, because we are more concerned about the shame before men than the sinfulness before God. Until God has the place which man now occupies in our hearts, there is no conversion: the soul is not looking to God. We may be able to reason about the tender love and grace of God, but our sense of the guilt of sin should ever be deeper than that of its shame. When the conscience is before God, guilt brings sorrow; and yet we can as sinners reckon upon the love and the kindness of God.

And now the dreadful moment arrives when they hear the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. "And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden," v. 8. The Lord comes not with a fiery sword in judgment as yet;* but still He comes as an "adversary" in some wise.

{*Man is the only intelligent being who is still alive in successful apostasy. What do we find in the case of the fallen angels? Their sin brought its immediate and irremediable punishment. Man, man alone, is abiding in unbelief; condemned indeed, but still the execution of the sentence is suspended.}

Thus Jesus came, seeking an account of the fruit produced. "Agree with thine adversary, quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him." Christ was saying, I am yet in the way with you. "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." The axe was laid to the root of the tree; Luke 3: 9. Therefore the only thing to be done was to agree with Him who had the right against them, "lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily, I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing."

312 "And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him Where art thou?" (v. 9). How came you not to be with me! "Enoch walked with God," Gen. 5: 22. God had no occasion to say to him, "Where art thou?" "And he [Adam] said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself," v. 10. If the Lord were here, those who are ignorant of His grace would go out one by one, like the accusers of the poor adulterous woman. When Christ spoke to their conscience in those words, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her," they walked out from His presence one by one (not all together, lest it should be noticed that they were sinners). They were careful of their character before men, but not before God. Had they been willing to confess their sin and to submit themselves to God's righteousness, they would have stayed. It was not that the Lord used any reproach to those Pharisees, but He fixed the sin on their consciences. So God merely says here to Adam, How comes it that you are not with me?

And how comes it, dear friends, that you have found bitterness and sorrow in the world? You will say, perhaps, it is because sin is in the world; but it is sin you have got into. You talk of a good conscience: the best conscience of a sinner only leads him to get as far away as he can from the presence of God. Do you call it a good conscience here in Adam, getting away from God and then judging for himself about his state? "I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." And it is thus even with the saint if he gets into sin; there is darkness in the sin, and fear in the conscience after the sin. And when he is convinced he must get back again into the presence of God: and there is not unreserved confession, he seeks to excuse himself. You will always find conscience, where the heart is wrong, tends to the invention of deceit. What did Adam say? I am guilty; pardon me, O Lord? No, he practises deceit.

313 "And he [the Lord] said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me" [not "my wife": in seeking to excuse himself, he casts the blame in reality upon God. It was Thou who gavest me this woman, and] "she gave me of the tree, and I did eat," v. 11, 12.

God takes no notice of this. He turns to the woman; "And the Lord God said, What is this that thou hast done? Eve now learns her lesson from Adam, as Adam had learned his of her before: "And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat," v. 13. All this is the truth; but conscience is not before God.

God, when He comes to deal with them about their sin, at once takes them up on the ground of their own excuses. "And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life: thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee," etc. (v. 17-19). The very excuse he gave was the height of his sin, and the very thing by which God condemned him. So also with the woman. Out of their own mouths were they judged. The plea of temptation was only in fact saying that they preferred their own lusts to God; that they listened to the devil's word more than to God's commandment.*

{*In this the world most accurately follows the example of our first parents. They sin, and then plead, as an excuse or extenuation of their guilt, temptation, natural desire, expediency, etc. But we rest on God's truth when we declare that there is no excuse that man makes, which is not in fact the ground of his condemnation, yea, the very reason of it. See in the parable of the marriage supper, for instance, the excuse those who were invited gave for not attending: "I have bought a piece of ground, and must needs go and see it, I pray thee have me excused" Where was the "needs be"? Only just this - they preferred their own gratification to the reception of the Lord's invitation.}

Still God says nothing about this at first. But what does He? He brings in grace. When He does take up the question, the man had already departed from Him - as a sinner he had departed from Him? before God came to judge him for the sin - and the effect of conscience is to drive away from God. Why does the infidel delight in infidelity? Because he dislikes God. God therefore takes up man in grace, and brings in promise. But He pronounces judgment upon what they have done. He does not take up grace and pass lightly over sin. Man always begins with what he will do, but God begins with what He has done. The truth always looks at what I am in the sight of God.

314 Having traced up the evil to its source, God goes at once to the serpent as the author of it; but in pronouncing sentence He deals with Adam as lost (already the condition of man was that he was lost: God comes to no question about goodness; and there is no promise made to Adam as in the flesh), and sets up the Second Adam. "And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel," v. 14, 15.

There is where grace comes in. There is the root of the evil, and there is the sole remedy to set aside what man and the devil had done. He sets up the Lord Jesus Christ Himself "the seed of the woman," as the bruiser of the serpent's head. What is the meaning of the term probation, as applied to our present state? "To save the lost" settles that. Grace brings out man's misery and sin in the presence of God, and brings Christ in. Man is under the power of Satan, decent or indecent. The decent, moral, unconverted man is only the more deceived, but the decent slave of Satan. God takes up the full power of the evil, and sets up His power for remedy in the Lord Jesus Christ. Man is not mended in his condition. God deals with Him as already set aside and lost, and, without any proposition of mending the evil, brings in and sets up the Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Adam, as the destroyer of the works of the devil; 1 John 3: 8.

And where was He to be found? Where does God bring in His glory? The grand fact is that it is "the seed of the woman." The spring of the evil was in the woman, and out of her was to come the deliverer. There is the glory of divine grace. Out of the eater cometh forth meat, and out of the strong sweetness; Judges 14: 14. The poor wretched woman was to give birth to the Saviour of the world. God does not slur over sin, but brings out all its vileness, and sets up Christ as the Second Adam in the very place of sin - His birth-place was in the death that sin had brought into the world. "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord," Rom. 5: 20, 21.

315 And mark the perfect contrast of the obedience of Christ! Not as the first Adam (from the place of the creature exalting himself to be as God), He from a high place takes a low. "Being in the form of God, he thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross," Phil. 2: 6-8. He lays not the burden on the weak one, but bears her sin. Instead of saying, "The woman that thou gavest me," etc. (v. 12), He loved the church, and gave Himself for it; took her sins upon Himself, and came into the depth of her sins. "He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all things," etc. (Eph. 4: 10), that in His blessed grace the greatest, the chief of sinners, might be able to find a resting-place, not in their own wretched excuses, but in His divine love.

Cain, his World, and his Worship

Genesis 4

J. N. Darby.

<12032E> 316

It is a terrible history of man's hopelessness, the history God has given us in His word (I say history, because we have a setting forth of his sins and failures from the beginning); but then the blessed grace of God is shewn forth in it, because it tells of Christ.

It is not simply that man's heart is evil - that is true; but it has been proved evil in the presence of everything that ought to have restrained its evil. God has given us the history of man's ways, and of His dealings with man (not merely stated certain dogmas); and in whatever way He has dealt with man, we find the evil of man's heart breaking out, and following its course, spite of all.

Man, having sinned against God, is turned out of paradise; Gen. 3. The next thing we read of is the outrageous wickedness of man against his brother - Cain, Adam's first-born, slaying Abel; Gen. 4. Then comes the flood sweeping away a whole generation of evil-doers; Gen. 7. Mercy shewn to Noah (he and his house saved through the judgment), immediately afterwards we find him drunk in his tent, and Ham, his son, mocking and dishonouring him; Gen. 9.

God speaks to Israel at Sinai, thundering with His voice His righteous demands on man; yet, awful as the presence of God is (and even "Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake"), before Moses comes down from the mount, the people have made the golden calf, and broken the first link that binds them to the service of Jehovah; Ex. 32. In the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ we see God visiting the Jew, and dealing with sinners in grace in the Person of His Son - Him they slay and hang on a tree; Acts 5: 30. Israel's history (man's under the most favourable circumstances) is one scene of violence and evil all the way through; so that Stephen (in testifying to them after their rejection of Christ and the descent of the Holy Ghost in witness of Christ's glory) says they were but doing as their fathers had ever done. "Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye," Acts 7: 51.

Notwithstanding all the dealings of God with man - the voice of God and the judgments of God - man is so hopelessly bad, that the nearer he is brought to God - the more culture there is bestowed upon him by God - only the more is manifested, and that in darker characters, the sin and desperate wickedness of his heart, working spite of all in sight even of God's judgments.

317 In the sin in the garden we get the character of man's evil as against God; Cain's sin is sin against a neighbour.* Of course both are sins against God (all sin is against God); but whilst in the sin of Adam and Eve we see lust and disobedience, in Cain's there is something more - it is sin as exhibited against a neighbour.

{*"What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind: and thy neighbour as thyself." (Luke 10: 26, 27.)}

Man (as to his actual condition) is a sinner cast out of paradise, already out of the presence of God; and he ought to have the consciousness of being out, and that the only way of getting back to God is through His Son. We are not in paradise. We have got out of it some way or other; and we are in a world which is under judgment, and where death is staring us in the face. Adam had just been driven out of paradise, and Cain must have had (through Adam) the remembrance that there was a time when man was not out of paradise, when he heard God's voice in the garden without fear, when he had not a bad conscience, and when he was without toil. Saints or sinners (in our own eyes), we have been driven out of Eden, and we are in the wilderness utterly excluded from God's presence. We ought to have the consciousness of being out, and of the misery of our condition; but alas! we have lost all remembrance of the place in which we once were, and have become familiarised to the ruin and desolation consequent upon sin. Still it is true and we cannot deny it, that we have got out of paradise, and are in a world constantly under judgment. We may try to make the best of the world; but we must all feel that something has come in, something that has brought in death and judgment. Happiness cannot be associated with sin, any more than sin can be associated with God. As for man, though he seeks to buoy himself up with his sins, and to delude himself with the lie of Satan, sink he must, sooner or later, under the power of the sin and death that has come in. He is just spending his energies to make the world pleasant without God, and himself comfortable and rich in it, to die out of it.

318 The world he cannot keep. He may build a city for himself, as Cain did (v. 17), and call it after his own name (Cain called his city after the name of his son); but it will be with him as David speaks, "Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling-places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names. Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not; he is like the beasts that perish. This their way is their folly; yet their posterity approve their saying. Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them," Psa. 49.

Cain did not like the sense of the wrath of God lying upon him.* Gone out from the presence of Jehovah (v. 16), he had become so great in the earth that he could build a city. Man never likes to be in the truth of his condition. Cain likes not to be "a fugitive and a vagabond," and he tries to build a city, and he does build a city, in the endeavour to make the world as pleasant as he can without God. It might be said, What harm was there in building a city? In the first place there would never have been the necessity for this in paradise. Moreover it was a proof of insensibility as to this sin against God, it shewed quiet contentment under the effect of that punishment which at first he had felt was greater than he could bear; it was the last expression of total alienation of heart and affection from God. Driven out from the presence of God, he sets about to establish himself. He seeks for himself a home, not with God in heaven, but on the earth, from which God had pronounced him "cursed." He makes himself master of a city, where God had made him "a vagabond."

{*"And Jehovah said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth [not merely, "Cursed is the ground for thy sake," etc. as to Adam], which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand: when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto Jehovah, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth," etc. (v. 9-14).}

And mark further the faculty man has of making himself happy in his estrangement from God. We find amongst the family of Cain not only "the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle" (v. 20), but "the father of such as handle the harp and the organ" (v. 21), and "the instructer of ever artificer in brass and iron" (v. 22). Now there is nothing wrong in working brass and iron; neither is there any harm in sweet sounds (we read in the book of Revelation of harpers in heaven); but what Cain was doing was this - he was making the world pleasant without God.

319 These are the efforts of man, who has settled himself down in a world where judgment has placed him, and who is trying to make himself as happy and the world as pleasant as he can without God, till death and judgment overtake him. If I saw a man who had committed some wicked crime against his father, the next day playing on musical instruments, should I say there was no harm in that? Such was Cain's world. And is it not like your* world? Is there any difference between your soul and Cain's world? Is it a better world because God's Son has been crucified in it? Has that act on the part of man made it more acceptable to God? (because that has happened since the days of Cain). Where is the difference? They had their "harps and organs"; and so have you. They had their "artificers in brass and iron"; and so have you. It was Cain's world then away from God? and it is Cain's world still. The like tree produces like fruit. Man is carrying on the world by himself, and for himself, endeavouring to keep God out of sight, as much as possible to do without Him, lest He should get at his conscience and make him miserable.

{*The believer is "not of the world "; his home and citizenship are in heaven, and his walk down here on the earth should be in the distinct consciousness, and in the distinct confession, that he "seeks a country" (Heb. 11: 14). This is of the last importance: anything of the earth is of that which rejected Christ.}

Can you find any difference between Cain's world without God and your world without God? You may object that you are not without God, that you are called by the name of Christ - are Christians, and have a religion also. Cain had a religion. He was a religious man, as religious as Abel. But he had no love to God; he had no faith. He was a religious man, but not a godly man.

It is a strange introduction to this picture, the setting forth of Cain as a worshipper, and a worshipper moreover of the true God. We read, "And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto Jehovah," v. 2, 3.

320 There is no mention made of false gods before the flood. Cain was a worshipper of the one living and true God. Soon after the flood there were idolaters; and then God called out a separate people as witnesses of His character to make good His name and grace. But there is not any mention made of false gods before Joshua 24: 6-8, "Your fathers worshipped other gods": a fresh crime, a fresh snare of the enemy, which called for new measures on the part of God. Satan had come and slipped himself in between man and God, and was the one that was really worshipped, though under the name of gods; and the call of Abram was the call and witness of "the most high God."

Your "artificers in brass and iron" are worshippers of the true God. So was Cain. And he took some pains too. He offered that which he had been toiling for in "the sweat of his brow." He was a "tiller of the ground," and he "brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto Jehovah." He did not bring that which cost him nothing (2 Sam. 24: 24); nay, his worship cost more of toil than that of Abel. He came in the way of nature, offering the fruit of his toil and labour; and you have done the same. This is ever the character of false worship. Religiousness does not take a man out of the character of Cain; it the rather brings him into it. So that you have not got one step in that way out of the character God has marked as that of Cain.

Observe, I do not charge you with being hypocrites, for I do not say that Cain was not sincere. There is no doubt indeed of his sincerity; but then his sincerity only evidenced the blind hardness of his heart. Human sincerity means nothing; it is often but the greatest proof of the desperate darkness in which a man is. Those were sincere of whom Christ said, "He that killeth you will think he doeth God service." Saul of Tarsus was thoroughly sincere when he thought he "ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth." He consulted moreover the chief priests and elders, the religious authorities of the day. He was zealous for his religion, and thoroughly sincere as a man, but totally blind as to God and the things of Christ, thinking to do God service by fighting against and slaying His saints. Cain in his sincerity brought to the Lord that which cost him something, that which was the fruit of his toil. He came to God as a worshipper, and in so doing offered to God that which he had brought honestly as a man, but which proved him to be ignorant of his state as a sinner.

321 What then is man to hope for? you will say. He is to hope for nothing. Did he not get out of paradise because of sin? what possible ground can he have as a sinner for hoping to get into heaven?

What ground had Cain for hoping that God would accept either himself or his offering? God had driven man out of paradise because of sin: what ground had he to expect by the works of his hands to get back into the presence of God? You may say, It was not the works of his hands, but the fruits of God's creation. But what would you think of the man who was hoping to get into heaven by offering his corn and his wine to God, supposing, like Simon Magus (Acts 8), that the gift of God may be bought? Why, it would shew that his conscience was as hard as the nether millstone, utterly insensible to the condition he was in, as well as to the character of God. The very worship of Cain proved the desperate utter insensibility of his heart to the judgment of God against sin, and to those mighty things which had just happened, the effects and consequences of which he was now experiencing.

How came man to be toiling there in the sweat of his brow? Their very toil told the tale of the curse. They had been driven out of Eden for sin. But in Cain we see utter recklessness to the judgment of God. He had forgotten the very nature and being of that God who had set man perfectly happy in the garden at the first, to keep it and to enjoy its fruits (fruits yielded to his hand without toil or labour); and supposed that by toil and labour (the judicial consequences of sin) he could produce something that God would accept. There was utter desperate recklessness to the judgment of God.

Cain's worship was the worst thing he did. It was in fact the denying that he had sinned; such blindness to what he had been, such hardness of conscience in supposing that he could get into the presence of God in his sins as if nothing at all had happened! such wretched assumption that because he was a "tiller of the ground," tilling of the ground was all right! But how came it to be all right? Because God had cursed the ground. He, a defiled sinner driven out of paradise, brings "of the fruit of the ground" which the Lord had cursed, "an offering unto Jehovah "; that is, he brings into the presence of God the sign and seal of the sin that had driven him out from God!

322 And how comes a man to be going Sunday after Sunday, as he says, to 'worship God'? What is all this toil? To 'make peace with God?' God is "the God of peace"; He "preaches peace" - a made peace through "the blood of the cross"; yet man goes on seeking to carry something into God's presence as 'a duty,' 'to make peace' without once asking about God's way of peace.

Cain was a worshipper of God; but there was no faith in Cain. There was no faith to recognise his own ruin and sin, no faith to apprehend the judgment of God against sin: he had no business in the presence of God as he was, no title to be a worshipper of God. He had not a bit of faith to recognise his own condition as driven out of paradise, his sin and estrangement from God, or, that blood - death - was necessary, in order for him to approach God. That is just the world's worship; and are you any the better for it? Are you any the nearer to God? Tell me, dear friends, what if God does not receive your worship? Suppose that, after all your well doing and toil for God, God rejects it, for that is what Cain's toiling met with from God - "Unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect" (v. 5) - would you be content?

How was it with Cain? "Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell." And it is ever thus. The moment God puts man on the true ground of his condition before Him, the enmity of the natural heart breaks out against God. Cain was "very wroth," exceeding angry; and why? Because his heart was opposed to grace. He had not owned the first principle of sin in the presence of God.

And you, when the sovereign grace of the gospel comes to you, are "very wroth." What! a man do his best, you exclaim, and not be accepted! So thought Cain. And so thinks every man naturally; that is, he thinks that God must accept him just as well as he accepts God, bringing down God to his own measure of holiness. And then the wrath of man breaks out, and he rejects the righteousness that God holds out to him; he will not have His Son.

323 There is not a principle in Cain that is not found in you. There is no evil in brass and iron, nor is there any harm in, sweet sounds; the evil and the sin are in this, that men are using these things to hide God from them. If you are worshippers of the true God, so was Cain. We may put a terrible name on that which we see in Cain, and yet approve of the same thing in ourselves; the light tells us that was sin in Cain which the spirit of self-love tells us is not sin in our own case. What difference is there between you and Cain? Take the Bible and see if you can make out any difference. The only real difference is this, that you have a further and more developed knowledge of "the Seed of the woman" (Christ), and therefore that of the two you are the more guilty.

Having sinned against God, abused His goodness, and refused His Son, man turns to please himself as if nothing had happened. It is more terrible to a spiritual eye to see insensibility after sin has been committed, it is a far deeper shade of sin than even the commission of the crime. The returning of a soul to God is just in the being awakened to a sense of the awfulness of this state.

There is yet another feature in the Cain character - open hostility to those who know God's principle of grace, to those whom God does accept. See what follows: "And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him," v. 8. Abel as a poor helpless man should have demanded Cain's sympathy, but Cain hates the one whom God delights in.

And so it is now. Why is it that you are so angry at a fault in a Christian which you readily excuse in a man of the world, if it be not hatred to the name he bears? If it ought to produce better fruits in him, why not adopt it yourselves? If you are expecting better from him than from the world, why not follow that which you profess to believe will produce the better fruit?

But you have not merely hated the name of Christ, you have been guilty of hating that which God has stablished in Christ. And here is the same principle that crucified Christ, the desperate recklessness of sin.

You cannot deny that the world has crucified Christ; God's Son is not now in the world. He has been in the world. He became a man amongst men (" the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," John 1: 14) - our neighbour. Man saw and hated Him, and summed up his evil in killing Him. I ask you therefore, Has God no such question with you as He had with Cain, "Where is thy brother?" (v. 9). Christ has become man's "brother" (it is not the question of God's purpose and counsel here); and is not God demanding of the world, Where is Christ? Cain replied, "I know not: am I my brother's keeper?"

324 Here is a much worse character of sin than Adam's. It is the haughtiness and recklessness of sin. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Not only has there been sin against God, sin that has exiled man from Eden and separated him from the presence of God in peace, but there has been sin also that has led to the hatred and destruction of a brother (blessed and perfect in His ways) whom man has seen. Your disclaiming this displays, and is the proof of, the recklessness of your hearts. "If I had not come and spoken unto them," said Jesus, "they had not had sin; but now they have no cloke for their sin. He that hateth me hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause," John 15: 22-25.

The coming of the Son of man into the world has shewn the real state it is in. Why was Christ rejected by man, except that man hated God? That was the only reason that Christ was slain in this world. They hated God, and therefore they hated Him. They hated the light - " Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God," John 3: 20, 21. "They loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil "; and this is their sin, that they have put the Light out of the world. Like Cain, they were "of that wicked one," and slew their brother; 1 John 3: 12.* Like him too in the motive - "And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous." "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" (John 8: 46). Even Pilate said, "I find no fault in him," John 18: 38; chap. 19: 4, 6. The world** has sinned against God in crucifying and slaying Jesus. They hated God, and therefore turned God's Son out of the world, when sent to it in love.

{*See John 8: 40-47.}

{**Not merely Jews are in question here; the world has done it, man has done it. "He was despised and rejected of men."}

325 But there is another thing. It is not simply a question of man's having killed the Lord Jesus Christ; the world has now to answer for its resistance of the Holy Ghost. "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost," etc. The testimony of the Holy Ghost, present in the world as witness of the glory of Christ, is a conviction of the world of sin; John 16: 7-15. He has been sent down because Christ has been killed. The necessary testimony of His very presence in the world is this: He would not have been here on earth if Christ had not been killed. He is come in condemnation of the whole world before God. 'I am here,' He says, as it were, 'because you have killed your Abel.' It is not a question about particular sins; you have killed God's Son, you are a sinner because you have not believed on Him.

Well then, dear friends, are you the daily companions of those who have rejected Christ, who have killed Christ? Are you of that world, and found with that world in its pleasures and profits, its religion and its lusts, which has done this, and which is still against God and against His Christ, vainly trying to make yourselves pleasant without God? Or have you taken your stand with those who are "of God," who have God with them and God for them, though the whole world that lieth in the wicked one be against them? The efforts that are being made merely to improve the world are but the sign of the insensibility of Cain. The Spirit of God is come into the world to awaken us to a sense of what has happened in the world, and of the truth of our condition as men.

How came poor Abel to be an accepted worshipper? "And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And Jehovah had respect unto Abel and to his offering; but unto Cain," etc. (v. 4). He was accepted by blood. There was this testimony in his offering: I cannot go to God as I am; I am driven out of paradise, sin has come in between me and God, and death, "the wages of sin," must come in between me and God, or I cannot go to God - I cannot go as I am. He took the place of a sinner, and put in faith between himself and God the blood of a victim that had been slain. Unless in his going to God he had owned his necessity that he could not get into the presence of God at all but by blood, he would not have been accepted any more than Cain. But he knew and owned that he could not get to God without blood: he was of faith, and faith ever sees that "without shedding of blood there is no remission," Heb. 9: 22. He put death - judicially inflicted death (by slaying the victim) - between himself and God, and then he comes into the presence of God as an accepted worshipper. "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh," Heb. 11: 4.

326 But further, Abel suffered with Christ. Having owned that he could not come into the presence of God without the blood of the lamb slain, he takes his place and portion with Christ in rejection. He is a sufferer from the wicked of the world. That is how it must end. That is all that the Christian is to expect at the hands of a world departed from God. "Marvel not if the world hate you," 1 John 3: 13.

"Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest," says the apostle, "by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; and having an high priest over the house of God, let us draw near," etc. (Heb. 10: 19, 22). All who come not through Him are rejected, because they do not know that they are so utterly sinful that they cannot come into God's presence except through the blood of His Son. And on the other hand, all who say, I cannot draw near except through blood, see that it is the perfectness of love - God's own perfect blessed love - that to meet man's need spared nothing, not even His only-begotten Son. "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him," 2 Cor. 5: 21. This is the language of faith. He is the only God who, when I was the chief of sinners, gave His Son to die for me. I know of no God but a God of perfect love, bringing me out of all my vileness, hanging on my neck in my vileness, as did the father to the returning prodigal (Luke 15), and bringing me into His house to rejoice with Him in the exceeding riches of His grace.

327 We get perfect blessed peace through the blood of Christ, without one pang of conscience left. "The worshipper once purged has no more conscience of sin." Heb. 10. The apostle does not say that he is not a sinner, that he is not vile; but that God has so loved the vile and sinful as to give His Son unto death to wash away their vileness and their sin.

The Accepted Man

2 Corinthians 3

J. N. Darby.

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There are two ways in which we may approach the judgment of man. We may judge of where man is (of the condition in which he is looked at by God) by taking the word of God and applying it to the condition of man in himself, to his state as an actual sinner. Thus, for instance, in Genesis 3, in the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden we see the character of evil against God Himself; in Genesis 4, in Cain's sin, the character of evil against man's neighbour. Here then is direct opposition to the requirement of God in both its parts; Luke 10: 27. But there is another thing of which Scripture is full - the accepted man, the Lord Jesus. We get in Him a precious living divine picture of what that Man is whom God does accept - of the Man after God's own heart.

If we find in Christ the accepted Man, whatever any other man's thoughts may be about himself, it is evident he is not this, because he is not like Christ (I speak not now as to divine power). In the glory Christ is the accepted and the acceptable Man before God. As the pattern for the saint He is the exhibitor, not of divine power in grace toward man, but of manhood such as God can accept. Now no man can at any rate lay claim to being this. The unconverted man, though he cannot comprehend the Man after God's own heart, can plainly see he is not this. A blind man may not be able to tell what I mean when I speak to him about light and colour, because he has no perception of these things, he is blind; but he knows that the things I am talking about he lacks the knowledge of. So, when Christ is spoken of, the natural man is in a state of forgetfulness, or rather of ignorance as to who and what Christ is (whether looked at in relation to God or to the sinner), and therefore as to the real dissimilarity between himself and Christ; but he is perfectly aware that there are things which others know about Christ that he does not know. He may say he knows them, but he does not; and moreover he must be conscious that he does not know that which he professes to know. The blind man may hear me speak, or be listening to sweet music, and in a certain sense lose nothing through his blindness (in the present enjoyment of what he hears he may forget his inability to see); but let him attempt to walk across the room towards me, and he will be reminded of it; for, unless one lead him, he will run up against that which stands in his way. The blind man may get used to his blindness.

329 So with the sinner. When the natural man hears the word of God read, or when Christ is spoken of, he is blind, ignorant (as was said before) of who and what Christ is; but he is ignorant of the depth of his ignorance; his mind is so occupied with other things that he does not think about it, and he gets used to his ignorance. When the truth is put before him he cannot see it; yet he must know that he knows nothing about it. If he looks into the Scriptures, he does not apprehend Him of whom they speak. He is entirely ignorant of the motives that actuated Christ in His path through this world; yet, if his attention be at all called to what Christ was, he must have the consciousness that he is not like Him, that he is not and has not the thing spoken of.

If it be true that this is the acceptable Man, the Man in whom God delights - acceptable in His spirit, and ways, and character, it must be evident to the natural man that he cannot be. He may have many amiable qualities (in nature there is much that is engaging and beautiful: we see it even in the animals) but nothing that is acceptable to God. Morally we do not find one single motive that governed Christ governing man, as man; it is evident, therefore, that if Christ's were acceptable motives, his are not.

Now being accepted is a great thing. It is impossible to think of a day of blessing, or of a day of judgment, without immediately having thoughts arise in the soul as to how it will be with us, whether we shall stand accepted in that day, whether we shall escape that judgment.

A man of the world must own that he has nothing in common with Christ, except indeed that he is a man and Christ was a man: he eats, drinks, sleeps; and Christ ate, drank, slept. But there is sin in every man, and Christ was "without sin" - sin in the place of godliness, malice in the place of love. As regards the moral motives of the soul, he has not any of Christ's, and Christ had not one of his. The world would cease if its conduct were regulated by the motives which actuated Christ; it could not go on an hour. There may be the outward imitation of that which was found in Christ; but God is not mocked. But, it may be said, and many do say it, God does not expect us to be like Christ in everything. Now the fact is, God does expect us to be like Christ. It is impossible for God to accept one thing as that which is agreeable to Himself, and then accept or be satisfied with the directly opposite. If the man of the world is the very opposite of what Christ was, God cannot accept him. He cannot deny Himself.

330 We shall see how God does bring into the very same place as Christ those who are accepted in Him. You cannot have a third man. You must have either the place of the first man, rejected, turned out into the world, in the place of ruin; or that of the second Man, accepted, brought out of the world to God. There is no third man offering an indefinite acceptance in some unknown condition.

What then is the Christian? We read here of two things as characterising him: he is an "epistle of Christ"; he has "liberty." What is the "liberty"? You will find this a characteristic of man, as man, that he has not liberty with God, and (though he has not liberty from Satan) he has liberty with Satan. He is afraid of God; but he is not afraid of Satan. He would not like to be with Satan in hell, it is true; he is horrified at the thought of that; but he is not horrified at walking with him every day. He is at liberty with Satan, walking at his ease with him in the earth; but of walking with God he has a perfect terror. Now do you, dear friends, find yourselves at liberty with God? I know that in heaven by-and-by you would like to be with God; but do you covet this nearness now? That is the question. Do you feel at home with God? would you like Him to take you just such as you are? Taking you just such as you are, could you trust yourselves with God? You hope, perhaps, that when the day of judgment comes, all will be well with you; you have no thought but that you will be able to stand in the judgment then. But if God were about to take you just such as you are at this moment is there not something you would be afraid of? What is there so terrible in thinking about God, that you should be afraid of God, that you would not like to trust God with your present condition? You are not afraid to trust Satan.

Satan is "the god" (2 Cor. 4: 4) and "the prince" (John 12: 31; chap. 14: 30) "of this world"; yet men are not afraid of making their way through a world where the Lord tells His disciples to have their loins girded about and their lamps burning, to watch and pray lest they enter into temptation, to be armed at all points. Men are not afraid there. Is not this strange? In Satan's world they are at ease, but with God they are not at ease. They go readily into places of temptation where Christ is sure not to be; and in the place where Christ could honour God they are ill at ease. They go to seek their pleasures where Christ could not have found His; and they are not afraid of Satan, though they know he is there. They are afraid where the light is: but they are not afraid of the darkness. Darkness is their element; light their fear. Now that is a terrible thing! "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." Satan is the prince of "the rulers of the darkness of this world" (Eph. 6: 12), "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience," etc. (Eph. 2: 2, 3).

331 Man can compare himself with the reprobate sinner, and take credit in his own eyes for the difference between himself and the sinner, when God is not in the conscience; but he puts away the judgment of God concerning himself, he never compares himself with Christ, "neither cometh he to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved," John 3: 20, 21. Now let us look at Christ, as to this judgment of man about himself. We find Christ scorning what man delights in, passing by those who could thus compare themselves amongst themselves, and becoming the friend of the profligate and the abandoned.

When He met with a publican, or a person of bad character, making no pretence to be anything but a sinner, He was at home with the sinner. Of such were His companions. He came in grace to sinners, as sinners. He saw into the heart, and therefore detected the hollowness of all man's pretended righteousness. He did not come from heaven to this earth to look for righteousness - that is the last thing He would have taken the journey for; He came to seek sinners.

Again, you read a person's character in his letter. Now the Christian is Christ's letter to the world. In verse 3 the apostle speaks of him as "the epistle of Christ," written by the Spirit of the living God in the fleshy tables of the heart, and contrasts him with the law written on tables of stone. A Christian is therefore a person upon whose heart the Spirit of God has engraved Christ, just as truly as God wrote and engraved the law upon the tables of stone; so that the world may read Christ in the man, as an Israelite might read the law on the stones Now how far can we according to this definition call ourselves Christians? We come short, I doubt not, we have blotted the letter; but I speak of the thing in principle.

332 Oh the folly of man! he has taken for granted from the Scriptures that there is a heaven, and then sets about getting to that heaven his own way. How does he know that there is a heaven at all to go to? It is impossible that he should know it except upon the authority of God. I learn it from the Scriptures, he says: it is in the Scriptures, and therefore it must be true. Yes, doubtless it is in the Scriptures; but having taken for granted just that, he does not go to God to know who are to be there, or how he is to get there.

The very idea, fabulous as it is, he possesses of heaven, renders the assumption of his being there less pardonable than would have been his utter ignorance about it. A man would be less wrong, supposing he did not know anything about a regal palace (a savage, fit only for the woods), than a person who knew what the palace was, and had some idea of the requirements of the place, and yet thought to go and live there. The unconverted man acts and thinks more apart from God in thinking he ought to go to heaven, than if he thought there was no such place at all; he in a state of sin is expecting to get into the presence of a holy God!

One thing impressed my own mind most peculiarly when the Lord was first opening my eyes - I never found Christ doing a single thing for Himself. Here is an immense principle. There was not one act in all Christ's life done to serve or to please Himself. An unbroken stream of blessed, perfect, unfailing love flowed from Him, no matter what the contradiction of sinners - one amazing and unwavering testimony of love and sympathy and help; but it was ever others, and not Himself, that were comforted, and nothing could weary it, nothing turn it aside. Now the world's whole principle is self, doing well for itself; Psa. 49: 18. Men know that it is upon the energy of selfishness they have to depend. Every one that knows anything at all of the world knows this. Without it the world could not go on. What is the world's honour? Self. What its wealth? Self. What is advancement in the world? Self. They are but so many forms of the same thing; the principle that animates the individual man in each is the spirit of self-seeking. The business of the world is the seeking of self, and the pleasures of the world are selfish pleasures. They are troublesome pleasures too; for we cannot escape from a world where God has said, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground," etc. Toil for self is irksome; but suppose a man finds out at length that the busy seeking of self is trouble and weariness, and having procured the means of living without it, gives it up, what then? He just adopts another form of the same spirit of self, and turns to selfish ease.

333 I am not now speaking of vice and gross sin (of course every one will allow that to be opposite to the spirit of Christ); but of the whole course of the world. Take the world's decent moral man, and is he an "epistle of Christ"? Is there in him a single motive like Christ's? He may do the same things; he may be a carpenter as Christ was (Mark 6: 3); but he has not one thought in common with Christ. As to the outside, the world goes on with its religion and its philanthropy; it does good, builds its hospitals, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and the like; but its inward springs of action are not Christ's. Every motive that governed Christ all the way along is not that which governs men; and the motives which keep the world going are not those which were found in Christ at all.

The infidel owns Christ's moral beauty, and selfishness can take pleasure in unselfishness; but the Christian is to "put on Christ." He went about doing good all the day long; there was not a moment but He was ready as the servant in grace of the need of others. And do not let us suppose that this cost Him nothing. He had not where to lay His head; He hungered and was wearied; and when He sat down, where was it? Under the scorching sun, at the well's mouth, whilst His disciples went into the city to buy bread. And what then? He was as ready for the poor vile sinner who came to Him, as if He had not hungered, neither was faint and weary; John 4. He was never at ease. He was in all the trials and troubles that man is in as the consequences of sin, and see how He walked! He made bread for others; but He would not touch a stone to turn it into bread for Himself. As to the moral motives of the soul, the man of the world has no one principle in common with Christ. If then the world is to read in a Christian the character of Christ, it is evident the world cannot read it in him; he is not a Christian; he is not in the road to heaven at all, and every step he takes only conducts him farther and farther from the object in view. When a man is in a wrong road, the farther he goes in it the more he is astray.

334 There is another terrible thing: we find men agreeing to take the commandments of God as their rule and guide, as Christ took them. We take His directions, they say, all that God says about what we ought to be, and what we ought to do; we are not going our own way. Well, granted; but you must take the law, such as it is, and with its consequences. If man says, I accept the law to be judged by, I take this as my guide, he makes himself the responsible party, that is, he has to answer for himself. And mark how God began with the law. What does the law say about him? It says he is "cursed" already. This law that he is taking to get to heaven by is the very thing that pronounces judgment against him: "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them," Gal 3: 10. Suppose I bring a right and true measure to a man who is in the habit of using a wrong measure, what do I do it for? Not to make him honest, but to prove his dishonesty. It is in vain for him to say, I will change my character; the thing is already done. The question is, has he a character? and he is proved to be a dishonest man. Now the law was given "that the offence might abound," Rom. 5: 20. The right, perfect, holy law of God was given as a rule; but if that rule be given to a sinner who cannot keep it, and if it be applied with all the searching power of the holiness of God, he is a judged person, and brought in under its curse. He hopes perhaps to be better; he has some vague thoughts about the mercy of God; but it is no use to talk about what he will be: judgment is already pronounced against him.

But more than this, as a matter of fact the law tells man not so much what he is to do, as what he is not to do. If we look at the ten commandments we shall find that they do not tell him to do anything, except to honour his father and his mother. That is the only positive precept. All the rest are, "Thou . . shalt not" do this, and thou shalt not do that. How comes it then that such a form is employed? This of itself is a sufficient proof of evil tendencies in those addressed. Men care not to make laws for a country to prohibit that which nobody thinks of doing; and so God's law forbids people to do certain things because they have a tendency to do those very things; it touches the motives and dispositions of men's hearts as they are known by God.

335 The law is given most surely as a rule; but it is given to a sinner who already needs amendment. The first thing it does therefore is to prove sin, condemning the inward disposition as well as the outward evil. Paul's experience of it (Rom. 7) is proof enough of this. He could say he was pure so far as concerned outward compliance with its requirements, "touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless," Phil. 3: 6. "Alive without the law once," "when the commandment came, sin revived," and he died. "I had not known sin," he says, "but by the law, for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet; but sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence; for without the law sin was dead." "When the commandment came," he found he was a condemned sinner. The law, being the righteous demand of God from man, and applying itself to those who are already sinners, must necessarily work condemnation and death. It is "the ministration of death" (v. 7), and of "condemnation" (v. 9).

But, again, there are not only wrong motives in man, but a very strong independent will. Man likes to have his own way. Now what is the effect of putting anything in the way of a person who wants to go his own road? That he will push it out of the way if he can. Thus the will of man, if the man be resting on the law as such, and yet liking to have his own way in a single thing, proves him to be a breaker of all the commandments. The will of the man, being contrary to God, if opposed, would push aside the whole law. This is what is meant by "whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all," etc. (James 2: 10, 11.) The authority of God is attached to His law; and therefore, if, when the authority of God meets the lusts of man, he is guilty of the breach of that law in one thing, he has overthrown the claim of the authority of God, and thus broken the whole law. If he commit not adultery, yet if he kill, he sets aside the authority of Him who made the law that says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery"; for He that said, "Do not commit adultery," said also, "Do not kill." Suppose you had forbidden your child to do three things, and he was not disposed to do two of the three, or lacked the opportunity, would his not having done two of these three things make you hold him guiltless? No; you would say that he was not disposed to do them, or he would have done them had he found the occasion. Having set aside your authority in the one instance, your authority was not his restraint.

336 How hard it is, you may be ready to say, that man when a sinner should have a law given him to keep, which he cannot keep, and which therefore, after all, instead of helping him, only works death and condemnation. These are man's thoughts and not God's. God never intended to save man by the law: that was not His purpose in giving it. He never meant to save any other way than by Christ. Bounds were set about the mount (Ex. 19: 12, 13) - it is a barrier from God; and Moses required to have a veil put on his face when he spoke to the people; Ex. 34: 33-35.

People have taken the idea of heaven from the Scriptures, and then they have taken their own way to it. But they are trying to go to heaven by the very thing God has given as the ministration of death and condemnation; and they expect to get there by the very thing God says pronounces them "cursed."

The first principle of Christianity, whilst recognising in the most solemn manner man's responsibility to answer for himself, puts the Christian on other and entirely different ground. This is the first principle and basis of all Christian truth, that there is a Mediator - a third person, between man and God. Another has implicated Himself, and, because man could not come to God, has taken up the cause of man, and worked out an acceptance for him.

Two things (already noticed) are brought out here, as the result of this. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," the liberty of grace. And we become the "epistles of Christ" (blotted ones, no doubt, in ourselves, but we are not epistles of ourselves), transcripts of Christ "written with the Spirit of the living God." This we "are," not merely we ought to be. Though in ourselves most imperfect and failing, the definition given by the Spirit of God of a Christian is that he is a transcript of Christ.

Now the natural thought of many a soul is this, 'Well, if that be true, I do not know what to think of myself; I do not see this transcript in myself!' No, and you ought not to see it. Moses did not see his own face shine. Moses saw God's face shine, and others saw Moses' face shine. The glory of the Lord, as seen in Moses' face, alarmed the people. They could not bear that glory. But we see it now with "open," unveiled "face" in Christ (v. 18), and yet are not in the least afraid; we find liberty, comfort, and joy in looking at it; we gaze on it, and, instead of fearing, rejoice. How comes this immense difference? It is "the ministration of the Spirit," (v. 8), and "of righteousness" (v. 9).

337 It is Christ alive in the glory that I see; not Christ down here (sweet as that was), but Christ at the right hand of God. Yet though that glory is in the heavens, I can stedfastly behold it. All that glory (and He is in the midst of the glory and majesty of the throne of God itself) does not affright me, because this wonderful truth comes in, that that glory of God is in the face of a man who has put away my sins, and who is there in proof of it; Heb. 1: 3. I should have been afraid to hear His voice, and have said with the children of Israel (Ex. 20: 19), "Let not God speak with us"; or, like Adam with a guilty conscience, have sought to hide myself away; Gen. 3: 8. But I do not say so now; no, let me hear His voice. I cannot see the glory of Christ now without knowing that I am saved. How comes He there? He is a man who has been down here mixing with publicans and sinners, the friend of such, choosing such as His companions. He is a man who has borne the wrath of God on account of sin; He is a man who has borne my sins in His own body on the tree (I speak the language of faith); He is there, as having been down here amidst the circumstances, and under the imputation of sin; and yet it is in His face I see the glory of God. I see Him there consequent upon the putting away of my sin, because He has accomplished my redemption. I could not see Christ in the glory if there was one spot or stain of sin not put away. The more I see of the glory, the more I see the perfectness of the work that Christ has wrought, and of the righteousness wherein I am accepted. Every ray of that glory is seen in the face of One who has confessed my sins as His own, and died for them on the cross; of One who has glorified God in the earth, and finished the work that the Father had given Him to do. The glory that I see is the glory of redemption. Having glorified God about the sin - "I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do" - God has glorified Him with Himself there; John 17.

When I see Him in that glory, instead of seeing my sins, I see that they are gone. I have seen my sins laid on the Mediator. I have seen my sins confessed on the head of the scapegoat, and they have been borne away; Lev. 16. So much has God been glorified about my sins (that is, in respect of what Christ has done on account of my sins), that this is the title of Christ to be there, at the right hand of God. I am not afraid to look at Christ there. Where are my sins now? where are they to be found in heaven or on earth? I see Christ in the glory. Once they were found upon the head of that blessed One; but they are gone, never more to be found. Were it a dead Christ, so to speak, that I saw, I might fear that my sins would be found again; but with Christ alive in the glory the search is in vain. He who bore them all has been received up to the throne of God, and no sin can be there.

338 As a practical consequence of this I am changed into His likeness - " We all, with open face beholding, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." It is the Holy Ghost taking of the things of Christ, and revealing them to the soul, that is the power of present practical conformity to Christ. I delight in Christ, I feast upon Christ, I love Christ. It is the very model and forming of my soul according to Christ, by the Holy Ghost - this His revelation of Christ. I not only get to love the glory, it is Christ Himself that I love; Christ, that I admire; Christ, that I care for; Christ, whose flesh I eat, and whose blood I drink - what wonder if I am like Christ? The Christian thus becomes the epistle of Christ; he speaks for Christ, owns Christ, acts for Christ. He does not want to be rich, he has riches in Christ - unsearchable riches. He does not want the pleasures of the world, he has pleasures at God's right hand for evermore.

Does the heart still say, Oh, but I do not, and cannot see this transcript in myself? No, but you see Christ; and is not that better? It is not my looking at myself, but it is my looking at Christ, that is God's appointed means for my growing in the likeness of Christ. If I would copy the work of some great artist, is it by fixing my eyes on the imitation, and being taken up with regrets about my failing attempt, that I shall be likely to succeed? No, but by looking at my model, by fixing my eyes there, tracing the various points and getting into the spirit of the thing. Mark the comfort of this! The Holy Ghost having revealed to my soul Christ in the glory as the assurance of my acceptance, I can look without fear, and therefore stedfastly, full at that glory, and rejoice at the measure of its brightness. Stephen (Acts 7), full of the Holy Ghost, could look up stedfastly into heaven (doubtless in his case it was with more than ordinary power), and see the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and His face shone as the face of an angel. And look at his death. Just like his Master, he prays for his very murderers. Stephen died saying, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge "; Christ had died saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." In him there was the expression of Christ's love for his enemies. By the Holy Ghost he was changed, and that in a very blessed way too, into the same image.

339 The soul at perfect liberty with God looks peacefully and happily at the glory of God as seen in the face of Jesus Christ; and because it sees that glory and knows its expression, it walks before God in holy confidence. Instead of being happy and at liberty with Satan in Satan's world, the Christian dreads Satan because he knows himself. At ease in the presence of God, he there drinks into the spirit of that which befits the presence of God, and becomes the "epistle of Christ" to the world, shewing out to all that he has been there.

Well, what a difference! May we more and more make our boast in Him, in whose face all this glory is displayed - the Lamb, who has died for us, and cleansed away our sins by His own most precious blood.

The Lord give us hearts freed by Himself, whilst still in the midst of this poor world that is walking in a vain show.

Moses Veiled, and the Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ

2 Corinthians 3; 4: 6

J. N. Darby.

<12034E> 340

The apostle has been led to speak of himself (as he says, afterwards, chapter 12, "I am become a fool in glorying; ye have compelled me," etc.) by reason of special circumstances at the time at Corinth. He had been forced to speak of himself, in order to maintain the truth of the gospel he had preached, and to make good (not for his own sake, but for theirs to whom he wrote) the authority of his apostleship. He says, at the close of the epistle, "Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you-ward is not weak, but is mighty in you . . . examine yourselves,* whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves," etc. (chap. 13: 3-7). So here, "Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you? Ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men: forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink," etc. Themselves were a proof of his service. There was the epistle that recommended his ministry, and to which his heart turned. It evidently led at once to the truth of the gospel which he preached.

{*By the certainty of their own Christianity, which they did not doubt, they were to be assured of his apostleship.}

In doing this he contrasts the church of God with the tables of the law, and puts the church of God in the place of (as answering to, in that sense) the tables of the law, presenting Christ to the world; just as, in the letter written and engraven on stone, there had been a presentation to Israel of God's mind in what He required from man. (See verses 3-11.) He predicates of the latter, that it was the ministration of death and condemnation; thereupon, speaking of the value and importance of the gospel, and, as a necessary consequence, of the plainness and clearness with which it had been set forth.

It is plain, that the whole question, the great thing to be done - if ever there is to be the knowledge of peace, salvation, and eternal life in the soul - is to have the soul brought into connection with God Himself. If to know Him is life, to be near Him, to have the consciousness of His favour and loving-kindness, is better than life; it is quite evident, that the whole work to be done is to bring the soul really, livingly, into connection with God Himself, into the conscious presence of God.

341 After all, what the believer finds practically difficult is to abide there. Abiding there, we cannot be in the unnatural state (unnatural, that is, in the highest sense of the word) of questioning whether or not God is our Father - whether we belong to God. Is it the natural state for His creatures to be in rebellion against Him? Alas! it is our natural state, as fallen: still, speaking in the highest sense, it is a most unnatural state. And it is surely most unnatural for us to be questioning our Father's love to us, if His children. Our only natural state, as recipients of grace, is conscious nearness to God. What is the natural state for a child to be in? Not that of calling in question whether its parents are its parents, but one of undivided, conscious, unsuspecting certainty that they are; one of freedom from all suspicion of their love. Well, what would be the natural state of things as it regards the creatures of God? An unsuspecting state of conscious happiness with Him from whom all blessing flows.

It is evident, if God be love, to be uncertain of His favour is not to know Him. If I suspect a person, it is because I do not know him, or, knowing, have cause to mistrust him (it may be so with man, we may reasonably suspect man). The great thing we have to see in the word of God is: Is there such a plain, clear, distinct, blessed revelation of what God is, that He may be known such as He is? Then we shall confide in Him; or, if He be not known, it is a proof of thorough blindness. Is there such a full revelation of God - of what He is in Himself and of His actings in love, of what He is and of what He has done - as to put those who believe the revelation into conscious favour with God? If there is the hope of this mercy, and the desire for it in the heart, uncertainty will be misery; but if the revelation be clear, if light be light, darkness is darkness; uncertainty as to what God is (in the revelation) is blindness in us. Many things may come in to disturb and trouble, as sin, the power of Satan, etc.; but there can be no question about favour with God.

The apostle declares it is the character of that which he speaks of here to produce "liberty." The law, whatever it was, did not that. Nothing but grace, nothing but the perfect revelation of what God is, could do that. Anything out of God is imperfect; but, if God is love, His actings are perfect love, the expression and reflection of what He is. The law was not that (the apostle has spoken of the law); so far as it went it was a revelation of God, but its character was that of requisition, from the unchanged heart, of what the heart had not; and, therefore, "the letter (he says) killeth." It was the ministration of death and condemnation.

342 But this is not all. Even though a great deal of grace accompanied the law, so long as the law was such as it was, it was necessarily obscure in its revelation of God; the blending of the two, the exhibition of the goodness of God with the presence of the claims of the law (that is, with the question of what man was), could only lead to misery, wretchedness, and darkness of soul. So long as the question remained, 'What are you for God? are you what you ought to be?' so long as it was not a revelation of unmingled grace - of that which did not, and would not, and could not, mingle itself with anything else, it could only condemn. The revelation of God's demands on man must condemn. No matter how much grace mingles itself with it - nay, the more the kindness and goodness of God - the greater the obligation of man to answer to it, and the greater the sense of the sin of man in not meeting the character of God thus revealed. If it is it not all grace, you must be condemned; if it is anything but pure simple grace, you must take up the question of what man is, that God is dealing with; and then it is all over with you, for God cannot depart from what He ought to be, as holy.

Man has failed in everything. But that disarms not grace. It is the occasion of grace, not the source but the occasion of grace. Now, God says, I must act for myself, I must manifest what I am. Grace has this character; it is not simply love (it is perfectly love, but it is not simply love); it is love acting where evil already is, and towards that which is evil. There is perfect love between the Father and the Son, but that is not grace. God loves the angels, but you cannot call that grace. Grace is the exercise of this same perfect holy love towards that which is totally unworthy of it. It is this new wonder come out - love acting when the occasion for it was in the faults and sins of those towards whom it acts. This evidently sets aside the question of what the sinner is (save indeed as the need for, and enhancing, the grace); but grace does not set aside the holiness of the law, it exalts the law.

343 The revelation of grace in a measure (that is, unless it be in the fulness and perfectness of its own glory - God's love to the sinner in Christ) only enhances the sin of man, and makes his responsibility and condemnation the greater. And this is not mere abstract reasoning: God has brought it all out in His dealings. When Moses put a veil over his face, as referred to by the apostle here, it was not when it was pure law.

When Moses came down from the mount the first time and broke the tables (Ex. 32), there was no veil. That was all on the supposition of there being the possibility of relationship between the people and God on the ground of law. He had nothing to do but to break the tables, since all relationship on that ground was gone. He could not give them to Israel (they had made the golden calf); so he broke them. He goes up again (v. 30), saying, "Peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin," and says to the Lord, "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin - and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book, which thou hast written." To this the Lord answers, "Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book," etc. Then (chap. 33: 12-23), we find Moses, emboldened by his knowledge of the exceeding loving-kindness of God, interceding again. He beseeches God to shew him His glory; and God (in answer to Moses' prayer), says, "I will make all my goodness pass before thee," etc. This is not merely law. Moses hidden in a cleft of the rock (chap. 34), the Lord passes by before him, and proclaims, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children unto the third and fourth generation." In a certain sense, that was grace; not the sovereign grace of God which we know in Christ, but His "goodness." It is well to observe, in passing (this being often quoted, as a general statement of what God is), that it is not a revelation of what God is in grace, as now presented to sinners. There are certain things in it, in which there is a partial revelation of grace; but it is not a statement of the mode in which God now deals with sinners; nor a general revelation of God's character, but of the terms on which He governed Israel. He had not taken them from under law; after that He gives the law again. When Moses goes up, saying, "Peradventure I shall make an atonement for you," No, says the Lord, "whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book"; that is, I will make every one that sinneth responsible for his own sin.

344 What is the consequence of that? It is quite true that Moses' face reflects the glory of the Lord, which it did not the first time. When Moses had been up in the mount forty days and forty nights, his face did not shine; but when he had been hidden in the rock, and the goodness of Jehovah had passed before him, he comes down with his face shining. The law never made a man's face shine. Yet, with all this reflection of the goodness of God - of His glory, if you please, but of His goodness ("I will make all my goodness," etc.), the law is given again. Two more tables of stone are hewn (chap. 34: 1), and God says, "Make thee an ark of wood, and I will write on the tables the words that were in the first tables which thou brakest, and thou shalt put them in the ark," Deut. 10: 1-5. It was broken the first time: how could he go and put the tables of the law by the golden calf - the ten commandments in the camp along with the sin which had already violated the law, the very first word of which was, "I am Jehovah thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; thou shalt have no other gods before me"?

The law set up again, Moses comes down from the mount with his face shining (himself unconscious of all this shining), and the people, when they see it, afraid to come nigh, are obliged to ask him to put a veil over his face. The sight of the glory brought a sense of condemnation, and they prayed that it might be taken from them. This it is that the apostle refers to (v. 7, 13).

When there was a mixture of grace and law, an exhibition of the goodness of God along with the presence of the claims of the law (the law put in the ark, its holiness still insisted on), the consequence was, that Moses must hide the glory: they could not bear to look upon his face. It was only condemnation and death to them. And it is always so, when there is a question of seeking fruit from man. If the Son Himself comes and looks for fruit, the end of that will be, He will send armies and destroy the husbandmen; Matt. 21, 22. A mixture of law and grace ends in greater disaster than law; man is more guilty than if there had been no goodness at all.

345 That is the thing that was, says the apostle, and it was the ministration of death, and of condemnation. When the veil was put upon Moses' face, it was not pure law, but grace and law; and it ended in the rejection of Israel. "Their minds were blinded, for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which veil is done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away." It is related in the history, that, when Moses went into the holy place, he took the veil off; when he came out unto the people, he put the veil on; Ex. 34: 34, 35. So in the end with Israel. "Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake," etc. (Jer. 31: 31-34). In the end the veil shall be taken away.

Not only, as it regards the law, is there conviction of sin through it, and thus not any possibility of relationship between man and God on the ground of it, where it is simply law but there is an impossibility of man's being in connection with God as the source of happiness, save on the ground of pure grace that sets aside altogether what the sinner is. There is often more difficulty in seeing this. Unless it be pure simple grace, the only other idea we can have is that God requires something; and if God requires anything, the more the grace and the goodness shown, the more guilty and failing are we, and the greater our condemnation; it only increases responsibility. If it is a mixture of law with goodness, man cannot bear to look at it.

But then we come to another thing. What we find here is not law, though the holiness of the law is maintained and secured. The veil is taken off. There is no veil at all: "We all with open face, beholding the glory of the Lord," etc. And what is the consequence? Boldness, where there is faith. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

"Seeing then that we have such hope," says the apostle, "we use great plainness of speech, and not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished," etc.; and again, "Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." There is no hiding, no concealment: God comes out such as He is in His holiness, majesty, and glory, and, blessed be His name! in His love too. "But," he adds, "if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost," etc.

346 This is the declaration of the apostle. There is no veil whatever now upon the revelation of God, and the consequence is, if it is not seen, it is the condemnation of those who see it not. All the glory of God - what He is, and in His ways and actings - is now perfectly revealed; and, if this does not reach the conscience and affections, and put in unsuspecting relationship with God, the man is lost. Because, if God is thus perfectly revealed, he can have no connection with God. Nothing but the revelation of God could put man into connection with God. In Moses it was hidden, darkened; but now there is nothing more to reveal, for there is no veil, no hiding of God, and the man is lost. Nothing else can be done. So Hebrews 10: 26, "There remaineth no more sacrifice for sins": a man rejecting that must be lost. He may reason against it, seek to disprove it, prove that there is no glory: well, what has he done? Proved this to his own satisfaction, and rejected the counsel of God against himself. There is not another gospel. The whole thing is out now. Nothing else can bring back man into relationship with God. There cannot be another gospel, if all that God is has been perfectly revealed. This is a most solemn but a most blessed thought. We are set in connection with a God fully known. There is not any uncertainty. There is not anything can come out now, as to what God is, or as to His ways and actings, that has not been made known; all is perfectly manifested in the revelation of Himself in Christ Jesus. What is the consequence of this full revelation of God? To put in a known and settled relationship with God.

When God revealed Himself to Israel, it was a question of terms of relationship between Himself and a people already in relationship, already formed, and recognised as such. Whenever this (as with nominal Christians, where it is not a matter of conversion of heart) is assumed to be the case, we always find persons putting themselves on a ground partly of law and partly of grace - a mixture of goodness and responsibility, and not on that of what God is. He had brought up Israel out of Egypt and to Himself (Ex. 19), and having shewn His mighty power and goodness, He puts them under law, as the terms of relationship with a people then before Him there; as a people surrounding the Mount to hear these terms of relationship.

347 But the gospel goes upon other ground. It sees man dead in trespasses and sins - Jew and Gentile alike. "There is no difference, for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God," Rom. 3: 23. If the nature of man is looked at, there is no difference; in the flesh good does not dwell. And so says Paul, "Among whom we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as other," Eph. 2: 3. The gospel treats all men on the common ground of not being in relationship with God. The Gentiles were in "ignorance" (Acts 17), not as Israel in relationship with God; and "the times of this ignorance God winked at." God was not dealing with the Gentile world then. "But now [He] commandeth all men everywhere to repent: because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained," etc. Now God is publicly revealed, and therefore, if He is publicly revealed, the consequence is that "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness," Rom. 1: 18. This manifestation of God brings out into full light all the evil, darkness, enmity, and wickedness of man (the light brings out into view the darkness); all his selfishness, carnality, pride, evil lusts, desire of gain, and the like, are brought fully out in their opposition to God. It is the full revelation of God which levels man, because it brings all men, Jew and Gentile alike, into one sweeping condemnation of having come short of the glory of God, and places them on a common ground of being "alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them," etc. As regards standing with God, there is a perfectly common ground. That is where man stands now; and upon this ground God takes man up. There is the occasion of grace. It is the fulness of the revelation of God in the face of Jesus Christ (the very thing that has manifested man's full alienation from God and opposition of heart against Him), that introduces into full confidence in God.

348 There is not one tittle of requirement now, no seeking of fruit from man. Of course there is fruit produced in those who have received grace. "A sower went forth to sow," etc. (Matt. 13). This is a very different thing from requiring fruit. People confound requiring fruit from man with the blessed truth that there are fruits of the Spirit; but the fruits of the Spirit are not the fruits of the man. If I go to a bad tree, expecting fruit, I cast away all the fruit as bad fruit; but if I graft it, that is quite a different thing. Many a person fancies that, in mixing law and holiness together with grace, he is going to maintain holiness. No! he maintains unholiness, because he lets not in that full revelation of God which shews out man in all his unlikeness to God. We must not suppose that grace is an allowance of sin; we cannot separate the holiness of God from His grace.

God does not come and tell us that He expects something from man; He tells that which will trouble us a great deal more - that man has failed in meeting His requirements. "I will take away the hedge of my vineyard, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down; and I will lay it waste" (Isaiah 5). He had planted a hedge, and He required fruit. He was well entitled to require fruit: "What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it?" But when He looked for grapes, it brought forth wild grapes. He has tried requiring fruit, but man has not produced it; He has found too much bad fruit to require it again. Do not then pretend to maintain the claims of God; if you do, you must satisfy them. Leave God to vindicate His righteousness in that day; and if you talk about holiness and righteousness, produce them. It is all too late to stand on that ground; if God require anything, we are lost for ever.

That being the case, we come to see how it is the apostle could "use great plainness of speech." "We preach, not ourselves," he says, "but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

349 It is a very blessed as well as a most solemn thought, that we have to do with a God fully revealed, as also who knows all the secrets of our hearts. Are our souls at peace with God? Are we in the full, unsuspecting, blessed confidence of the favour of God, that flows from God thus known in perfect grace? There should not be a suspecting thought. That is the true state of a Christian; he may have to blame himself as to many a thing, but he has never a doubt in his soul of the divine and blessed favour of God towards him. It is perfect grace. When Jesus was on earth He could not let out the fulness of it - "I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how I am straitened till it be accomplished! "Death had not come in; atonement had not been wrought. He could not go and present to God that which let open the flood-gates that the love of God might flow out in all its fulness. The death of Christ did not procure it; but the death of Christ must be there, as the only means by which it could flow out.

That is where we see the unclouded fulness of God's love. "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost." There is nothing to be learnt about God but what is revealed and fully told out. He who has borne all the sin is in the presence of God. The question of sin has been settled; it has been gone through with God. Christ being in the presence of God, it is there we see the unveiled glory. It is there Paul saw Him. There we see Him. "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand," Rom. 5. We are standing in grace, a present grace. It is not merely that Christ has done something that has put away our past sins; we are to "reckon ourselves dead unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ," Rom. 6. "Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For, in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God." I have a right to say, I am dead, and alive unto God.

The place where I see the glory is not Moses' face - not in one who says, "I will go up unto the Lord, peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin" with God, who says, No, every man shall bear his own sin - "whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book." That is not the case now. The glory of God is in the face of Jesus Christ? who does not say "Peradventure," etc., but who makes the atonement before He goes up; and the glory seen in the face of Jesus Christ is proof that the atonement has been accepted. I am at home in the presence of the glory, happy there. That which condemned me before is now peace. Beholding it, I am changed into the same image. Every ray of it is joy and peace to my soul, an evidence that there is no question of sin now. It is "the gospel of the glory of Christ." His was not a mere visit to man in his sorrows and sins to put him to the test. He did come seeking for fruit; but besides that, He did much more; and now, as the apostle says, light shines. "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Again, "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost; in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." It is there the glory of God is seen, it is in Christ - "the face of Jesus Christ." It is the declaration of the full revelation of all that God is in His holiness, and glory, and love, consequent upon the atonement made by Christ, and the glorification of Christ. Thus all questioning is ended. When we see it, we can look steadily and peacefully at it, and we are transformed into the same image. There is no darkness there at all (1 John 1: 5); and, beloved, if there is no darkness at all, all sin is condemned. "God is light": yes, but He is "love," and I see it in the putting away of my sins. God was alone with Christ when the work was going on. He has hid me in the cleft of the rock; and He has taken off His hand, and I can trace, in the work that has been done, the perfectness of the love that has left no sin to be atoned for. God gives the privilege of not intruding the remembrance even of sin to defile the place of His holiness.

350 But again, it is most important that all sin should be confessed; as regards our walk down here, we have constantly to acknowledge our short-comings; but then we have Jesus above (not to procure righteousness - that is done, but) to maintain our intercourse and communion with God in the light, whilst we are in our weakness. Nothing else would do, because we are in the light. God is light; and whatever cannot stand in the presence of the glory of God, whatever is not according to that light, is sin. "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God"; but my sins have not hindered my seeing the glory of God; nay, rather, they are the occasion of the full manifestation of His glory.

351 Can you stand there? No! perhaps you answer, it is presumption to think of it! If so, your gospel does not save you. He that trusts in Christ can stand therein. It is the fulness of divine favour, present grace, wherein we stand. Are our souls standing there in the presence of God? or are we mingling holiness and grace? There is no mingling with God; but perfect holiness and perfect love.

The Church in the Wilderness in the Vision of God

Numbers 24

J. N. Darby.

<12035E> 352

All this statement of Balaam is of what God would do with His people.* Behind Israel's failure God takes up His own thoughts, and acts in His own ways, about them.

{*The sovereignty and efficacy of the calling of God.}

Firstly they are a peculiar people, separate from all other nations unto God; chap. 23: 9. "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance."

Secondly, God will see no evil in them; chap. 23: 21. In the end, Israel will be the testimony that "His mercy endureth for ever."

Thirdly, we have the way in which their beauty and comeliness are seen, as looked at in "the vision of the Almighty," chap. 24: 5-9. It is not man's sight of them, but God's.

Fourthly, speaking of the glory of Israel in connection with Christ in the latter days (chap. 24: 15-25), Balaam says, "I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth. And Edom shall be a possession: Seir also shall be a possession for his enemies; and Israel shall do valiantly. Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion, and shall destroy him that remaineth of the city." Then he looks at the nations and says, "Amalek was the first of the nations, but his latter end shall be that he perish for ever." Of the Kenites, "Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock; nevertheless, the Kenite shall be wasted until Asshur shall carry thee away captive . . . . Alas! who shall live when God doeth this?" The whole power, pride, and energy of the Gentiles is smitten. The "Star," the "Sceptre," arises, and delivers Israel. The pride of man is brought down, and Christ is set up. And there is the world's history. The great truth of all history is in its connection with God. His people being brought out before the Gentiles, He shews, in the great result, that His gifts and callings are without repentance; Rom. 11. Though He may not interfere for a long time, yet in the end it will be seen that He has taken notice of all that the nations have done; and Christ, in whom His glory and purposes centre, shall be set up King upon His holy hill of Zion; Psalm 2.

353 In chapter 24 we get out of the region of conflict and questioning into the place where God can look upon His people in their loveliness and beauty: to us the beauty of the church in all Christ's perfectness. The preceding chapter gives us their separation and justification. As looked at by God (and therefore by faith), the church is dead and risen with Christ. We are quickened together with Him (He having borne all our sins), as out of the grave, where our sins were left. But where the fulness and finishedness of acceptance in Christ* is not known, anxiety and despondency result in the heart of the saint, on the discovery of sin within, and he questions whether he is such. He does see iniquity - he is conscious from the teaching of God that iniquity is in his heart. It is not merely a natural consciousness of sins: the Spirit of God gives him a divine understanding of sin, and of what it is. The power of God's holiness is set up as a throne in the conscience, and he judges himself, as though he were himself to be judged for it. We constantly find souls in this state, miserable, distressed, and anxious, questioning whether they are saved; whether they are in the faith. Now how is this to be disposed of? Clearly not by the taking away of the Spirit, whose work has produced this discovery of sin, but by the eye being directed elsewhere entirely; that is, to the work of Christ for him. It is not by the pulling down of the throne set up within that nearly drove him to despair. By looking to the work of Christ the standard of holiness is exalted, but he sees that he is made the righteousness of God in Christ, and he gets rest. The nearer he is to God, the less will he get rest otherwise, so long as God is God. He is taught to look entirely out of himself, and to understand that the righteousness of God is his by faith in Jesus Christ. When man is manifested to himself, he sees that he is wretched (Rom. 7: 24), but man being proved to be bad, this gives way to God's righteousness, etc. The last Adam takes the place of the first in respect of life and judgment. In everything this is true. It will be fully realised in the glory by and by; but faith does not wait for that. Faith does not take even conscience's view of the matter, but God's view, and rests there. The church is seen in God's presence and in God's sight; as here He "has not seen iniquity in Jacob, nor perverseness in Israel." Paul, looked at in himself, was "chief" of sinners; 1 Tim. 1: 15.

{*"As he is, so are we in this world," 1 John 4: 18.}

354 Israel had gone through the wilderness with constant failure, but at the end of the forty years' journey, when Satan resists their entrance into Canaan, God does not see iniquity in them. Moses had said of them in these very plains of Moab, "Ye have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you." But God sees no iniquity; He sees no perverseness.

Experience is not faith. You cannot know an object of faith by experience, you may know yourself by experience. But the experience of what passes in my soul is not faith. I want faith for that which is revealed (that is, in the revelation of God) and not a revelation. No doubt it is felt experimentally, it is not merely a matter of theory. Many a one who had by faith got peace, when he sees his sins again, loses peace. He may have received the grace of the gospel very sincerely; yet, in measure his knowledge of it is superficial. He does not see it is applicable to his state. Faith looks not at itself but at God's righteousness in Christ: His grace has judged the whole condition of the sinner; and, resting in His revelation, the soul stands in the consciousness of redemption.

Has God planted us in this condition merely to say, I am safe? Is this the end of God? Surely not! But this peace is the basis on which all happy intercourse with God goes on. He cannot have such intercourse with me while He is judging me. Take, by way of example, the parent dealing with a naughty child - there is no intercourse in that; nor can there be any until the child is restored. Correction is not communion. The Holy Ghost's thoughts and revelations are founded on the righteousness God has set the church in in Christ. God has redeemed her - "brought her out of Egypt"* - charged Himself with the question of her sins. It is not that we should work up to a certain righteousness: there is not a question of righteousness to be allowed. God's side of the matter begins there. We may know terrors first, and it may be well that we should; but God begins with having the church.

{*Numbers 23: 22; 24: 8.}

355 See Ephesians 5: 25-27: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." He has loved it, and given Himself for it, that He might work in and about it what He would like to have it. He presents it to Himself, not merely as purified, but more, "a glorious church." Well now, our souls ought to follow this; we should start from the point whence God starts - His determination to bless, as it is said, "And when Balaam saw that it pleased Jehovah to bless Israel." This foils Satan.

To return. Balaam goes not now as at other times to seek for enchantments. He finds himself in the presence of God, and Satan and Balaam can do nothing. "There is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel." So in our case; when it is manifest that God has the church, Satan can do nothing. It is a settled thing. The church is to be a blessed church, and the Holy Ghost can take His stand there, and occupy Himself with her portion, and set before the soul her beauty and glory which are of God.

But Balaam set his face "towards the wilderness " - why? Because the children of Israel were yet in the wilderness. The wilderness was not Canaan, but Israel was there. The world is not heaven nor the glory, but the church is there now; and while the church is in the wilderness, the Spirit of God can take up the parable and shew what the church is in God's eye. So here, Balaam is not walking through the tents of Israel, or he would have heard the murmurings and discontent of Israel. He is not in the camp, he is gone up to the top of the hill, and, looking at them with God's eye, what does he see? Israel abiding in their tents according to their tribes. The Spirit of God comes upon him,* and he takes up his parable and says, "Balaam, the son of Beor, hath said, and the man whose eyes are open hath said: he hath said, which heard the words of God, which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open: How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel," etc.

{*Observe, the Spirit of God did not come upon him before; God met him, and put a word in his mouth (chapter 23: 4-16), but not the Spirit upon him.}

356 We have to look at God's thoughts about the church. The Holy Ghost speaks of the church, as to what it is to God; and God's thoughts are not merely of the glory of the church in the world to come, but of the beauty, in His mind, of the people in the wilderness.

Would we have happy thoughts about the saints? we must rise up to what the church of God really is to God. We must get "the vision of the Almighty" (the knowledge of the beauty and comeliness of the church in all Christ's perfectness), in order to have our souls soft and tender and humble about what passes around. If we do not see this, we shall not be able to maintain the sense of Christ's love. And, further, unless by the power of the Spirit we get away from circumstances, so as to see the church, and the saints individually, as Christ sees them, instead of seeking to nourish and cherish them, as Christ does, we shall be disappointed. This often makes us angry: it should not, but it does. We shall either lower our standard and be content with conformity to the world in the saints, or become discontented and judicial, angry and bitter against them, the flesh being disappointed and vexed. Faith assumes the acceptance of the saints in Christ, while it seeks in the exercise of godly and gracious discipline that they should be maintained and bloom in the fragrance of Christ's grace.

"As the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river's side, as the trees of lign aloes which Jehovah hath planted, and as cedar trees beside the waters." What a most blessed picture! And could we be happy in seeing them stunted, dishonouring the Lord? The glory of Christ is concerned, for His character is to be seen in us. Paul says to the saints at Corinth (not, Ye ought to be, but), "Ye are the epistle of Christ, written with the Spirit of the living God." No, I must grieve when I find in them that which is contrary to their beauty in Christ. They are "as trees of lign aloes," and as "cedar trees." It is not merely that God has not seen iniquity in them - He has seen beauty.

Israel were in the wilderness, their enemies all around; but for all that, the table is spread for them in the presence of their enemies; and here are God's thoughts about them, thoughts of comeliness and goodliness; they were "as gardens by the river's side, as the trees of lign aloes . . . as cedar trees by the rivers of waters." "Thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures," Psalm 36: 8. What an unlikely place, the wilderness, in which to look for rivers of waters! "He shall pour the water out of his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters, and his king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted."

357 Balaam was in the very presence of Balak, who would have done anything to bring a curse on the people; and he says, "God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows. He couched, he lay down as a lion, and as a great lion: who shall stir him up? Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee."

And this is what we have to see in the church, spite of Satan. Though in the wilderness, and in the presence of its enemies, a table is spread for it there. Spite of all the power of Satan, the beauty of the church is this - not in the glory, because there it is not in the presence of Satan; not in the rest, but now - the display of the efficacy of the calling and of the power of God in the presence of Satan, in the very place where Satan rules. The church is set in the efficacy of the fulness of Christ's work. It has failed. But, unless the soul has the consciousness of redemption - the fulness of redemption in Christ, it cannot see this.

We should know that we are the Lord's "garden"; we should have in the wilderness the consciousness of being planted as God's "trees," and not merely of being saved. God has set rivers of water to flow there - not thence, but there - that though in a dry place, the church should bear testimony to the perfectness of Christ's work, to the infiniteness of the efficacy of Christ's death. What a marvellous miracle of grace is the acceptance of the church! Yes, such is its efficacy, that in this dry and barren land, this land where no water is, the waters of God flow; and God's people have rivers of waters around them to refresh them through it. That a poor wretched creature such as I am should have the Holy Ghost dwelling in me, and be a tree of the Lord's planting, is as great a miracle as bringing me to glory. "Greater is he that is in us, than he that is in the world." God has put a wall, an unseen wall of grace, around us; and while Satan is deceiving and blinding the eyes of the world, these waters of God supply the saints, watering the plants of His planting inside the fence of God. What a manifestation of divine power and grace.

358 O beloved, our souls need to see the church, and the saints individually, thus in God's vision, with our eyes open, in the Spirit: otherwise we shall not get into the power of God's thoughts. We do not want "the vision of the Almighty" in order to see that a saint is a saint; neither do we want "open" eyes to discover inconsistencies in the walk of our brethren. We want to rise up and have our eyes open to see, as God sees, this beauty and glory of the church. God is in possession of us. And remember this was said in the very presence of Balak. It is blessed we should have the certainty of these things in the midst of Satan's power.

What does David say? (Psalm 33). "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." The enemies can only look on, and see how blessed I am whilst I feast on what God has provided. "Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over." Not only have I got mercy and peace, but I have understood its fulness - an overrunning cup. He can both dwell upon the proved faithfulness of God, and count upon it for the future also; as he goes on to say, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life," and finishes with "I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

One thing more. Balaam sees the beauty of the people in "the vision of the Almighty"; but not only so, he sees their hope in the One that is to be in the midst of them in the latter days. There is the actual beauty of God's people; there are the secret unfailing springs whereby they are refreshed; the power of God is for them against their enemies. But we must see the future also: "And now [he says to Balak], behold, I go unto my people; come therefore, and I will advertise thee what this people shall do to thy people in the latter days . . . . I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh; there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab," etc.

So as to the church; it will be brought into glory and blessing with Christ. We do not merely see the beauty of the church, according to God's mind, its present loveliness and preciousness in His sight, but we see Him who is to be in the midst of the church, the Bridegroom of the church, whom we are longing for. "We shall see him as he is," 1 John 3: 2. By faith we see Him now - we see One our souls long for - who has loved the church and given Himself for it:* and when He thus comes out in His glory and beauty, we shall be with Him. The same Holy Ghost, who forms us for His eyes, gives Him to our eyes to be the centre of our affections and joy.

{*We look out for Him not merely as the Star of Jacob. The Star is known to us in a more blessed way.}

359 There is our hope: We shall see Him as He is. If we have the Spirit shewing us the beauty of Christ now, we are looking for the fulness of glory and beauty in the day of the glory. Let us see that our affections are going out towards Himself.

"How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles, O Israel!" We have the strength of God's love to think of for present comfort, and where there is a right view of the beauty and comeliness of the church, and yet of her failure, there will be great humbleness and tenderness of spirit towards the Lord, and towards one another.

The Lord grant we may not sit down content in wretched coldness of heart, with evil in ourselves, or in our brethren. The waters of God are at the root of the plant, however miserable the pruning. How precious this! May we rise up, in the sense of the beauty we have in God's mind, to delight ourselves in Him, who is our comeliness, to glory in Him who is God's delight, and our joy and glory. Amen.

A Christian - Who and what is he now and hereafter?

J. N. Darby.

<12036E> 360

It is rather a solemn thing to say what a Christian is, especially when we think of what it is that made him one. God is acting so as to glorify Himself. It is a solemn thing to be a revelation of that of which Christ is worthy - of the result of Christ's work; as it is said, "He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied," Isaiah 53: 11. It does us good to think of this, because it makes us judge ourselves, to see how far we are really that. Not that we ever shall be the perfect display of it until we are "like him" (1 John 3: 2), until we see Him as He is, and are conformed unto His image in glory. Still, if we bear Christ's name, we should seek to present a fitting result of His work in the world.

That is what a Christian is. Hence it becomes a solemn thing to say what he is. Still, whilst it is a solemn question, it is a matter of grace. There is such a comfort in this thought! Whilst most solemn, it is always happy, because it is of grace - the free, full, and sovereign grace of God. This all helps us a little.

With regard to the question itself, there is a great difference between what a Christian is "now," and what he will be "hereafter." Not as regards the spring of life, redemption, etc., but now a Christian is the expression of the power of God in the midst of evil; hereafter he will be the expression of the result of that power which has put away the evil, when all the evil is put away.

Take us at our best estate now - a Christian is the expression of the power of God in the midst of the prevalence of evil. A Christian will not be that exactly hereafter; he will then be the expression of the result of God's power, in the highest sense, when the evil is put away. As to the foundation in Christ's blood, and the power of His resurrection, and the love of God, this as much belongs to his state hereafter as it is the basis of what he is now. God's love in Christ will be the spring of my joy then as it is now.

One thing that gives such settledness of peace (as it regards his own soul's peace) to the Christian is, that it does not depend upon what he is now, or will be then, but upon that which is common to both states. The ground of it is the same now that it will be in heaven. The thing displayed may differ; but the ground of confidence is the same now as hereafter. As to the source and spring of it in the love of God, His love is as true, and as perfect, and as complete, and as much manifested towards me now, as it will be when I am in glory; He cannot in His divine love go beyond the gift of His Son. The life also that I have now is not a different life from that I shall have then. No doubt the body hinders it. Its manifestation will be different; but the life is the same.

361 And the ground of peace changes not. That upon which I rest for eternity is just as much now as it will be then. The blood of Christ has been shed and has been carried into the holiest; Heb. 9, 10. Whatever our conflicts, our conflicts (properly speaking) spring from that ground being entirely settled. Whoever is in conflict as to that has not got to God, or otherwise has not understood the ground of his standing. Unsettlement of soul may arise from a man's not having seen the gospel simply; but as to the ground of his standing, it is just as much accepted now as it will be then. There is not another Christ to die - no fresh blood to be shed. Nor is there another revelation to be made. There is not a love to spring up in the heart of God that has not been told out. There may be a fuller apprehension of that which has been accomplished, but there is nothing new either to be accomplished or revealed.

Whoever has not got upon that ground (has not had that question settled in his soul) has not got as yet upon simple Christian ground. God may be working in his soul; but I do not call having life the getting upon simple Christian ground. There may be life without the knowledge of what God is as for us, of the perfectness of His love towards us, and of what He has done for us in Christ. Life may make me anxious, and hope, and have desires after God, and long to be assured of His favour, and the like; but, when we speak of a "Christian," we speak of what a Christian is in Scripture, and Scripture always speaks of him - of a believer in any state - as to his standing. It is very necessary to see this.

We must not confound the exercises of a Christian with the standing of a Christian. The ground of his standing is God's work. In his exercises there comes in himself; his flesh, his ignorance, and many other things alas! may be working. But it is entirely according to God's thoughts, and not according to my thoughts, that my standing is to be judged of. Moreover the exercises of my own soul are never the same as God's judgment about them.

362 When I am thinking of these, it is my actual state that occupies me; but were God to take notice of my actual state, He must condemn me. What He has regard to is the work of Christ for me, and my union with Him, not in this respect my actual state at all. It is always important to recollect that, because my own judgment of myself ought to be as to my actual state.

Whatever his exercises, however these may vary, the Christian, in one sense, is just the same, because he is in God's sight as Christ. Christ being the perfectly accepted man at God's right hand, the Christian is looked at by God in the same position (Eph. 2: 6), sitting in heavenly places "in Christ." In that sense there cannot be any difference; and the ground of our acceptance cannot ever be imperfect. I repeat, we must not confound the movements of life with the ground of our acceptance. We can never have this too simple and clear. It does not make one despise the first actings of life, its first movings and breathings, however feeble and imperfect: I do not despise my child because he is not a man.

In the Ephesians (where what a Christian is is fully brought out), men are viewed as the "children of wrath" in their very nature (necessarily heirs of wrath, because God is what He is, and man is what he is.) Every other distinction is lost sight of, because, in his character of a sinner, man is brought fully into the light of God. But having thus told us what man is, the apostle does not stop with man; he turns round and begins at the other end; he now tells us what God is, that He is "rich in mercy," and (as the effect of this) that He has set us in heavenly places in Christ.

But when we come a little more to detail, I would recall the distinction which I made at first - that a Christian is now the expression of the power of divine life and the divine presence (divine life, I mean, aided by the power of God), in the midst of evil that he knows; but hereafter he will be the blessed expression of the result of God's power when evil is put away. So with Christ (there was no evil of course in Him; yet, speaking abstractly, it was the same thing; in Him it was perfect) when here; He was what He was in the midst of evil. There cannot be any increase in it in itself; but the manifestation of divine power in us is capable of an indefinite increase.

363 Redemption, however, precedes everything else (I do not mean by this that it precedes the counsels of God). First, Christ "loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that is should be holy and without blemish," Eph. 5: 25-27. Redemption precedes the washing. Washing may go on, but it comes after redemption. He makes her His, before He sets about making her what He would have her to be. There may not be a clear thought as to it; but the thing is done nevertheless. Redemption being accomplished, the Lord sets about producing in us the effects and fruits of His grace in conformity to Himself.

The first effect of divine life in the midst of evil is not merely to see, but to have the conscience exercised about, certain things. The moment life begins to work, we get the consciousness of evil inside, as well as of evil outside; that is, it gives the judgment of evil in ourselves. Not that the instant Christ is presented to the soul in grace, the soul sees the evil plainly; it may see the grace and blessing, knowing evil in a general way, without being exercised about it through any definite application of what Christ is to the man within; there may be rather the loveliness of Christ attracting than any deep work in the conscience. I can quite understand that. But then, before we get into a properly Christian state (the process may be longer or shorter), the necessary effect of life working is to give us the judgment of what man is, in the main bearing of his present condition, as looked at by the Holy Ghost. It brings in the consciousness of what we are in the presence of what Christ is. Then we get the man brought down into the distinct consciousness that it is all over with him. And it is all over with him. I mean by this, not merely that he has sinned and there is condemnation, but that he has no right or title or claim to anything now that he has, either to the promises of God or to anything else. Now that is the place the soul has to be brought to (so hard to come to), to find out what it is in God's presence. He may hope to get out of the scrape if he thinks he has any right to the promises, because these may help him; but it is no use talking of God's promises when God is talking of what I am and of judgment. If I am thinking about what I may be some time or other, promises have their place, they come in most beautifully; but if it is what I am, promises do not touch that. The Syrophenician woman (Matt. 15) will serve as an illustration. No promise could meet her condition; for as a Gentile she had not any claim to the promises. The Lord says, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." If you come to me as an Israelite, I may do something for you; otherwise "it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto dogs." But when she replies, "Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table," she in effect says, God is rich in mercy; and Christ cannot say He is not - that there is nothing in God for a poor sinner.

364 I do not believe that a person gets upon right Christian ground (one has to make allowance for ignorance, but there is no true, no solid ground, as to simple and abiding peace), until the soul has been brought to the consciousness that it has no claim whatever or title to promise.

Having been brought down to this by what goes on within, there may be attraction; but the first full effect is that the man is judged, he sees what he is, and becomes entirely hopeless as to what he is, and is turned over entirely to the thought of what God is. We have only to say, "What hath God wrought!" I am now upon new ground, namely, upon that of what God is towards a sinner who is altogether vile. If the sinner is perfectly vile, God is perfectly good. Further, I come to see what He has done because He is so. It is not that He has taken him out of the world. "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world," etc. He will do that by-and-by.

The first thing in this new life, inasmuch as it is all in Christ, is, that He is raised from the dead. We have to look at what God has done in Christ. I find Christ dead because of sins (our sins); and then I find the quickening life-giving power of God coming in and raising Him from the dead. I should separate this entirely from the heavenly standing of the saints. We have all been too much accustomed to confound these two things, resurrection-life, and heavenly standing. What I see as the effect of resurrection-life is this: - a man quickened and raised with Christ becomes a pilgrim down here. This is not the whole of a Christian. But it is the power of divine life in the new creature moving in a world that does not belong to him, and to which he does not belong. The Christian begotten by the resurrection of Christ is a distinct thing to consider from a Christian sitting in the heavenly places in Christ. Though the same individual is both, they are distinct things to consider.

365 In 1 Peter 1 we read, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath [not, "blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ," as in the Ephesians; but] begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time," v. 3-5. I find here persons begotten unto a lively hope, and what is their hope? are they sitting in heaven? No, they are hoping for it. Therefore the apostle says (chap. 2: 11), "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul." It is the Christian on his pilgrimage that is contemplated. He is a stranger here. He has an inheritance in heaven; when he is in his inheritance, he will be no stranger; but he is not there, he is going towards heaven. He is a resurrection-man on earth, walking through the world with new affections and feelings, going on towards his inheritance, but he is not there; an Israelite in the wilderness, redeemed from Egypt, and a stranger, but not in Canaan. And there comes in the trial of faith. The apostle goes on to say, "Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ."

Where do I find the Christian in Ephesians? Not going a journey at all; he is sitting down; and where? "In heavenly places in Christ Jesus." That is what I am doing now; I am sitting in heaven, settled there. And, Christ being Heir of "all things," the inheritance is not heaven. The inheritance of Ephesians is different from that in Peter; it is all that Christ possesses, and therefore earth comes in. The inheritance of "all things" is the heavenly man's hope; but heaven is his home, his position. In Peter heaven is his hope: he is going towards heaven as his home, and towards his inheritance which is in heaven. There I get a very different condition.

366 Both these things are true of the same person - both are true of the Christian. It is good to have the trial of faith, it supposes faith to be there; it is good to sit down with Christ where no trial is, and it is good to come down into trial. But these are different conditions. The place of Christ on the mount, when with Moses and Elias (Luke 9), was different in the midst of the excellent glory from that in which He stood when He came down from the mount, and had to meet the crowd, and then cast out the devil. My true position as a heavenly man is to sit in heavenly places in Christ; but on the other hand, as begotten to a new hope by the resurrection of Christ, it is simply going through the world, but it is through the world that I am going. Here I am, a new creature, quickened and raised up with Christ; and what a world am I in! So with regard to Christ's coming; if walking on earth, I am waiting for Christ, the hope of the coming of Christ, and His appearing to set things right here; but if sitting in heaven, I am there in Christ, and wait to be there with Christ actually, and there enjoy Christ fully. The Lord's coming is not spoken of in the Ephesians; the saints are viewed as sitting in heaven.

I get these two elements of a Christian's position; and in one sense I do not call one more important than the other. I may look at the Christian at the springhead of peace, in full enjoyment of heavenly places, and in settled peace with God, and fighting for Him in conflict with Satan. But I cannot have him fighting for God in Canaan till I get him into Canaan; I may have him in Egypt under the enemy's power, but that is not conflict with him. It needs redemption by God. But this places him in the wilderness, a second element of his Christian life.

A person acting under the consciousness, and in terror, of Satan's power, fearing he may be lost if left there, is sometimes more in earnest than when he has got peace; but I do not trust this energy. He has not learned what the flesh is, though he may have learned what Satan's tyranny is. It is when he has to say to God that he will find out what the flesh is. A man will always go fast enough if he finds Satan behind him. The Israelites travelled faster when Pharaoh was at their back, than they did afterwards in their stages in the wilderness. There was no murmuring because of the way when Pharaoh was behind them; but then it was afterwards in the wilderness that they were put to the test. Then came the question, Is Christ sufficient, or is the manna "light food"? If a man is not spiritual, he must get something to satisfy his craving. All this is put to the test; put to the test, not when a man is flying from Pharaoh, but when he is walking with God.

367 And there comes in the mediation of Christ. In this wilderness state I get Christ between me and God - "if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous"; but this is not union with Christ: I am looked at in myself; we get individualised. A man may be floundering about, through not having his eye simply fixed on Christ, not knowing how to get to the end; but he finds a thread let down from heaven to bring him to the place exactly where he ought to be, while he is only thinking of the mud, or judging himself for not having valued Christ enough. There are a thousand thoughts and feelings and affections brought out, and into play, as the result of our having resurrection-life. We get the constant loving care and tenderness of Christ brought home to the soul; and there is a necessary character of intercourse with Christ which heaven itself will not give.

This is one part of a Christian. He is a pilgrim and a stranger in the power of resurrection-life, with the mediation of Christ carried on, not to procure for him life, but to maintain his intercourse and communion with God in the light on the footing of what Christ is there. On the footing of that, himself imperfect, he is maintained in intercourse with a perfect God. Everything that the heart of man can be exercised about is met by the fulness of God through the mediation of Him who is both God and man.

The other thing is this (where there is no question or trial at all), the Christian sitting in heavenly places. And there, let me say, it is not yet the church, though in touching on it we touch the church's position. As resurrection-life did not take a man into heaven, so taking him into heaven does not in itself put him into the church. That is, it may be viewed as an individual thing. When I get into heaven, I am getting wonderfully close to the truth of the union of the church with Christ; still I may look at myself as a single individual in heaven, without at all taking in the unity of the body which is the church.* I can speak of the "children of God," and of "joint-heirs," without bringing in the idea of the body. I take the Christian sitting in heavenly places. As an individual Christian I have done with conflicts when I get there; it is no longer the journey in exercise of heart. I shall still have conflicts with Satan, but these are for God. I may too have daily to judge my flesh in these conflicts; but judging the flesh is not conflict for God; it is a different thing to have conflict for God, and to be judging the flesh as hindering. When in heaven I am in the result of God's work.

{*The difficulty of separating these two things in the mind is this: the moment I talk about "sitting in heavenly places" I must bring in Christ, because it is "in Christ" that I am there; and thus, also, the whole church is sitting in heavenly places in Him.}

368 In the Book of Joshua, before a single conflict, there was a table spread, and they had done with the manna. God had spread a table for them in the presence of their enemies (chap. 5). When they got across the Jordan, they sat down and ate the "old corn of the land." The manna (the provision for the wilderness) had ceased, and they were eating the "old corn of the land"; they had Christ looked at as indigenous to heaven. It is not for my wants that I have Christ in heaven; I have no wants there, I have Him there to enjoy Him, to sit down at God's table and feed with everlasting delight upon what God delights in. It is the "old corn of the land" that I sit down to there. And mark the difference as regards the passover. They did not eat it with the blood upon the doorposts, as in Egypt; they were there enjoying the results of redemption in the consciousness of the quiet security of the land. The aspect of the blood in Egypt was that of keeping God away as a judge. They were sitting down too in the plains of Jericho, in the presence of that great city, the type of all the power of the enemy; and there they ate the "old corn of the land" (Jericho's land in a certain sense), before one bit of conflict began. So with the Christian.

And here comes in the connection between our sitting in heavenly places and our passage through the world. I should be manifesting distinctly what is heavenly here, and thus be practically a heavenly man, in the midst of worldly men. I should be a heavenly man, as one that is there and at home there, shewing out what I have learned and enjoyed there. Christ was, while walking and acting on earth, "the Son of man which is in heaven." He manifested towards the world the blessedness of the spirit and tone and character of heaven. He could not be Messiah for the Jews without being the Son of God for men.

369 If a Christian man is not walking in the Spirit, if the flesh is not subdued, he cannot display to the world the temper and spirit and character of heaven - he is manifesting something else. But the conflicts of the heavenly places (Eph. 6: 12) are not merely conflicts in the subduing of our flesh; they are conflicts carried on in realising and laying hold of the things in Canaan that belong to ourselves and others. If Joshua and the Israelites took cities in Canaan, it was because they were in Canaan. Our enemies are there, and there it is we should meet them. There are things in which we have to be faithful on earth; but there are also things that belong to us because we are sitting together in heavenly places in Christ. A man may be consistent in the one, without displaying the heavenly man. You may see some tolerably consistent on earth, whose souls are not seeking to realise what is theirs in Christ: Satan's effort is ever to hinder our doing that. We cannot carry the flesh into the heavenly conflict. If my flesh is not mortified, I cannot wield the weapons of that warfare. The flesh always brings in Satan's power, who has got a tide against it; and God can never act with the flesh, or display His power for us against our enemies, where it is allowed. If we were walking as born of God, and as having on the whole armour of God, the flesh being habitually mortified, he could have no effect; we should be able to go on in the simplicity of our own service, and he could not come in with his wiles, as in the case of Achan (Josh. 7), and of the Gibeonites (Josh. 9). The moment we get upon heavenly ground, as soon as ever Joshua is in Canaan, I see the Lord's sword drawn, and the question is, "Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?" So with us, there is the drawn sword. The moment we get into heavenly places, the Canaanites are against us. The church of God should be seeking to realise by faith whilst down here all that belongs to it as sitting there in Christ. As soon as Joshua crossed the Jordan, it was Canaan; but Canaan and conflict. All this has the character of the power of God brought in where evil is.

As Christians we have to be pilgrims in consistency with our condition in the wilderness. The Lord may give us palm-trees and wells of water (Exodus 15: 27); the ark may go before us to search out a resting place (Num. 10: 33); but if we are not prepared to go with the cloud whenever it moves, we are not pilgrims and strangers, and we in heart go back to Egypt. But the heavenly man, besides his being a man with resurrection-life and the pilgrim of faith, is to be the manifestation down here in the world of that which is heavenly. It may be in the power of hope, but the thing which he presents is that which is his now. He shews plainly and distinctly that he is Canaan, and acts upon the ground of being there. If the land was not as yet cleared of its inhabitants, whose abominations defiled it, still Joshua knew what was suited to it; and therefore, when he had taken the kings and hanged them, he did not leave them there after the sun went down; Josh. 10. He could not allow God's land to be defiled.

370 As to what the Christian is "hereafter," it may be said he is a risen man still, a heavenly man still. Hereafter, as an individual, he will be the perfect result of the power of God, not in the midst of evil, but of the power of God that has put aside the evil. "There shall be no more curse; but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: and they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads," Rev. 22: 3, 4. It is not another man, but the same man, in the perfect enjoyment of blessedness in the midst of good. There are many points of view in which who and what a Christian is now and hereafter might be taken up. The question is far from being exhausted.

One branch of the subject, not touched upon as yet, divides itself into two parts - heirship, and reigning with Christ. A christian is an heir, as well as a child, an "heir of God" and a "joint-heir with Christ," Rom. 8: 17. Again, he will reign with Christ; and it may be of use to see what the part in our life here is corresponding to that of reigning. The inheritance is connected with our being children, "if children, then heirs," etc. The moment a person is in the position of a child, there is an heir. The reigning part we find connected with suffering: "If we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him." Both these things are no doubt spoken of the Christian; still this is the principle, "if we suffer with him," etc.

371 Again, there is another character which this statement suggests to the mind, and that is his priestly character. I only refer to this now. We are kings and priests unto God. In taking up this it would be interesting for us to see the present intercessional character of priesthood; for in reigning by and by it will be as a royal priesthood, rather than intercessional.

The Church - What is it? Her Power, Hopes,

Calling, Present Position, and Occupation

J. N. Darby.

<12037E> 372

It is a solemn thing when we come to think what the church really is.* It is all blessed when we think of her privileges; but looking at her as Christ's representative on earth is most solemn - an "epistle of Christ." As the tables of stone represented what God demanded of man, so should the church, and in an equal sense, be in the world the revelation of what God is to man, an exhibition of God's grace and power to man and in man.

{*Not, ought to be, but, is; she ought to be a faithful representative; but we cannot take the church of God out of this place, let her have got into what condition she may.}

When I speak of the "kingdom," it is a different thing.* We there get the display of power and government, not union and fellowship. Even the testimony of the kingdom comes necessarily to be quite a distinct thing. I should distinguish altogether "the gospel of the kingdom" and "the kingdom," from what we are accustomed to call, "the gospel"** and "the church." Paul taught the kingdom, and he taught the gospel, and he taught the church; but he never taught them as the same thing.***

{*It of great importance to distinguish between the kingdom and the church.}

{**We employ the term "gospel" in a very limited sense, but in the scriptures it is used in a much more general way. For example, the apostle could say that when Timothy came back from them, he brought good tidings (preached the gospel) of the brethren's faith and charity. Again, we read "For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them," Heb. 4: 2. To them it was the promise of the land. The word is not restricted to the grace now preached, it is simply "good news," and there may be the good news of the kingdom, or the good news of Canaan.}

{***He preached the kingdom of God; but it is a very distinct thing that God should set up a reign of power on the earth (take the word "reign" instead of "kingdom," and you will see at once that this is quite distinct from the idea of the "church"); that would not necessarily touch the question that Christ was going to have a bride united to Him in glory. And when he speaks of his ministry, he distinguishes his own ministry into a ministry of the gospel, and a ministry of the church.

373 There is one revelation: God is going to take to Himself His great power, and to reign. There is another truth: there is to be a bride, and body, of the King. Again, certain things setting out the grace of God are necessary for the soul to be saved. These three things* are very plainly quite distinct.

{*The kingdom, the church, and the salvation of the soul.}

From the moment Israel was called as a people, God had evidently the thought of having a king.* Man's way of setting about it was quite wrong. Up to the time of Samuel priesthood was morally the regular point of association between the people and God. But the priests were unfaithful, and then the Lord wrote Ichabod upon all that had been Israel's glory. The link between God and the people was broken. The ark was taken by the Philistines. The priests were slain. He delivered His strength into captivity, and the Philistines were in the mount of God.

{*This thought was not fully brought out until David, but in the days of Moses it was brought out that He would not only have a kingdom, but a king. Moses is called "king in Jeshurun" (Deut. 33: 5), but he was not their king.}

This was the sign given to Saul;* 1 Sam. 10. He found people going up to Bethel (v. 3). There were people that had faith in the God of Bethel** (that is, that God would never leave His unchangeable promise to Jacob). Everything else might be gone; but God's connection with Israel could not be broken up. This became the resting-place of faith. God could not fail. Secondly, he was to go to the mount of God (v. 5); and there was the garrison of the Philistines; the power of the enemies of the Lord in the place where God's altar ought to have been, and thus power against those who were acting in faith. Still Bethel could be visited with a tabret and pipe; faith could take up the joy that was proper for the people who had Jehovah for their God. There was also the spirit of prophecy given to him (v. 6). But neither of the signs did Saul understand, though clear and instructive to the eye of faith. David was the opposite of this, and was the type of Christ, as King.

{*He ought to have understood it, but he did not.}

{**Bethel was the place where Jacob had seen that God was the unchangeable God of Israel (Gen. 28).}

After the king is brought in, there is a change in the position of the priesthood; it ceases to be the habitual link of connection between the people and God. When Eli is set aside (1 Sam. 2: 35) God says, "I will raise me up a faithful priest . . . and he shall walk," not before me, but "before mine anointed for ever." There I get a royal person, another link between God and the people, set up above priesthood.* So that Solomon was quite right in thrusting out Abiathar; 1 Kings 2: 27. When Solomon dedicated the temple, and the priests could not stand to minister because the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God, the king praised God and blessed the people.**

{*From this time the people's fortunes followed the king.}

{**As Melchisedek.}

374 At length the King was presented in humiliation in the Person of Christ. John Baptist comes (Matt. 3) and says, "Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand . . . he that cometh after me is mightier than I . . . whose fan is in his hand . . . he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."* John is rejected; and then, after he is cast into prison, Christ takes up the same testimony (Matt. 4). "From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness," etc. The power of God was with Him in testimony, and was seen. The disciples, the King having been rejected, are given to know "the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven," which to the multitude are parables; chap. 13. And they have God with them. The apostles were to go on (and they went on) preaching the kingdom.

{*That is, the King is coming in judgment.}

The kingdom is still to be set up, that is, the power of heaven, in the Person of Jesus Christ. He shall take to Him His great power and reign. It will be set up in heaven, for He must go to a far country to receive a kingdom and to return; Luke 19: 11, 12. He has gone up on high; but He has not yet been sent back in the power of the kingdom. It will be a "world to come," not merely a state of Judaism, the kingdom of the "Son of man" - not merely the Jews and their Messiah; Dan. 2, 7. Heaven will be in the highest sense the seat of the kingdom. But it is still the kingdom.

There is another revelation. We are to reign in the kingdom. There are "joint-heirs"; those who are to "reign with him"; and those who are to "sit on thrones." Yet it is still the kingdom, largely extended, a wider sphere; but I am still travelling in the circuit of the kingdom.

375 The destruction of Jerusalem was the setting aside of Jerusalem in judicial power; but still we can preach the kingdom of God. There will be the effect of the actual employment of power in setting things to right. At present it is rather in testimony than in power. The effect of the power of Christ in "the world to come" will be to set aside the power of Satan.* In all this we have only the kingdom. Again, there will be a special testimony to the coming of the kingdom before the close.

{*Miracles were "miracles of the world to come" (Heb. 2: 5; 6: 5.)}

There is another ministry that goes out altogether on another principle. In Paul's ministry I get that which is beyond the reach of dispensations; I have here what man is (not merely "sinners of the Gentiles," or Jews). He may prove it as regards the Gentiles in one way, and demonstrate it as regards the Jews in another; but what he proves and demonstrates is this, that man as man is at enmity with God. If we begin at Jerusalem, we begin with a testimony to Jerusalem.* In Paul's ministry Jews and Gentiles alike are known only as "children of wrath." We get him preaching the gospel** to "every creature under heaven."*** But Paul was not simply a minister of the gospel; he was a minister also of the church "to fulfil [complete]**** the word of God."

{*The testimony in Matthew 28: 19 goes out without a word about the Jews; Christ had been with the Jews, but the testimony is to go out unto the Gentiles. In Luke 24: 47 the "beginning at Jerusalem" marks the greatest possible grace.}

{**In the common sense of the word.}

{***It was not a different gospel, as to the salvation of the soul from that of Peter; but the testimony was more indiscriminate. I may distinguish in speaking to a man, but I must come to the same point -  You are a lost sinner, and God is a holy God, and (Jew or Gentile), if not washed in the blood of Jesus, you must perish.}

{**** In order to the completion of the word of God, the doctrine of the church (as taught by him) must be preached, as well as the kingdom}

We read in Colossians 1: 12, "Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom* of his dear Son; in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins; who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:** for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead:*** that in all things he might have the pre-eminence. For it pleased [the Father] that in him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven. And you,**** that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled, in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy, and unblamable, and unreprovable in his sight." And now as to the ministry: "if ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven, whereof I Paul am made a minister; who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church; whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God," etc.

{*There I get the kingdom.}

{**Besides being the image of God, He is Head over creation; and the reason of that is, that He has created it all.}

{***It is now "Head of the body, the church," as "first-born from the dead."}

{****The church. Here (as there was the headship over all things, and the headship of the church, so) we get the reconciliation of all things in purpose, and the present reconciliation through faith, which is the church.}

376 In the testimony about the church, I find (not the kingdom, nor the salvation of individuals, merely; but) that there is a body for Him who is the Head, associated and connected with Him in His headship over all things. There is a certain special thing which the Lord has reconciled. Paul deduces everything, as to the church, from Christ's headship of the body, and the flowing down from Him of all he has to minister. How is the accomplishment of this? "By one Spirit are we all baptised into one body," 1 Cor. 12: 13.

377 Turn to Ephesians 1: 19: "And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." In this passage, there is the headship of the body, and He is "Head over all things to the church."

As to the way and power of the unity of the body of saints formed on earth with Christ, the Head, in heaven, it is by the Holy Ghost "sent down from heaven "* making them one body.

{*Come down after Christ's ascension, and consequent upon His glorification at the right hand of God, the work of redemption being accomplished.}

As a consequence, when Paul speaks of apostles and prophets, he looks at them exclusively in this light,* and never as appointed by Christ on earth. He says, "If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God, which is given me to you-ward: how that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery (as I wrote afore in few words, whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit," etc.** (Eph. 3: 2-5). As to the very existence of these holy apostles and prophets: "Wherefore, he said, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave*** some apostles; and some prophets; and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ," etc. (chap. 4). His thought about apostles is of something that flows from the exalted Head. He knows no man after the flesh.

{*As flowing from Christ, the exalted Head in heaven.}

{**Here I get "holy apostles and prophets," and a thing known nothing of until revealed to these apostles and prophets, to whom it was revealed by the Spirit.}

{***From this height.}

378 By one Spirit baptised into one body, we have the Head and the body united together - the Head at the right hand of God in heaven, united to the members, formed into a body down here on earth by the power of the Holy Ghost. Scripture calls that "the church."*

{*One greatly respects the jealousy of souls having the consciousness of the electing love of God, and His saving every one whom He has called from Adam downward, in being alarmed lest this distinction should affect the foundation of God's electing love, through the blood; but still it is my duty, as well as my privilege, to understand the position in which God has set me, and to call by the right name what God has called by that name in scripture.}

There is a word in Matthew 16 that is sometimes overlooked. The Lord says there to Peter, "Upon this rock will I build my church." There had been the revelation by the Father to Peter of the Person of Christ as "the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him (on the confession of this), "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee . . . . And I also* say unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven," etc. Christ is going to build His church; and besides this He gives the keys to Peter, the keys of the kingdom - a distinct thing from Christ's building His church. The church is that body which the Holy Ghost forms into unity, as connected with, and united to, the Lord Jesus Christ, its Head, sitting at the right hand of the Father in heaven; and that which the Holy Ghost so unites to Him is the only thing** in Scripture, called "the church" - that is specifically such.

{*In effect, "I am going to give thee an official place; I am going to say something: My Father has revealed my name to thee, and I am going to give thee an official name!"}

{**Local "churches" are not in question here.}

It may be added that this is a question which at the present moment is running through almost every country in Europe.* There are endless theories about it; but this is the question, "What is the church?" Some say it is "visible," others "invisible"; some, that there will be a church by-and-by, but there is none now; that there is no church on earth (there may be churches), but (when all are assembled in heaven) there will be a church. Now whilst it is perfectly clear that, when Christ leaves the Father's throne to take the church unto Himself, it will form a glorious body in heaven; yet, plainly, whilst sitting at the right hand of God, the only thing He owns as the church is the body down here. Until He rises up from His seat on high, He is working and ordering and acting always (while hid in God) by the Holy Ghost; and the Holy Ghost is down here. That which He owns as the church is where the Holy Ghost is, until it is united to Himself in glory.

{*The thing people are seeking to settle is, What is the church of God? It may be said to be the question of the day with the saints; and most surely it connects itself with every part of practice.}

379 There is no difficulty if we turn to Scripture. Where did Paul look at the church? "By one Spirit are we all baptised into one body," where? On earth, not in heaven. Certainly, gifts of healing, etc., were not in heaven. Nor are the "joints and bands" in heaven. None of its ministries are in heaven. It will be in heaven eventually no doubt, but it is now on earth. This is a great point to get our souls simple and clear upon.

As to her "power." In Scripture it is not the power of the church, but the power that works in us - the power of God working in the church: "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,* unto him be glory in the church," etc. The operation of the power of the Lord is necessarily limited by the moral condition of the church (He may bear with it, have patience towards it, but); God will never publicly act so as to sanction what He disapproves.**

{*"In us," it is true, but still it is His power.}

{**He sanctions the gospel preached, and there will be a certain measure of power go with the gospel.}

And with regard to power in public testimony; whilst the church was no doubt the vessel of it (there was a certain measure of power in the testimony of the kingdom* then, for which you would look in vain now), still it was the power of the Son of man. Where it is merely the saving of a soul, or the ministry of the church, one does not look for the same sort of power. God is sovereign and works as He pleases. The church was a vessel of power, and miracles were a testimony to the power of Christ as the risen Son of man. But when I think of the saving of souls, I look rather for that operation of the Spirit of God through the gospel. And when I look at the church, I look to the Head to supply what its need demands. While the church carried externally the character of Christ before the world, she was chartered with power - the power of Christ. That which Christ is to supply can never fail. Christ, and His power, and His acting in power, can never fail. He must nourish the church withal according to its need. But if God is acting in, and towards, persons, there must be truth in His actings; He cannot act in the power of grace contrary to the moral condition of the church, any more than He can act towards an individual contrary to his state before Himself.

{*The kingdom was there to a certain extent.}

380 We must get our souls down into the consciousness of where we are, before we get the blessing suited to our condition. Where are we? is the question. He never alters His mind. But the church's responsibility never alters His grace. Christ is exactly what it wants now - otherwise my faith cannot get on - as exactly what we want for the church now, as when in the days of the apostles it was adorned with every kind of miracle. But He will not act in the same way. Christ will never give up His thoughts about the church; and if we are acting on our thoughts, and He acts on His, He will make sad work with what we have set up. "He that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." If Christ begins to gather, He will scatter that which is not gathered in the power of unity with Himself. As with a card-house, the first wind of God's Spirit blows it all about. This may be very astonishing, very humbling, still it does not discourage (far from it!) those that look for God's actings. You are sure to get bad roads, when the spring comes, and the frost breaks up. Let the church be what it may, that is, the members of it; Christ is not altered. Her power is her weakness, her spirit of dependence, in never getting out of the place of constant, simple, unmingled dependence.

381 The "hope" of the church, as such, is identified with, and founded on, the relationship in which it is placed as united to the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven. It is true she is here as a pilgrim on earth, but, at the same time, she is the bride on earth. United to her Head in heaven, seated in heaven in Him, she waits to be there. The one proper hope of the church has no more to do with the world than Christ has, who is in heaven. She will see things set right in the kingdom, but this is not her hope: her hope, as her actual association, is with the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven, where she knows Him. Where did Paul know Christ? In the heavenly glory. And Paul knew the church to be one with Christ there.

There may be the change of the body in order to the accomplishment of the glory, but there is nothing as to its own position but sitting in heavenly places with Christ, because it is now sitting in heavenly places in Christ. To be along with Christ is our one hope - "That where I am, there ye may be also." In the first epistle to the Thessalonians, the apostle says, "Then shall we ever be with the Lord"; and what follows? Nothing! A great many things may be happening: but the church's hope is to be with Him where He is, and like Him, when she sees Him as He is.

As to the "calling." The heavenly calling, though embraced, does not at all fill up the thought. It does not in itself convey the thought of the church.* We might, as a set of individuals, be called up, and look to be caught up into heaven, and have a heavenly portion as the brethren of Christ, without knowing that we were the body and bride of Christ. The "hope" of the church is its marriage with the Bridegroom, and that is in heaven; we may come forth from heaven, for the kingdom and the glory, but our place is in heaven, in the unity with Christ as one with Him. We are builded together for the habitation of God through the Spirit; that is the calling of the church down here.**

{*We are constantly confounding in our minds the members of the church and the church itself. A great many things are true of the members that do not involve the church distinctively (that is, as gathered into unity by one Spirit, baptised into one body). I may speak about the various members of a corporation without speaking of the corporation, its rights, etc., as such.}

{**In Ephesians 4 Paul beseeches "that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called . . . endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling," etc.

With regard to the distinction between Peter, Paul, and John, as to the subject of ministry committed to them, Paul develops the dispensation of God; Peter was a witness of the resurrection of Christ. In Paul, it is not simply resurrection, but union with Christ at the right hand of God; he was converted by hearing Christ (whom he had never seen on earth) telling him that (in persecuting the church) he was persecuting Himself. (Acts 9: 4, 5.) That was the converting word. In John we get another thing, an abstract statement of what the nature of God is, and consequently what the nature of the children of God - love and righteousness. God is light, and God is love; and the nature of the children is deduced from the nature of God Himself.}

382 As to "present position and occupation," there is one thing makes a great difference. When the Spirit of God was working in the beginning of the gospel, the testimony had the aspect of power, and produced a sensible and visible result; there was an ostensible gathering. The central energy had the fulness of the truth, though there might be feebleness at the extremity of the rays. But there is nothing of this sort now. The sheep of God are scattered. The camp has got wrong. The consequence of this is all manner of degrees of knowledge. The very principle of unity has a separative tendency. A man must now settle himself upon the centre of truth. If my soul is not prepared to look to Christ, and to gather with Christ, and to take His judgment, I shall be cast into the uncertain condition of the differing judgment of every saint I meet with in the day's walk. Where Christ is the common object, there will be a coalescing power. I find the church of God in a unity which attaches itself to Christ alone, as the one sole centre.

The "occupation" of the church ought to be constant, incessant reference to its Head. If its Head is not its first thought (and that is shewn in thinking of its Head, and filling itself into all the thoughts and mind and affections of its Head), it cannot act for Him. This is its grand occupation. "We will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word." I must get through the crowd of Satan's power, and I must get beyond the crowd to my Head, who is the only source of power. We should seek that kind of communion with the saints which living in spirit with the Head gives. We should get all who hear to join in the cry; Rev. 22. So should the church have its own light, that all that is outside would be shut out. The apostle was living in a world of his own - he was filled with ideas of his own; but they were God's ideas, and he had power. It is not knowing the scene I have to act in that gives me power (we get no strength from the contemplation of that), but intercourse and living communion with the Head. We should get near enough to Christ to enjoy Him, and to know Him truly, and to gather up all that is like Him. If not separated by affection from the world, we shall be separated by discipline in the world. He will vex our souls to get us separate, if in spirit and in heart we are not separate. "Because thou servedst not Jehovah thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart . . . therefor thou shalt serve thine enemies which Jehovah thy God shall send against thee."

Christ's Cross, and God's "due time"

Romans 5: 6-8

J. N. Darby.

<12038E> 384

In the last verse of this chapter we have, in fact, the summing up of the great principles and ways of God's dealings with man in this principle of the gospel, "grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."

The result of what the apostle has been speaking of as to God's dealings, dispensational and personal, is, that all is grace. "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly," v. 6. "God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," v. 8. It is grace that did everything; v. 15-21. "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners," and they may have gone on sinning and setting aside the authority of God; but by Christ's obedience "shall many be made righteous." "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." And in the sum of the whole matter grace reigns.

That which gave the apostle so much confidence in this was, that it was consequent upon the discussion of the whole condition of man, as looked at in every way and in every shape. The blessed result was, not something that came in, and the discussion after; but after the discussion of the whole condition of man (that having been gone through), God takes His own place, and manifests what He will be and is towards the sinner in Jesus Christ. Now that is properly speaking the gospel. The gospel is not what man is, or what God requires from man, but what God is after He has thoroughly revealed what man is. When received in simplicity it leaves no possible question in the mind. It is the revelation of God made after He has estimated all our need. The gospel, we repeat, is the revelation of what God is, when what man is has been thus fully revealed. "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Peace of soul is constantly hindered through our not recognising that God has taken full cognizance of what we are. The gospel begins consequent upon His having made a full estimate. He knew from the beginning what man was and would be; but after, in his history, He had brought out and demonstrated in ways and conduct what man was under all the possible circumstances in which he could be placed - when He had demonstrated him to be entirely lost, and that He could not trust him in any way or in any measure, He begins, and says, I cannot trust in you: you must trust in Me. Hence the reason there is often a long and painful conflict, because of our not being brought down, in conscience, to the point where the gospel begins. A man may acknowledge himself to be ungodly, but then he hopes to cease to be ungodly; and God perhaps lets him struggle on thus for some time, until in his own soul he is brought to the place where the gospel begins. It is not that the gospel is not simple, but that in conscience we are not in the conditions where the gospel sees us. The work must be in the conscience. We read (Matt. 13) of a man hearing the word, and anon with joy receiving it, yet of his not having "root in himself"; evidently no work in the conscience (it is not that he is insincere) but only in the intellect; he has never been brought in guilty before God; "for," it is added, "when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by-and-by he is offended." Whereas, if he knew that his own soul was lost without Christ, surely he would say with the disciples, "Lord, to whom shall be go? thou hast the words of eternal life!" (John 6: 69). It is a great deal harder to believe that we are "without strength" than that we are "ungodly." Many a soul believes the one, that has not as yet been brought to believe the other. God has given us His history of the world from Adam to Christ. There was a "due time" for the death of Christ, a "due time," that is, in the history of the world. So is there the "due time,"* of the individual heart; not that the same feelings pass through the minds of all, but each must be brought to the result given us by the history of man previously to the death of Christ.

{*It has been said with truth that man's extremity is God's opportunity.}

385 It is true, many a person admits himself to be ungodly that has not been brought to feel the full meaning of the word. It is wonderful how our moral distance from God has rendered us incapable of judging of this. If a man say that God is holy, and that he is a sinner, as judged of by his natural conscience, yet not admit that he is shut out from the presence of God, but reply, "Oh, I hope not," he has not the power of apprehending His presence. On the one side God is "of purer eyes than to behold iniquity," on the other man is a sinner; but he has no sort of conscience or consciousness that he is in the presence of God. There is not a single individual that would not put off being there. Our conscience can never naturally bear it; the whole secret of their hopes is, that we have never been in the presence of God. In one sense we are always in His presence, but I speak now of being brought near in conscience. A man may be living absolutely without God, and yet be accounted a very good man after all. If he hurts his fellow-man it is another affair. In judging of right and wrong in the world God is always shut out. There is no surer proof of the way man has cast off God than his judgment of right and wrong; he calls "wrong" that which injures man, but the divine presence and claims are shut out. It all shew this first great truth, that men are "without God."

386 But there is another truth stated here - they are also "without strength." When a man is really brought to himself, it is always a question of present standing. An ungodly man will think (it is the natural thought) of meeting God some time, of what He will be in the day of judgment. But if His presence be revealed to the heart, it is His presence now that occupies it. Whilst there is merely the thought of going to God, there is another question: man thinks about how he can make up with God - time is before him, in which he can make his peace with God. He is either unconscious of the state he is in, or is looking to something by which he hopes, at a future day, he may be able to stand before God. He has no real thought of God but as a judge. Now hoping for mercy so, is no more than saying (and many mean nothing but this), that God is not of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, that He can let a little pass.

As to the first point, the state of the Gentiles was thorough ungodliness; Rom. 1. The apostle, after looking at man in every way (proud as man is of himself), brings all in guilty. But men have a natural conscience, and they are afraid to do in the light what they do in the dark. When in the outward darkness of Satan and ungodliness, they "work all manner of uncleanness with greediness" (Eph. 4: 17-19), worshipping stocks and stones, etc. Christianity makes men ashamed to do in the light what they did before in the dark (the profession of it, I mean; in that sense, it is borrowed light). Being in this condition, his own lusts are his springs of action, the slave of Satan and of his own lusts, gratifying his mere natural wicked inclinations, that was a clear case. It did not become a holy God. It was plainly ungodliness.

387 But besides this, there was another thing. God singled out a nation, to which He shewed great kindness, and gave (as His people) a rule. And then the question was whether there was strength in man to walk by this rule. He spake the ten commandments with His own voice on mount Sinai, and added, "Cursed is the man that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them." After all the will of man was that which wrought in his heart, and he was a breaker of this law.

But this went much farther. I may have my mind open to see and estimate the spirituality of the law, and not be merely a carnal Jew: where does that bring me? Into the consciousness, not merely that I have failed, and broken the law without, but of a principle within - a "law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members," Rom. 7: 23. If I am put under a law, the better that law, the worse my case. It may be said, "Why then did God give the law?" "It was added," we are told, "because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made," Gal. 3: 19. To what end? "The law entered [perfect as it was] that the offence might abound." What could the law enter for, to man already a sinner and having this law in his members? "The law entered that the offence might abound, that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful," Rom. 7: 13. This was the way God took to convince man that he was "without strength." And in that sense it was mercy. What is more difficult than to convince man of this? The judgment right and the affections right, still there was this law in his members; and the law, while it discovered and brought out this, imparting no strength, added to the character of the sin. For then was another thing; it made every act which was the result of this evil of our nature "transgression" - a thing done in despite of His authority. "Sin by the commandment became exceeding sinful," Rom. 7: 13. Now clearly a thing that makes sin "exceeding sinful" is not the way to make me a, sinner, have any righteousness before God!

388 What is man without the law? what with it? Man without the law is out of the presence of God; with it, he has failed in responsibility, and is a breaker of the law. And when Jesus came, the witness of the goodness of God, he rejected Him; John 15: 24, 25. Man has been tried in every way, and found utterly wanting. Wherefore? Was God ignorant of his condition? No; law was for the discovery of it to himself. God is now bringing home to his conscience that which He knew from the beginning; Rom. 3: 19.

A word here as to the triple form the law took. First, there was the perfect standard of what man ought to be; secondly, the prohibition of what man was disposed to, a positive standard of what God required, and the prohibition of that to which man was inclined; and, as a third thing, an adjunct of certain ordinances and ceremonies "imposed until the time of reformation," Heb. 9: 9, 10. What did God do all this for? On the one hand, to demonstrate that man was not righteous; and, on the other, to point out One who (holy and righteous) should suffer "the just for the unjust."

What did man? He took, to make out a righteousness for himself before God, the thing God had sent in to demonstrate him a sinner; and then, in order to fill up the gap in his own heart, sought to eke out his righteousness through these ceremonies - types and prefigurings of Jesus, the substitute for the sinner.

The moment there is spiritual understanding, when grace is not understood, the only effect is to make the soul miserable - it finds no strength. The more it understands the law to be what it should be, the more it feels justly condemned, and incapable of fulfilling it, or of delivering itself from its condition. "O wretched man that I am!" is its cry, and "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. 7: 24). All that is merely the question, "What is man?" Man is ungodly and without strength; and his history is summed up in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well now, have we been brought to the acknowledgment of the result of this history? Had we simplicity to receive by faith what God shews us man to be, we should have no thought of his being under a state of probation. For four thousand years man was under a state of probation, and, as the result of the trial, no good is expected from the bad tree. The gospel is come on the ground of man's being no longer under probation of God. He has given up looking for fruit. "A sower went forth to sow," etc. (Matt. 13). The natural thing was for Jesus to seek fruit; but there was none there: all had become verjuice. [sour grapes]

389 Man having been put to the test, now God comes in. It is quite evident that, unless it be for everlasting condemnation, we must give up the thought of appearing before God as a Judge; Rom. 3: 19, 20. "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified." The more I know of myself, the more I know that. The love of Christ only puts me into a darker judgment of myself. Is God to pass by judgment, as if there were no difference between good and evil? Impossible! There is just the beginning of wisdom. We cannot stand before God: what is to be done? A man must, in that sense, have done with himself. I cannot trust God in anything I ever have been, or can be; God cannot trust in me: now can I trust in God? What God is was before sin. If I begin to reason, I am under law; I cannot reason about God being grace to me: if I could reckon on it, it would not be grace.

Where shall I find the revelation and testimony of what God is? In Christ. What was this blessed witness for God here? Never anything but grace. With the Pharisees He shewed that their righteousness was only the adding of the sin of hypocrisy to their other sins. But whenever a man was before Him without any pretence to righteousness, let him be the vilest of the human race - a thief, an adulteress, a woman of the city, who was a sinner - whatever else, He was grace and nothing but grace. I want to know what the God with whom I have to do, as a sinner, is; and what is He? Grace. Perhaps I say, If I go to Him, I shall find Him gracious; but that is not all the testimony. Jesus came to us. "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins," 1 John 4: 9, 10. In the coming of the Son of God, I have the positive certainty of what God is to me, assuming that I believe Him to be the Son of God; I have the perfect certainty of His love. "When we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." From His mouth (if I am to take His testimony) I shall never hear anything but "Thy sins are forgiven thee, go in peace." If I am in the truth of my sins, I shall find Christ in the truth of His grace.

390 God has right to be sovereign, and there is the reign of grace (v. 31). But God is righteous; and therefore grace is to reign "through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord." In the grace of God reigning, He has given His Son to be the proof of His love; but then God is righteous, and could not introduce the sinner in his sins into His presence, and therefore He gave His Son to bear the sins. God's righteousness is displayed in all its truth and power. The Lord Jesus died for the ungodly. He was obedient at all costs: He bore everything, and went down into the dust of death, man's hatred, God's desertion, and Satan's power; we find Him there at the cost of everything. Everything that was against us was done away. By one man's obedience many are made righteous.

God's righteous wrath against sin has been exhibited. Where do I learn it? In the cross of Christ. Was it in holily sparing His Son? No! I see the wrath of God against my sin executed in that cross. The judgment of God against sin, the thing I dreaded, is now my salvation: "Out of the eater has come forth meat, and out of the strong, sweetness"; the head of Goliath, so to speak, has been taken off with his own sword. The Lord Jesus Christ has risen again as having borne the judgment. But more, He stands in living righteousness before God. Righteousness is there for ever under the eye of God.

The blood of Christ shed in death - death as the wages of sin - is ever under the eye of God. I do not say that it is ever under my eye, but it is under God's eye. He is the Judge. Never shall we feel about it as we ought; but sure I am He feels about it as He ought. He sees the blood. "When I see the blood, I will pass over." The blood is of infinite value with God. But there is another thing, He Himself is there - "Jesus Christ the righteous." He who has obeyed, who has accomplished all, is there. There may be chastisement from the Father (Heb. 12), and a great deal of painful discipline for our good; but righteousness is ever there, the righteous One in the presence of God for us.

The Holy Ghost was to convince the world of righteousness, because Jesus had gone to the Father; John 16: 7, 10. Righteousness is to be found in the presence of God, and it is He who has borne my sins.

391 And let us remember that this cannot be a question of hope. My soul may be looking to Jesus and hoping that He will speak a word of peace; but I do not hope that Christ will die for me; I do not hope that Christ will rise again for me and accomplish this righteousness; I believe. It is a simple question of the value of the Person, and blood, and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

As to the Christian life. The first thing is to begin our conduct with God. Do not let us talk about what we shall be. If we come to God with our present in our hand, the first question is, What are you? Man is a sinner, and no present in the hand of a sinner is accepted. Where there is really truth in the heart, the conscience takes notice of its present condition, and will never dream of putting off. It is, I have seen Thee: what shall I do? Job was a godly man, but a reasoner; yet the moment he sees God, he says, "I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." He sees God, and that ends the whole question.

There is another point. It is not merely the efficacy of the work as regards the past, so that I stand before God without fault, but I am there in Christ. I bless God for many means in helping me on in my walk; but as for my standing with God, were there anything whatever needed, it would be saying, I was not already perfect in Christ. Faith says, Christ has presented me in the presence of God, according to the mind of God, and I have nothing to seek. This is what the apostle means by "holding the Head," Col. 2: 19.

Another thing flows from this: as grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life in the Person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ, realising my position by virtue of being united to Him, the life in which I am one with Christ will shew itself down here in my living to Christ. The principle of the Christian's position is just this: - You have died with Christ, and, to be living as those who are "alive from the dead," you cannot have a single principle in common with the world. I am one with Christ (if I am a believer), and consequently as Christ before God, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me," Gal. 2: 20. So again, "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal body," 2 Cor. 4: 10. It is not the demand of a certain amount of human righteousness, or the removal of certain evils that hurt the conscience and offend society; it is the living display of what Christ is before men. We should never be content when we fail to display Christ before men: as Christ is righteousness for me before God, so is He the example and standard of righteousness before men: as Christ is for me before God, so ought I to be for Christ before men. This is the way for the Christian to judge of right or wrong. We may be humbled because of failure, but we must not lower the standard.

Faith and its Footsteps

Hebrews 11

J. N. Darby.

<12039E> 393

It is impossible to deny that there is some principle livingly working in the world which has signally called out the hatred and opposition of man. It has been so from Abel downwards to the present day.

The "course of this world" has gone on. It is now going on around us. But in the midst of this there has been, and there is, a motive acting, which calls out the hostility and proud judgment of the world. That history is the history of the town in which we are, as well as of Cain and Abel. In every age and in every country it has been so. We find the people of faith the objects of the hatred of man. But God owns this people. "Others," we read here, "had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonments: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy" (v. 36-38). Here God gives His history of them. He does not interfere. He leaves them "destitute, afflicted, tormented." He does not meddle with the world, and the world goes on. It will not be always so, but that is the present fact. "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the hearts of the sons of men are fully set in them to do evil." They go their own way, "the course of this world," Eph. 2: 2. It is not God's world. So little does He meddle with it, that, when His own children - those whom He owns - are "destitute, afflicted, tormented," He does not interfere. It has departed from Him and He will not own it.

We find the same thing in the message to the angel of the church of Smyrna, in the book of Revelation: "The devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried, and ye shall have tribulation ten days." How came that? could He not interfere? "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." There is hope in another scene. If a person will walk with God, he must walk by faith; he is walking in the midst of a world where God is not owned, and where God does not interfere - a world ripening for judgment. He sends a testimony; and just in proportion as we are faithful to His testimony, the prince of this world will torment us. "I say unto you," the Lord Jesus tells His disciples, "that Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall the Son of man suffer of them." That is the character of the "course of this world." God may control by secret providence and overrule, but that is its character. Faith has its testimony, and goes on with it, recognising that God does not own the world. "We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned: and the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth," Rev. 11: 17, 18. Until then they must live by faith of that which is unseen.

394 This was specially a trial for the Hebrews. Their very religion was one of sight. They had a system to walk by, a visible temple, sacrifices, priesthood, and the like. Messiah they expected to see. When they did see Him, they hated and put Him to death; and this Messiah was gone to heaven. In becoming Christians they lost all they had possessed, and gained nothing - nothing that was tangible to the flesh. There was therefore the constant temptation to deny an unseen Messiah, and to turn back to things seen.

The apostle sums up in this chapter, and shews that all through man's history, no matter who had obtained a "good report," it was by faith. Men will count us fools. We may give as a definition of folly, a man's acting most consistently for an object that nobody sees, and nobody believes to be true. The saint's warrant is the word of God. The moment he acts upon any object seen, he ceases to act as a Christian. Christ lived, in that sense, the life of faith. It is the life of faith we get here, not salvation, or the finding peace in the way of faith. There is a single exception (Abel), or which may be so in measure. Faith is looked at as the power by which they walked.

There are these two things in faith: as it regards, first, peace of soul; second, power for walk. If I talk of faith, I may mean belief of a testimony - a person tells me a thing, and I believe him. But there is another sense in which I may have faith in that man; that is, I may put my trust in him. We often confound these things. There is the testimony of God, which I have to believe, and a trusting in God, which is the power of my walk. That which gives me peace is, receiving the testimony of God: I do want confidence in God for power of walk, but I must not confound this confidence in God with His testimony.

395 We shall find the two things in Abraham. God called Abraham, and shewed him the stars of heaven, and said, "So shall thy seed be," and Abraham "believed God." In the offering up of Isaac (v. 9) there was not the receiving of a testimony, but "believing in God."

Here I am, a sinner, with the consciousness of sin: how can I trust in God? I know Him to be a holy God, a hater of sin: how can I trust in Him? I dare not be in His presence with sin upon me; what can meet that? it is not denying the holiness of God; it is not my putting away my sin; but God tells me my sin is put away. I believe Him. This is not trusting in His power. The thing that gives me peace is my receiving a testimony. My spirit cannot rest, when I am conscious of sin, unless I know that it is not imputed to me: it is God who has seen it just as it is; my being content with myself will not do; I must have God content about me. There is a wrestling going on in the soul that wants to be content with itself. Believing God's testimony, it would be at peace. It has never yet been brought to feel itself a thoroughly worthless sinner. The question is, not as to my not having sin, but do I believe what God says when He says it is put away? There is really a work of the Spirit of God in this, not in producing what will satisfy me, but in bringing my soul to say, It is all over with me. God often allows it to struggle on, trying to get better; He lets it, and, like a man in the mire who pulls one foot out to get the other in, its case is only worse. The answer to this comes in, the blessed truth of the gospel by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, that "by him all that believe are justified from all things," Acts 13: 38, 39. I find God perfectly at rest: He is resting in Jesus, perfectly satisfied. Christ says, "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do"; and God says, "Sit thou on my right hand." I get rest to my soul, because I find that God has not one single thing against me. There is often this struggling under the sense of conviction before the soul gets peace.

396 Another thing is the walk of faith. Come sifting, come trial, come what may, the ground of my peace is never touched. If it were not completely settled - done, it never could be; and why? because God says that "without [not 'sprinkling' but] shedding of blood there is no remission," Heb. 9: 22. Therefore, if not perfectly done, Christ must die again, shed His blood again. But it is finished. The Spirit of God will make me see it; but it is done. I take this word of Jesus, "I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do"; and I say, "It is finished."

Now I find the path of faith opened before me. I am sure God loves me, and is nothing but love; I can therefore trust in Him. I know His love. He has saved me as a sinner, I can trust in His love as a saint. Mark the order in which things are presented here. To faith that which is unseen becomes as near and as real as though present to sight (v. 1); yea, much more so; because there is deception in seen things; but there is no deception in things communicated by the Spirit to the heart. Through faith we know that creation was by the word of God (v. 3). Then (v. 4) we come to the great basis on which a fallen creature can have to say to God. Let us look a little at the distinctive character of Abel's sacrifice.

Cain offered to God what cost him more. His was not the case of a thoroughly irreligious man; he offered to God, worshipped God, and was utterly rejected. He was not an infidel or an irreligious man; but a worshipper, and a rejected worshipper. His worship was founded on unbelief. A sinner, one out of paradise, he thought to go to God as though nothing had happened! So with man; they think they can go and worship God, paying a compliment to Him. And what did he bring? The very thing that had the stamp of the curse upon it. God had said, "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." That is what comes of a person thinking he can worship God ("do his duty," as he terms it); it is the denial of the whole truth of his condition.

What does Abel? Quite another thing: he brings a slain lamb, he comes through death (in principle, through the atonement of Christ). He sets between himself and God the testimony of a provided sacrifice. "By faith he offered." Before the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the revelation had been that such a thing would be done; as though I were to say to a debtor in prison, I will pay your debts. All that we enjoy as a finished work was a subject of hope. "Whom God," it is said, "hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, at this time, his righteousness: that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus," Rom. 3: 25, 26. We are not looking onward to a future sacrifice; I have not a promise of getting out of the prison - I am out. We have a testimony that the thing is done, and the Holy Ghost is the seal of the testimony. The Holy Ghost cannot testify anything to my soul otherwise than that the work is done, the debt paid, the door opened, all finished. Two things are spoken of in 1 Peter 1: 11, "the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow": we are between these two things. The believer stands upon one-half done. The Old Testament saints looked for both; we come after the sufferings, and look for the glories. The Holy Ghost has been sent down meanwhile to testify of accomplished redemption. This is not my hope. I am not waiting for my sins to be put away: they are put away. This is the basis on which we rest. God rests in the accepted work of His Son, and there I rest.

397 Next (v. 5), we come to the walk of Enoch. Here I find another thing. Of course everybody is not translated as Enoch and Elijah were. Not only can I approach God (faith does not merely tell me this), but that has come in which has set death altogether aside. Death belongs to me now; it is not (as it is called) a "king of terrors": all things are ours; life is ours; death is ours; for we are Christ's and Christ is God's; 1 Cor. 3: 22, 23. In Enoch we find a walk with God; a power of life with God, and such a power that death is not seen. We have the life of the Son of God, and not only His death; the blessed truth, not simply of a made sacrifice, so as to give my soul peace, but that all the power of Satan in death has been destroyed. God allowed Satan to do his worst: all that "the prince of the world" could do was brought to bear upon His Son, and it is gone for ever. "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now life in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." "We are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord . . . confident, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord," 2 Cor. 5. What I am looking for is not to be "unclothed" but to be "clothed upon"; but if I die, the life that I have is untouched, and I am "present with the Lord."

398 Here I find two things which faith recognises: first, the blood of atonement, by which sin was put away; and secondly, a power of life, by which we walk (not merely as His people, but) with God. The result will be that the power of death is entirely gone. We are identified with a living Christ - as we are saved by the death of Christ.

We do not hear anything about "condemning the world" in the case of Abel, or in that of Enoch. God "bears testimony to the gifts" of the one; and the other "walks with God." But I find another thing (v. 7). We are going through the world, and God has given us a testimony about the world, and about what is going to happen to the world - infallible judgment. He has "appointed," it is said, "a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead," Acts 17: 31. "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet [prophetic testimony], moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith." Warned of what is coming on the world, he owns and recognises the judgment, and falls in with God's revealed way of salvation; and he condemns the world. Mark this: faith "condemns the world"; not merely is it belief in a sacrifice that saves, and power for walk with God; but it says of the world, that it is altogether departed from God, and is going to be judged.

We have the testimony of the word of God, that the thing that is coming upon the world is judgment. There is many a person who, as a saint, would rest in a saint's walk with God, but who shrinks from breaking with the world. The saint is so to act upon this testimony as to the judgment of the world as practically to condemn the world. Had we Noah's faith, as well as Abel's and Enoch's, we could not go with the world. If His people are saved by Him, He is coming to judge the world; and therefore they have their portion with Christ, and in Christ, so that when He comes they will be with Him. As sure as Christ rose from the dead, He is "the man" God has ordained to judge the world - "this present evil world"; and so sure there is no judgment for you and for me, if we believe in Him. That by which I know there will be a judgment is that by which I know there will be none for me. How do I know there will be a judgment? Because God has raised Him from the dead. What more has God told me of His resurrection? That my sins are all put away.

399 There is another thing which we cannot enlarge upon now (v. 8). The apostle turns to another point, the practical active manifestation of the power of faith. It was this strengthened Abraham. He trusted, so to speak, blindly in God. God called him by His grace, and he went out, not knowing whither he went. There comes in confidence in God; not simply the receiving a testimony, but blind, implicit confidence in God. A person might say, If I only knew what would be the consequences of my doing so, I could trust God. Then you will never go. Look at Adam; how did Adam act? He had present external things, but he took the devil's word in faith. God turns round and says, You have believed the devil, when you had all My good things; now you must trust Me. You go out not knowing whither you go, because of trusting in the person that is leading you. God will give light enough to say, God wills this, and I do not see another step. When you have turned the corner, you will see what is round the corner.

Further, when we have taken a step, we shall find that the Lord never satisfies us: He blesses, but He does not satisfy. When Abraham comes into the place which he should afterwards receive for an inheritance, what has he got? Nothing. He is still a stranger. This the heart dislikes. Hence the disappointments often experienced. As regards our prospects, we have our own thoughts about them; we are thinking perhaps of what we are going to make them twenty years hence. God is going to bring us into His rest.

He brings Abraham into the land; and then He begins to lead his thoughts to another country. He gets near God, and is placed upon a high enough platform of faith to see it is all before him yet. The Lord reveals Himself to him in communion; speaks with him, unfolds to him His purposes; and Abraham worships. He has his tent and his altar. And this is what God does with us; He makes Christians of us, brings us into the land of promise, and makes us see it is all before us yet. This is not the time for rest. The eye becomes clear in the ways of God; and we have the privilege of being strangers and sojourners with God, and we shall be strangers and sojourners until we get home in the home of God.

400 Beloved friends, how is it with you as regards this? Can you really say, My home is in God's home (the home of your hearts, that is); I have no home till then, and I do not want one. There is not anything between us and God, no sin between us and God, or Christ is not there (He is there because He has put it all away); both cannot be there. Are your souls then resting on the Lord Jesus Christ? or are you working to settle something that has been settled already? The Lord give us to believe His testimony, and to trust in His power.

It is characteristic of faith to reckon on God, not simply spite of difficulty, but spite of impossibility. Faith concerns not itself about means; it counts upon the promise of God. To the natural man the believer may seem to lack prudence; nevertheless, from the moment it becomes a question of means which render the thing easy to man, it is no longer God acting; it is no longer His work where means are looked to. When with man there is impossibility, God must come in; and it is so much the more evidenced to be the right way, since God only does that which He wills. Faith has reference to His will, and to that only; thus it consults not either about means or circumstances, in other words it consults not with flesh and blood. Where faith is weak, external means are beforehand reckoned on in the work of God. Let us remember that when things are feasible to man, there is no longer need of faith, because there is no longer need of the energy of the Spirit. Christians do much, and effect little - why?

Verses 13-17. Not only were those spoken of here "strangers and pilgrims," but they "confessed" it. People sometimes wish to be religious in the heart, and not to speak of it: there is no energy of faith there. To see the world to be lost and condemned, to have our hopes in heaven - such facts must, of necessity, produce a proportionate result, that of making us think and act as "strangers and pilgrims" here. And it will be manifested in the whole life. The heart already gone, it remains but to set out. This evidently involves open and public profession of it; and herein is a testimony for Christ. Who would be satisfied with the friend that owned us not when circumstances were difficult? The concealed Christian is a very bad Christian. Faith fixed on Jesus, we embrace the things we have seen afar off; we are not mindful of the country from whence we have come out, we have at heart that which is before us. Where difficulties are in the path and the affections not set on Jesus, the world rises again in the heart; Phil 3: 7-14. Paul had not acted in a moment of excitement to repent forthwith; his heart filled with Christ, he counts all but "dross and dung." Perseverance of heart marks the Christian's affections to be onward, his desires heavenly. And God is not ashamed to be called his God.

401 It is either the flesh, or faith; impossible that, at bottom, there can be a stopping half-way. The aim of the Christian must be heavenly things. The appetites, the necessities, of the new man are heavenly. Christians may be used for bettering the world, but this is not God's design. The seeking to link ourselves with the world, and the using Christianity for world-mending, are earthly things. God's design is to link us with heaven. You must have heaven without the world, or the world without heaven. He who prepares the city cannot wish for us anything between the two. The "desire" of a "better country" is the desire of a nature entirely from above.

Verses 17-19. Abraham held to the promises more than to natural affection. The strength of the trial to him was in this, that God had pointed out Isaac as the accepted seed, the one connected with the promises. Faith counts on God. God stops Abraham, and confirms His promise to the seed. In obeying we get an acquaintance with the ways of God, of which otherwise we should have had no conception. Unbelief causes us to lose joy, strength, spiritual life; we know not where we are.

Verses 24-26. The carnal heart uses the providence of God against the life of faith. Providence brings down Pharaoh's daughter to the child Moses. In the midst of the world's wisdom, at the court of Pharaoh, providence has placed him (as it might seem) to use his influence in Israel's favour. The first thing faith makes him do is to leave it all. He might have been able to succour Israel through his influence, but Israel must have remained in bondage to Egypt. Faith is "imprudent"; yet it has that eternal prudence which counts on God, and nothing but Him. It discerns that which is of the Spirit; and what is not of the Spirit is not of faith, and not of God. To hold to providence thus is at bottom the desire to "enjoy the pleasures of sin." The world is loved, and there is the wish to lean on circumstances, instead of God; it is not a "good providence" when a man is ruined.

402 Moses appeared to be weakening himself in preferring the reproach of the people of God, and of the people of God in a bad state. He might see them in a sad condition; but faith identifies the people of God with the promises of God, and judges of them, not according to their state, but according to His thoughts. Energetic against evil, he counts upon God as to the people.

Verse 27. The world would persuade us to be "good Christians," whilst acting and walking as others. Called to glory, faith of necessity quits Egypt; God has not placed the glory there. To be well off in the world is not to be well off in heaven. "All that is in the world is not of the Father." To leave the world, when the world has driven us out, is not faith; it is to shew that the will was to remain there as long as we could. Faith acts on the promises of God and not because it is driven out by the world. Moses "sees him that is invisible." This makes him decided. When we realise the presence of God, Pharaoh is nothing. It is not that circumstances are the less dangerous; but God is there. In communion, they become the occasion of tranquil obedience. Jesus drinks the cup, Peter draws the sword; that which brings out obedience in Jesus is a stumbling-block to Peter. Where there is lack of communion, there is weakness and indecision.

Verse 30. At the blast of rams' horns, after they have been compassed about seven days, the wall of Jericho fall down. Things which appear base and contemptible are not so when done before the Lord; 2 Sam. 6. To faith Jericho's walls are not any more than the Red Sea, or the Jordan. Verse 31. Who would have thought of Rahab? yet by faith she acknowledges God. Faith makes nothing of distinctions amongst men; it says that God is rich in mercy towards all that call upon Him. There is no difference, for that all have sinned. In the midst of difficulties she sides with the people of God.

The confidence of faith is manifested in the Christian life as a whole. Christians are often brought to a stand, through measuring their own strength with temptation, instead of exclusive reference to God. They go on well up to a certain point. One man talks of his family, another of the future (if any have not faith, all we can do is to pray for him); in the various concerns of life our reasonings means but this, I have not the faith that counts on God. Faith has reference entirely and exclusively to God. Duty ever leads into difficulty; but I have the consolation of saying, God is there, and victory certain; otherwise, in my apprehension, there is something stronger than God. This demands a perfect practical submission of the will.

403 When the children of God are faithful, God may leave them in trial and difficulty to bring out that in them which is not of the Spirit. He may also allow evil to have its course and test us, in order that we may understand that the aim of faith is not here at all, and see that, in circumstances the most difficult, God can intervene, as in the sacrifice of Abraham and the raising of Lazarus.

Man looks not beyond the circumstances which surround him. To tarry in circumstances is unbelief; affliction springs not out of the dust. Satan is behind the circumstances to set us on; but, behind all that, God is there to break our wills.

[END OF EVANGELIC - VOL. 1.]

Man Fallen and the Seed of the Woman

Genesis 3

J. N. Darby.

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It is not only Scripture which makes known to us that there is sin and misery in the world. There they are, even if Scripture or a Saviour did not exist. The world is a ruin. Man knows well that iniquity and defilement are in him; and nobody is satisfied with his portion here below, because his heart is ill at ease. The word of God explains, as nothing else can, how Satan entered the world, and reveals the consequence of sin in man's relations with God.

The first thing the old serpent did was to put something between the creature and the Creator, to put himself between God and man. This was subtle, and ruinous if successful, as it was; for the only thing which makes us happy is that there is nothing between - that God loves us.

Satan begins then by producing distrust in God, and so stirring man's will into activity in lust and disobedience. Never does the enemy lead one to think of the goodness of God nor of man's obedience. The woman knew right well that she ought not to eat of the tree, and that mischief must be the result; yet she ate, and gave to her husband with her, and he did eat (v. 1-6). Thus sin is the self-will that sprang from the unbelief which doubted God. By this means Satan made a breach; he persuaded Eve that God kept something for Himself, for fear that His creature should be too happy and too blessed. But Eve was wrong in listening to Satan; she ought not for a moment to have attended to the voice which insinuated distrust in God.

God has warned man of the consequences of sin, as Adam, "in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." But Satan, who seeks always to deny the righteousness of God, says to the woman, "ye shall not surely die; for God doth know that in the day that ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Nor was this altogether untrue. The fall has rendered man much more intelligent relatively to good and evil. But Satan hid from man that he should be separated from God and have a bad conscience. "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons" (v. 7). They acquired a knowledge that shewed them their nakedness, which they strove to conceal from the eyes of themselves and each other. All that is brought near us appears to us more important and greater than what is still far off. The forbidden tree being near Eve, and the judgment of God being distant, she took of the fruit, and ate.

2 So the spirit of falsehood tells men at this day that they shall not die, and that the threats of God shall not come to pass. He conceals the warnings of God, and then men do what Satan and their own lusts urge them on to do. If a Christian even is not watchful, his conscience will lose its activity, and, in place of seeing God, he sees his nakedness.

Man, besides, takes leaves to cover his nakedness. He does his utmost to conceal from himself the evil which has happened to him; but when God is revealed, it is quite otherwise. God draws near, as if nothing had occurred; then the nearness to God, which would have been a joy for man without sin, becomes on account of sin a source of immense terror, and insupportable. "Adam and his wife hide themselves from the presence of Jehovah Elohim amongst the trees of the garden." They had succeeded in veiling their nakedness from their own eyes; they were terrified at the voice of God, and strove to hide from Him. What a horrible thing for man to be in such a case as to wish concealment from God! (v. 7, 8).

Adam "was afraid," as he confessed to Him who called him from his hiding-place. Conscience trembles at the presence of God. Every hope of enjoying life is taken away when His voice is heard. Man is self-convicted of departure from God because of sin. God "drove out the man"; but man had himself fled from His presence first. His own conscience told him that he could not stand before God; and God made this evident by the words of His call to Adam, "Where art thou?" (v. 9). He was gone from God, banished by conscience before God drove him out. Is he then the one to complain of unrighteousness, whose own heart condemned him similarly before God's sentence was pronounced? The relations of man were thenceforth broken, and in a manner irreparable, as far as man is concerned. "I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself" (v. 10).

Self-justification is as vain as seeking to hide from God. "And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat" (v. 11, 12). How is the mighty fallen! The head of creation stooping, in order to excuse himself of his sin, to cast the fault on his wife - yea, on God Himself! How debasing is evil once allowed, and dominant! No slavery more degrading, none so immediate and all-corrupting in its effects. Was man then the weaker vessel? or this the way of natural affection? The hardest thing for a sinner to do is to confess his sin truly and thoroughly; to judge oneself is only the fruit of grace through faith. A bad conscience dreads God and the consequences too much to confess, while it knows its sin too well to deny it.

3 But God will have sin out, and trace it to its source. "And Jehovah Elohim said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And Jehovah Elohim said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (v. 13-19).

If you had full confidence in God, and you were perfectly sure that God loved you, you would be very happy. But Satan is active, and his power consists in producing distrust, and this where there is happiness and intimate relation with God - to darken, and, if possible, destroy all in the heart. He takes advantage of men who trust their own will and their efforts for their happiness, distrusting God, and neither willing nor knowing how to confide the care of their happiness to Him, and to give themselves up to His mighty love in Christ. And this he does now as ever. He persuades men that God is too good to condemn us because we are sinners; and man, spite of his sins and his conscience, hopes and persuades himself that he will not be condemned. It is the voice of the old serpent.

4 But God has proved, even by the death of His Son, that He will not endure sin, and that its wages are death, as it will be judgment after death for all who believe not. The conscience being bad, all the effort of man is to hide from himself his nakedness before God. He would put out of the world gross and outward sin, drunkenness, murder, robbery. He seeks by laws and by philanthropic efforts to blot out the exterior effects of sin which shock the world. But these are but the aprons of fig-leaves, which root out nothing whatever, but serve for the moment to conceal from ourselves our nakedness and misery, and to avoid thinking of the righteousness of the condemnation God has pronounced from that day on our sinful state.

Now that sins have come between our consciences and God, one wishes at least that there should be something to hide us before God; and it is with this view that man employs what he calls innocent things. Thus the trees were innocent enough, but what use did Adam make of them? To hide behind them from God. God had given to man all that is in the world; but man now perverts it all to escape from the presence of God, pretending the while to be innocent in such an application of what is good in itself. When the voice of God awakens the conscience, one wishes still for something to hide us from Him; but this is impossible. "Where art thou?" said God to Adam, who had no means of concealment longer. If God were to say so to each of your souls, would it be your joy to be in His presence? God is really the only resource and refuge when we have sinned. It is only God who, by imputing nothing to the believer, takes away all guile from the spirit; Psalm 32. But if you hide away from God, how do you then stand for your souls? God had not yet driven from His presence Adam, who had fled away from Him. Conscience tell us that, if we have sinned and He is a righteous God, there are no leaves or trees to hide us in His presence. Man is miserable in his conscience, and he cannot be happy in sin, save only that there is no God. All the hope of incredulity is that there is no God, or, what comes to the same thing, that He is not righteous or holy. Adam wished to excuse himself, as if he had lusted after nothing himself - he had only followed the voice of his wife, instead of keeping to the prohibition of God. But if there was no lust in us, no sinful act would result. He had disobeyed the word of God, for which he was responsible.

5 In the midst of all the goodness of God, who has given His Son for poor sinners, if you have no confidence in God, there is the proof of your sin. No matter how it may be manifested, is not this ingratitude and distrust? Eve listened to and believed Satan, in place of listening to God and believing Him; and this is just what man is ever doing, while he hopes for salvation and eternal life, though he sins. All the efforts you make to be happy prove you are not. The immediate effect of God's presence in your hearts and consciences would be to stop your pleasures: if all your pleasures are thus incompatible with the presence of God, what will they be for you in eternity? Will they carry you to the foot of His throne who is holy and righteous, to shew Him that you have passed many innocent hours far from Him? What is there but disobedience, distrust, falsehood, self-will, unless it be a still worse thing, the state of soul which wishes to divert its thoughts away from the presence of God.

Man may withdraw himself from the presence of God while grace lasts, but he cannot when God will judge him. Satan will help you to hide; your best friends following the world will help you also to keep away from the presence of God, to forget and deny it; but this will certainly not go beyond the time of grace which is granted you. Therefore, while it is called today, if you hear His voice, harden not your hearts.

God knows that you are sinners; He knows that it is the subtle iniquity of Satan, which would make man his prey. But there is to that an answer, of which Satan knew not, any more than poor, guilty, fallen man: the revelation of the Seed of the woman (v. 15). The question is really between the serpent and the second Man - not the first. It is neither a promise to Adam and Eve from God, nor a hope of improvement in their children; but God pronounces judgment on the enemy, and in the midst of it the revelation is made of the Saviour, child of the woman who had ensnared the man to be ruined of the devil. The woman's Seed shall bruise the serpent's head, but He is bruised Himself first. What grace, yet righteousness! What humiliation, yet victory! If Adam exalted himself as a robbery to be as God, He who was God emptied Himself to be a man, and became obedient unto death, as the other was disobedient unto it. To lost Adam, the first man, there was, and could be, no promise. All the promises of God are yea and amen in the second Man; but they become the portion of every believer. Faith finds and enjoys the promise, not sin and unbelief. To Eve and Adam God only speaks of the actual consequences of sin (v. 16-19). It is in judging the serpent (v. 15) that He reveals the coming Seed of the woman, and the way of His victory. Thenceforward the only hope of lost man is in this revealed Saviour; and before he is driven out he hears of what Jesus was to suffer in destroying the power of the devil; yet not a single sign of repentance appears in Adam after his sin. He had shewn terror of God, cowardly selfishness as to his wife, as much dishonesty in his own case as dishonour done to God. But God occupies Himself only with His counsels of grace in the woman's Seed, whose person and work and glory are developed in all the Scriptures.

6 But victory over Satan in the cross of Christ is no longer in any sense a promise; it is accomplished. Had man let into his heart that God did not love him? that He kept back what was good for him, through jealousy or envy of his happiness? It was Satan's lie; for the suffering second Man, the woman's Seed, is Son of God, the true God, and eternal life, who became man to die for sinners and destroy the works of the devil. Yet is the unbelieving heart so perverse as to refuse its confidence to the God who thus gave His Son. Jesus, instead of fleeing from God's judgment, went to meet it when the hour came, and took on Him the burden of our sins, instead of listening to the voice of man or Satan. "The cup which my Father giveth me, shall I not drink it?" By His death He annulled him that had the power of death, and gives the believer perfect confidence in God, all fear of death being gone. His love puts us in peace and relationship with God, unscared by difficulties, now that we are forgiven our sins, clothed with Himself instead of nakedness or fig-leaves, with nothing but grace to stand in and God's glory to look forward to, since He bore the judgment for us.

7 Is your confidence then in the God who gave His Son to save the poorest of sinners? This confidence inspires and strengthens obedience. Nothing to the believer is more precious than God's love in Christ, which makes us prefer His will to all Satan can offer.

May God touch your heart, and give you to magnify Him by receiving all that His love has done in Christ!

The Blood of the Lamb

Exodus 12

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On the paschal night, when Jehovah struck the firstborn of the Egyptians, and passed over those of Israel, a groundwork was laid for the deliverance of Israel from their bondage to Pharaoh, a lively image of Christ, the Passover sacrificed for us; for we were slaves of Satan, as Pharaoh, king of Egypt, was prince of this world, and the people of God his bondsmen. But God was taking notice of the state of His people, visiting them, and about to deliver them.

In one sense Satan has rights over us as sinners, and the justice of God is against us, because He had said, "In the day that thou eatest [of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] thou shalt surely die." Thus Satan can accuse man, though he had said on the contrary, "Ye shall not surely die"; your case is not so utterly desperate as these Christians say. Satan is always the same liar as he was. God cannot say to the sinner as such, Thou shalt not die; but to deliver He must take notice of sin, and lay a righteous foundation, of which faith can avail itself by grace.

Pharaoh had power enough to keep the Israelites, and the more as they were accustomed to slavery, and latterly of the bitterest kind. Pharaoh had no real rights, any more than Satan. Meanwhile he deceives. Such is the state of the world. This is so true, that the higher one's place is in the world, the more one is really enslaved. A poor man may do many things in the street without any one taking notice of it: the rich man dares not to wound its conventionalities and usages. Our will contributes also to our slavery. If one were to tell us that we are directed, led, retained by Satan, we should not agree to it. In fact he employs the things of the world to drag us into sin. Judas was drawn into his sin because he loved money. Satan entered into his heart to harden his conscience, and to strengthen him in sin, by taking away from him all hope of the mercy of God. Thus there is first the lust, or desire; next the enemy furnishes the occasion or means of satisfying it; then he enters into us. Satan tries to retort the sin on others, and teaches us to do the same. So Adam said, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat," making of his heart an excuse for what his hand had done.

9 In Egypt Israel became the object of controversy between God and Pharaoh, who represents Satan. The enemy says God has no right to claim them, for they are sinners. It is true that they are sinners; and it is necessary that man should completely bow to the justice of God which condemns him. If one is convinced of being lost, it is impossible that one should not seek salvation, perhaps blindly; still one seeks it every time that conscience is awakened. Without this, people content themselves with saying that God is good, that is, that He must take no account of sin. But ought God to make heaven like what the world is? And is not this just what would be if sin were to enter heaven? Could one give a measure to indicate up to what, and how much, people might sin? But our consciences also accuse and tell us that we cannot get rid of sin; and sin begets death.

God has already been dishonoured by sin, and it is in this world from day to day that God is yet dishonoured. It is here, on the earth, that the angels learn what it is that God is dishonoured. It is here that we see Satan degrade all the creation.

Jehovah says, "I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am Jehovah. And the blood shall be unto you for a token upon the houses where ye are; and when I see the blood I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt" (v. 12, 13). This was not the deliverance of Israel, like the passage of the Red Sea, but it was the ground of it; and of the two, the Passover was really the more solemn morally, though the Red Sea displayed God's saving power more gloriously on behalf of His people and against their foes. But on the paschal night it was a question how God could pass over the guilty, even if His people; and the blood of the lamb sprinkled on Israel's doorposts declared that God, though expressly judging, could not touch those screened thereby His truth and justice were stayed and satisfied before that blood. The destroyer was kept from entering. Not an Israelite perished within the blood-sprinkled lintels. It was a question of arresting God's judgment here, of destroying Satan's power in the type of the Red Sea; but the blood of Christ laid the foundation for the victory displayed in His resurrection.

10 Once the Red Sea is crossed, Israel are pursued no more. They are redeemed - they can sing. It was not so when they supped on the lamb in Egypt; yet were they screened from God's judgment of their evil. Their deliverance from Pharaoh followed.

But must not I see the blood? says many a distressed soul. It is well for me to estimate its value aright, and growingly; but no person could have solid peace on this ground. Nor was it what God told His people. It was indeed a token to them; but their assurance was built on this, that "when I [Jehovah] see the blood, I will pass over you." The Israelite's business was not to look at it for his safety, but to keep within the shelter of the sprinkled blood to which God had thus pledged Himself. It is He who sees the blood and passes over. God alone estimates perfectly the blood of the Lamb; and faith means not our estimate of it, but our confidence in Him. The blood is the token which recalls to us the love of God, as well as His righteousness, but what is shed for sin looks to God and is for God to look on.

Christ thus presents God to us under three aspects: His righteousness that strikes the substitute for us; His love that provides the Lamb for us; and His glory that has raised Him up when all was clear for us. There is thus entire deliverance. We are in Christ before God. The greatest expression of divine hatred of sin is found in His cross. The stroke of judgment fell; the thunder and lightning are exhausted; the sky is pure and calm for those who believe.

But he who is under the shelter of the Lamb's blood must eat of the Lamb's body. It is no question of appetite for it. Doubtless he who has appetite for it enjoys more; and it is so much the worse for him who cares not for it. But it is no condition to do so. What accompanies the act of eating the lamb is the bitter herbs and the unleavened bread. On the one hand repentance attends faith and characterises the new life, as it takes cognisance of all one has done and is; and in Christ one tastes, on the other hand, of what is absolutely without sin. One delights in the Holy One; one judges self, and it is a bitter thing.

There is need also of having the loins girt, shoes on the feet, and staff in hand. The attitude of strangers and pilgrims is the only one for those who are under the blood of the Lamb. Whilst we are here in the world, we cannot let out all that is  within. There is danger within and without. We must be ever on the alert and watch. We have no longer a home in the Egypt world. We are bound for the heavenly land. But we are no more slaves. It is the Lord's Passover we are keeping, and we are His for ever, though not yet in the rest that remains but only on the way, while in another sense we are seated with Him in heavenly places.

11 The fact that the Passover was to be eaten at night, and burnt, or nothing left to the morning, seems to intimate that it was entirely apart from the whole course and scene in which nature and sense are conversant, a matter between God and the soul, abstractedly in the undistracted claim and holiness of the divine nature. No circumstances entered into it, no question of compassionate apprehension of sin and misery. It was sin, and the holy judgment of God, where nothing else was.

So, as a sign of this deep and infinite truth, all was darkness for three hours with Christ: nature hidden; all between God and Him.

Then all was to be burnt. There was no mixing the lamb with anything common. Israel was sanctified by it like the priests, so that he ate it; but it could not be mixed with other food.

Christ a sweet Savour to God for us

Leviticus 1, 2

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The first sacrifice offered was one of sweet savour. For this there had to be taken of the cattle, from the herds or the flocks, a male without blemish representing Christ without sin. On its head the offerer laid his hand when brought before the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, that it might be favourably received for him before Jehovah: not taking from the offerer his iniquities but transferring to him its sweet savour when wholly burnt on the altar, yet making atonement for him. If of fowls, the offering was to be of turtle doves or of young pigeons.

In chapter 2 we have a meat or rather a cake-offering of fine flour with oil poured on it and frankincense, which like the burnt-sacrifice was consumed on the altar, though not wholly, for the priest took from it his handful of the flour and of the oil with all the frankincense. Christ alone is unleavened. He was conceived of the Holy Ghost as well as Son of Mary, Matt. 1; Luke 1.

God has accepted the offering that Christ presented to Him, not only the sacrifice for sin, which comes afterwards in chapter 4, etc., but also the sweet savour of His life which was perfect.

Christ accepted the will of His Father in all its extent, going down, so to speak, from humiliation to humiliation, going on from obedience to obedience, always perfect but perfect as He grew up a man. He advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men (Luke 2); not that His obedience was ever less than perfection, but that it became ever more painful and difficult, till it went even up to death - death of the cross. The world rejected Him always more and more. There was found in the world only a sepulchre for Him.

Christ perfectly glorified His Father. He rendered testimony to the holiness of His will by accepting it altogether. We on the contrary seek but too often to exalt ourselves even among our brethren; we want their esteem and their respect. Christ sought but "one thing," the glory of His Father, and not His own. For it, and so for us, He always went lower and lower down in this world. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him. He is accepted fully and on high; and if God is satisfied with Christ, we also ought surely to be satisfied with Him. We can find all repose for our hearts in Christ. Are you tired of the world, weary of the desert of sin, of strife? Well then look to Christ, where only is rest, perfect rest for conscience and heart. He is the sacrifice and the offering of good savour.

13 Christ was perfectly holy, though He took part in blood and flesh, as the children had their common lot in the same, and was tempted in all things (sin excepted) in like manner with us. He fulfilled all righteousness; Matt. 3. He was Himself baptised, when the penitents flocked to John confessing their sins. If He thus put Himself on a level with the Baptist ("thus it becometh us," etc.), He puts Himself also on a level with Peter (Matt. 17) when the temple tribute was demanded, whilst displaying His divine wisdom and power in making the most unruly and inaccessible of creatures serve His good pleasure.

But it was not allowed to burn cakes which contained leaven or honey; Lev. 2: 11. Oil was there, the Spirit of God; and also the salt of His covenant; but leaven represented the sin we have in us which gives its character to our bodies as they are; and God could not accept it as being corrupt. Neither could honey any more be offered, representing the sweetness of nature which God gives to us by the way, in which our hearts can find some refreshment. So literally did it happen to Jonathan when faint; 1 Sam. 14. All that man has at his disposal is spoilt and cannot be offered to God; nothing can but the life of Christ as the meat-offering, and His death as the burnt-sacrifice, to say nothing here of His suffering for our sins and trespasses. In His perfection throughout God the Father finds His pleasure. Christ is all and in all.

As a new creation in Christ we are called to manifest what God is, not in miraculous power, but in doing and suffering all the will of the Father, owning and proclaiming it as alone good in obedience. It is only Christ who has thus absolutely glorified the Father. Even when He poured forth His deepest expressions of grief such as He alone knew, not a murmur escaped Him. Yea, when forsaken of His God and acknowledging it, He adds, "But thou continuest holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel," Psalm 22. Job on the other hand, though he had not his equal on the earth, could only say, "Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived . . . . Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, which long for death, and it cometh not," etc. Such on the one hand was a perfect and an upright man; not such on the other was Christ. In all things He has the pre-eminence.

How should Man be just with God?

Job 9

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In Job we have an example of a strong and upright soul, not understanding grace, with a great deal of selfwill. He knew he was not a hypocrite but was upright: God said so of him, and Job knew it. But there was a great deal of self-righteousness, self-complacency, and self-will. His piety made him attribute what came upon him to God, and his pride made him rebel against it. It is very interesting to see the exercises of a soul in this state. Job said many right things of God, and he knew God would not treat him as his friends did. He wants to find God. He knows God would do him justice if he found Him. "He is in one mind: who can turn him back?" But he could not find God. Job had not the secret opened as we have it; he was calling himself righteous. The question raised was how righteousness was to be found. Here is a soul in conflict with Satan.

There was life in Job, graciousness in his walk in life, upright dealing, etc.; and God said to Satan, "Hast thou considered my servant Job?" etc. It was not Satan spoke first to God, but God to Satan. God knew what He was going to do, Satan did not. This history shews the resources the soul has when righteousness is called for. This took place before the law was given; if not before promises, before the gospel came. How is a man to be just with God? was Job's exercise. His friends had no thought about that. They were going on the ground of this world being the sphere in which God's righteousness in government is manifested; but Job saw the wicked prospering, the righteous sad.

Some will reason, soundly enough too, and tell us the other world will be the sphere where righteous acts will be rewarded and the converse. But why, if worthy of a good place in the next world, are they tormented here? But it is not so, that the condition of men answers to their conduct. There is another, thing besides righteousness, and that is grace. Grace meets with sin, and yet it does not contradict righteousness. Man knows nothing of this way.

Job had not really learnt what his own righteousness was worth, and he had not learnt how God brings out to a soul the consciousness of its state. Neither Job nor his friends understood God's way of grace - how God could ride over the sin by meeting it in grace. Job's friends could philosophise, they could tell a quantity of truths; but what comfort was there in that to a broken heart?

16 Now God in Christ is dealing with sinners: not men acting for God, but God acting in grace, because of man's state. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Christ had not broken the sabbath, but God was working because man was in sin and in misery.

This was not God dealing in law, nor promise, nor full grace, as shewn out in Christ; but here is a man taken up, Satan accusing him, and God dealing with him. A master hand was guiding all in Job's case, though Satan was permitted to sift him. The accuser goes up, and God says, "Hast thou considered my servant Job?" Satan accuses. Now he must go through another process to learn how a man, a sinner, could be blessed with God Himself - could know Him, could understand His thoughts and feelings. Satan might touch his goods, but not himself. This seems but an every-day occurrence: loss of children, property, etc. God carries it on, shewing how He orders everything. Job stands these losses; he blesses the name of the Lord; but his heart was not reached. Satan says, "Skin for skin," etc. Well, says God, You may go and do it. His wife too comes and says, "Curse God and die." His piety is proof against this also, his heart was not reached; but God has to do His work thoroughly. Job sits in the gate, his friends around him; he was a mark for every one; it is too much for him. Now he curses the day he was born. He was feeling human complacency before, and had not been exercised in the presence of God. Many can say good things of God who have never tasted what they are themselves in the presence of God. What we want is a righteousness that cannot be shaken in the presence of God. We must be brought to this - not only be conscious of grace, but have truth in the conscience.

Peter needed to learn what he was. There is a practical discovery in the presence of God of all the mischief that is in the springs of the heart; we want the springs of the heart broken up. How many are as discontented with God as possible, not looking after holiness, but seeking to make themselves comfortable! Until the will has been crushed in the presence of the majesty of God, there cannot be a right state before God. God does hate iniquity and love righteousness; but what good is that for a ruined man?

17 The world goes on the principle of sin being in it. Deceit is the will unbroken in the midst of the consciousness of sin. Those justified God who received Christ. The Pharisees complained because He ate with publicans and sinners; but the publican can say, That is just what I want. The sinner justifies God in owning the sin and receiving the grace. A man never knows God until he gets to that point - " How shall a man be just with God?" Men are willing to contend with Him; but what good is that? says God. God does love righteousness; but what avails that to me? How many sins to-day, yesterday, and so on, have I committed? It is no good pleading with God on that ground.

Then Job takes up another case. He cannot answer Him in His majesty, and He does not see His love. "If I justify myself, my own mouth will condemn me." How can I justify myself? How many foolish words this week? If I am unrighteous what can I do? He is vexed in his soul about it. "He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked. If a scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent." A scourge comes, and perhaps the best family falls a prey to it. Shall I give up God then, and not trouble myself about it? But he has to do with God, and he cannot help it. He cannot escape His hand. He is not a man, as we are. Job would have got away from God's presence if he could, but he could not; he was all wrong as to this, but he could not get away from God.

"Yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch." I cannot make myself clean before God. Men pass through the world in an astonishing way, thinking about their character, conduct, and of getting honour from one another, etc.; - but what are they in God's sight? Whited sepulchres, fair without, but full of dead men's bones within. The more a man labours to be good, the more he finds he is like the Ethiopian who cannot change his skin: the evil is in his nature, and he cannot get rid of it. When there is real integrity of heart, there is struggle. The sense of integrity, without the knowledge of righteousness, is the occasion of much misery in the heart. Job says, "Let not his fear terrify me." He had this fear. God has taken away the fear in Christ, and there is a daysman betwixt us, such as Job felt the need of.

18 The consequences of sin are not known yet. God is saving now, not judging in righteousness. There is the time coming when He will rule in righteousness. He is saving souls now for a better state hereafter, but then the "sinner dying a hundred years old will be accursed." We cannot judge of people's state of soul by their circumstances; we cannot say those on whom the tower of Siloam fell were worse than all that dwelt at Jerusalem.

When I come to that point, to say (not the world is wicked, but) I am wicked, I have the "daysman" between me and God. He is the One who has come to me in all the wickedness of my heart, and has come to me because I am so. Now I have, not only God working in me, sending Satan to plough up the fallow ground, and to shew to my conscience what was there long before, but God doing a work for me. He brings in a righteousness (His own) for the sinner. He works a work for us.

The first thing I find then is that this my state has not kept Him away from me, but it has brought Him to me. That is grace, not righteousness. Hiding my sin from me would not be mercy. Not letting me see things as God sees them is not mercy. It is in meeting me just as I am, and acting above the sin, that He has shewn mercy. Christ never alarms people who come to Him in their need. To the hypocrite He speaks terror, but to the poor in spirit it is "fear not: I am all that you need." You say, "I am such a sinner." Christ says, "That is just the reason I am come." You reply, "I have an awful will." "That is the reason I am come" says Christ: "I will break your will." "Neither do I condemn you," said He to the woman accused by the Pharisees.

I defy you to find a case where Christ brought fear upon a convicted conscience. He takes the fear away instead of causing it. He comes in the poorest and the lowest way to meet with those in need, and that they might not be afraid of Him. Grace reigns - it has come in God's own blessed sovereignty.

How different are men's thoughts of righteousness now from God's! We can let all go on quietly without trying to set things right, knowing we have something better. We are made the righteousness of God in Christ.

We have a daysman not only laying His hand on man but on God. He is the mediator to reconcile. If a day is assigned in a court of law, the daysman is the one who appears on my behalf to undertake my cause. Not only has Christ come to me in my sins, but He has come to answer for me, taking up the whole cause. He has done it - settled the whole thing as to my sins, and is gone back to appear in the presence of God for me. He has appeared for God amongst us, but now He is gone to appear for us in the presence of God. I have given up all attempt to answer for myself: He has taken it up. Has God accepted His answer for me? Here faith comes in to accredit God when He says He has accepted Him. The work that the daysman has done is accepted. We know not only that there is a daysman, but that the daysman has sat down, the work being finished, no more remaining to be done (as to the sacrifice). The Holy Ghost is the witness of that: "their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more."

19 Righteousness is there. Where? Before God. I am not talking of the fruits of righteousness, but of righteousness itself there. God's mind is that He has accepted Christ. God has given Him, and that is love. He has accepted His work, and that is righteousness. Now there is no fear. Grace reigns through righteousness. I stand in the presence of God by virtue of the perfect righteousness that has been presented to God. Where is love to be seen? Very feebly indeed amongst Christians, but love is not feeble in God. I find in Him perfect love. He has broken my heart because it was a hard heart.

Here was all the country set in movement to get Job's heart right! - Sabeans, Chaldeans, etc. God has been working in all this. I have the key to it all now through the gospel. Self-will, pride, all must be broken; but God is perfect love. He has taken away the sin by the cross, and He has provided righteousness. Then what have I to fear? Though He will exercise our souls that we may know good and evil, it is all love. I can glory in tribulation, knowing that it worketh patience, experience, hope.

Now, beloved friends, are you resting on the daysman? or are you saying, "If I can make my hands a little cleaner, my conscience a little quieter, I shall be all right?" If you were to stand in the presence of God, that would be all spoiled; Job 9: 31. What righteousness is that which is spoiled in the presence of God?

It is the blood which has made atonement, and Christ at the right hand of God is our righteousness.

Jesus Dependent

Psalm 16

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I need hardly say that there are many aspects under which we may consider the Lord Jesus. There was His glory with the Father before the world was as Son of God.* He is Son of man; He is High Priest of His people. He was the manifestation of truth, and everything is made manifest by the truth. There is no real truth anywhere but in Christ. If I knew what God is, He is not known really but in Christ. If I want to know what man is in perfection, I see him in Christ. If I want to know what sin is, "He was made sin"; I see it there, the power of death? I see it in Him. Love? It is in Him I seek it. Hatred? True, it was not in Him, but it was made manifest by Him. All is known really through Him. "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." The truth shall make you, free indeed; and then, a little lower down in the context, the "Son shall make you free."

{*'as Son of God' is inserted from the original Morrish edition of Mr Darby's lifetime.}

We have seen Christ as the last Adam, and the power of redemption, the real deliverance He has wrought out for us. He is "the second man, out of heaven." "As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly." And again we have seen, from Psalm 22, where Christ has brought us. Having come out of death, raised by the glory of the Father, He praises in the midst of the congregation, and gives us to chant the same song with Him, we being brought into the condition of the last Adam before God, although we have the treasure now in "earthen vessels." Death and resurrection are in Psalm 22.

There are two other characters regarding Christ very precious, because drawing out the affections until by-and-by we shall see Him. He has not only delivering power, whether by life or death, but He is an object, in glory as in humiliation; and there is a third thing: He is a Priest for us, and this character in which He is to us is connected with these new affections, not as an object, but connected with affections.

Christ said, "I go to my Father and your Father," John 20 "In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you," John 14. The congregation must not jar with His praise, and are therefore placed in the same position with Him before "My Father and your Father." Our place before God now is in Him, the Christ in glory. Such is our place, and we are predestinated to bear the image of the heavenly. This gives us power of hope; we are excited by it to run the race; it is not so much dependence marks it (although we must always be in dependence or fall), but the energy and joy of hope. We wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. We do not hope for righteousness, we have it, or rather we are it. Christ is the righteousness; He has entered into the glory, and this is the consequence of the righteousness. "We wait for the hope of righteousness"; we wait for the glory. The Spirit now takes of the things of Christ, and shews them unto us down here - then in glory. The law was a ministration of condemnation, the Spirit is the ministry of righteousness. When Christ was glorified, He sent the Holy Ghost down to seal our persons and make us partakers of the glory to come; the effect of this is, that beholding Him we are changed into the same image from glory to glory. This is practical realisation, and it becomes fruitful in us. Seeing Christ glorified, by the Spirit, has this effect on our hearts; we are conformed to Him. It is through looking at Christ in glory.

21 There is another thing of great moment, namely, our looking at Christ as Advocate. "When Jesus knew that his hour was come . . . he took a towel and girded himself." He became, in a certain sense, their servant. Whenever we see Him taking a place down here serving, the affections are drawn out in a different way from that which excites the energy of hope. God put before Christ an object of hope, "who, for the joy that was set before him, endured," etc. So He gives us an object to encourage us and brighten our hope all through the way. We are not counting ourselves to have already attained, "but press on towards the mark." But when we think of ourselves in weakness and infirmity, there is the sense of dependence on One either to restore or to keep us going on. In this there is daily much exercise to be kept walking before Him (not touching what we are in Christ), and that is very fruitful; 1 John 1: 7.

Am I under law? No! "We have an advocate with the Father," 1 John 2: 1, 2. Have I to run to Him to be forgiven? No! We run away from Him when we have sinned. He restores us as Peter. Christ looks at him directly he has committed the fault and brings him back. So now He brings our souls back by the Spirit. He is an Advocate, the One who carries on our affairs before God. The same word is also used of the Holy Ghost who carries on our affairs down here. When we fail, or there is the need that we should fail because of self-confidence, it is Christ's work on high to bring us back to communion with the Father and the Son. I do not speak of our going to Him to do it, but I am dependent on Him to do it. "To humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart," Deut. 8: 2. This God does to make us discern between good and evil, which it is needful for us to discern through the fall. He sets us in righteousness first, and then carries us on by His priesthood, maintaining us in the whole scene of our dependence. Christ is not so much an object in all this as an agent.

22 In this psalm (16) He is more the object before the soul - our food. Christ becomes properly the food of our souls, not Christ in glory, but here in humiliation. "I am the true bread that came down from heaven"; it does not say the bread that went up to heaven. Then eating His flesh is needed for life. We must know Him as dead. We cannot feed on Him as the living glorified Christ, but as the dead Christ. What draws out our affections to Christ is what He was down here. He was going through all the difficulties here - made His passage through everything about which He has to intercede for us.

God had His food in the offering, but there was the meat-offering and part of the peace-offering which the priests ate. He says, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again. Then we find the Father has given us the very object He delights in for the object of our affection. The Father could not be silent, when Christ was here. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." The perfection of the object is the reason of the imperfectness of our apprehension of it; but that is the way God brings our affections into tune with Himself. He could say at the beginning, because of His intrinsic perfectness, and at the end because of His developed and displayed perfectness, "This is my beloved Son." Then what do we say? In weakness and poverty, yet surely each can say with unhesitating heart, I know He is perfect. We cannot reach to His perfectness, but we do feel our hearts, poor and feeble as they are, responding. The Father has shewn us something of His perfectness. The Father is communicating of His delight. "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," not in whom you ought to be well pleased (which is true too); but His way is to communicate to them of His own love to Christ. It is a wonderful thing that the Father should tell of His affection for Christ, and that when He was here amongst us, the Son of man on earth amongst sinful men.

23 A person need not know that he is righteous in Christ, before he can be attracted by this communication with Him. With the woman in the Pharisee's house it was what was revealed in Christ to her made her love much, not what she got from Him. The blessedness of what was in Christ had so attracted her and absorbed her mind that she found her way into the house, though not invited there. She was taken up with Him; she wept, but had nothing to say. Jesus was there. He commanded all her thoughts, her tears, her silence, her anointing of His feet - all noticed by Him, and all before she knew what He had done for her. Attracted there by what she saw in Him, she got the answer as regards peace of conscience from Himself.

Now a person may be attracted by grace seen in Christ, but the effect of that will be conviction of sin, and, if forgiveness is not known, the presence of Christ to the soul becomes quite the opposite of God's righteousness, and holiness will take the form of a law. Many rest satisfied with being only thus attracted for a season, but then they can slip back into any vanity, because righteousness is not known to the conscience. Righteousness sets us in conscience before God as Christ is - in the light. If I have not peace, I cannot have fellowship with another Christian. My sins are all my thought, if my conscience is awake. "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship." It does not say, if we walk according to the light; but the case stated is being in the light. The Christian state is being in the light, and we have fellowship with one another and cleanness in His sight. There is no communion in sin, but wretchedness and misery. When we are there (in the light, as He is) we can feed on Him.

There is no real feeding on Christ as bread come down from heaven, when not feeding on His flesh and drinking His blood. The power of death must be known before the heart can be given to be occupied with Him. The Lord gives Himself to us, and He expects us to be occupied with this affection towards Him. "If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I go to the Father." What a place! The Lord comes down here so low and takes such a place amongst men, that He reckons on their affection being such as to rejoice in His joy at going away, though it was for them to be left without Him. This affection that He looks for now cannot be known, unless He is known as salvation.

24 "In thee do I put my trust." This is quoted in Hebrews 2 to prove His humanity. There are two things make perfection in a man, dependence and obedience. They were in Christ, the contrast to what was in Adam when he sinned. Christ was ever the dependent and the obedient one. Independence is sin: there is the principle of sin in it. All thought of freedom from the will of another, where one's own will is at work, is a terrible thing. With Christ there was no will but His Father's. This was not any check but motive. It is most blessed for us to see Christ taking this place of dependence. It is natural to us to say, I must do something. But no! you should not eat or drink unless He tells you. Whatever you do, do all in the name of the Lord: yet it is all liberty.

So in family life, no person who has his father in his affections at all times would do anything without a desire to please him. Love makes it perfectly indifferent to the child what is to be done. It is done to please the father. Would not a child like even in eating and drinking to please his father? It is not the thing that is of consequence, but the relationship and affection to him. Satan tempted Christ to make the stones bread, when He was hungry, and He could have done so. He might have had twelve legions of angels, but He had taken the place of dependence and waits.

His heart could be moved with compassion; not only could He shew His power in working miracles. And it is in seeing the place of this dependent obedient One down here that the heart gets food. What traits are seen in Him! Asleep on the pillow, He can rise to still His disciples' fear. When sitting wearied on the well, He could converse with the poor woman who came there in need.

He was able in love to go through all; He was thoroughly man - able to touch others, being untouched by evil Himself. The fact of being untaintable made Him go forth in love dispensing blessing to all. "O my soul, thou hast said unto Jehovah, thou art my Lord," v. 2. Now I take the place of a servant. Thou art my Master. To the young man in the gospels He said, "Why callest thou me good? none is good but One, that is God." I am my Master's; I am taking the place of dependence, leaning on Thee, looking to Thee. Then comes fellowship.

25 Verse 3. "My goodness extendeth not to thee; to the saints that are in the earth, the excellent," etc. No matter how feeble, how poor, how ignorant, they are "the excellent." It is not what they had, but what they were. He has taken the place, going before the sheep, finding out all the difficulties because He leads, and meeting all the dangers in the path before them. There is not a step of the path of life that He has not trod. He has shewn the path of divine life up to blessing. "In whom is all my delight." All His affection flowed out to them. He takes delight in them, not necessarily in their state. There was enough in Him, and He did draw out the affection of His Father, as a man down here (of course, as the Eternal Son also*) in this path of life. "Thou wilt shew me the path of life." How dependent for everything! He does not say, I will rise up, but "Thou wilt shew me." He passes through death in dependence on His Father (there was the blessed perfectness of a man with God); and, at the close of His career, "knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God and went to God, he riseth from supper," John 13. He could go back unsullied to the throne of God, and take man back with Him into the glory, out of which He came. There is manhood now in the presence of God.

{*'Eternal' is inserted from the original Morrish edition of Mr Darby's lifetime.}

In Matthew 3 is John's baptism. They came to Him confessing their sins: "fruits meet for repentance" were needed. The beginning of all excellence is to confess we have none. "Fruit" was confessing they had brought forth none. The instant the Spirit of God is working, Jesus goes to be baptised with them; not of course having any sin to confess, but doing His Father's will He takes His place with them; He had come for that; and the consequence is, that He takes His place after to praise in the midst of the congregation. He must be alone in death, but no sooner is He risen than He must have them with Him; He then will be in company.

Verses 4-8. "I have set Jehovah always before me": still dependence - perfection: "because thou art on my right hand, I shall not be moved." "Thou wilt shew me the path of life." It is most blessed to hear Christ say this. It is the path of death in verse 10; how did He find that of life? Adam found the path of death in his fall and his self-will, but back from it never. The tree of life was never to be touched in the garden of Eden; he had taken the other path. Thus we see there are two trees all through the world - that of responsibility, and the gift of God which is life. All man does ends in death (but it is too late to speak of that); he is dead in trespasses and sins; but now Christ came, bringing life into a world that drove Him away, where Satan the prince of it was, and everything was bearing the stamp of its prince.

26 In this place of death then He makes out a path for us. He is shewn by His Father and God the "path of life." He was the life, but then the path of life had to be tracked through this place of death, where no one thing testifies of God - one wide waste, where there is no way. Christ has tracked the path Himself: it is for the Christian I am speaking now. The gospel shews He gives it to those who believe. He had to make out the path of life through a world of sin and wretchedness, in obedience, up to God. It must be through death for us, because we are sinners. Now He says to us, If any man serve Me, let him follow Me. We must take up the cross. The cross to Him was atonement - that was the path. As He came for us, it must be by the cross. He has gone through it perfectly and absolutely. What is the consequence? The end is, "In thy presence is fulness of joy." He would rather die than disobey.

Notice well that death is gone to us - the end is gained; but we have to tread this very same path that He trod up to His presence, where there is "fulness of joy." Christ is the blessed Object for our affections. Alas! how little affection we bear Him. In the wide waste of sin, "a dry and thirsty land where no water is," He could say, "Thy favour is better than life." Why all this? It was for His own glory and His Father's doubtless, but it was for these "excellent of the earth." "In my Father's house are many mansions . . . . I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also."

We have to follow Him. It is not the quantity we do, but the measure of presenting Christ that is the value of our service, in a world where there is nothing of God. "All that is in the world . . . is not of the Father." In that world the Son of the Father has marked out this path of life up to the Father. "Let my sentence come forth from thy presence" - in the controversy with man in this path; then in the end "I shall behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied when I awake up in thy likeness," Psalm 17. Here we get the two parts of the blessedness for us - with Christ, and like Him, in the Father's presence. If we were constantly before Christ, with the consciousness of not being like Him, it would be constant distress. Now we are unlike alas! but "in thy presence is fulness of joy." With Him and like Him we shall enjoy the light of the Father's countenance. In Revelation 4, elders are first seen sitting in peace, then prostrate in worship.

27 In the Psalms we get Christ walking with the Jewish remnant - Christ first humbled, and glorified in the end; His own experiences. Christ is the object of our study when we have righteousness in Him. When brought into blessing, we can study Him who brought us there. It is this searches the thoughts, affections, motives in the path; then we go through the death in taking up His cross; then in the end we are to be like Him. The Lord give us to know the blessedness of being identified with Him, following in the path He has tracked out for us.

Jesus Christ the Righteous

Psalm 17

J. N. Darby.

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This and Psalm 16 give us two great principles of divine life - trust and conscious righteousness. We find them running all through the Psalms, and any godly person's life as well as that of the Jew. But it is worthy of remark that it does not give the foundation fully on which we stand; according to the New Testament our position is different. You do not find in it the foundation of God's righteousness at this time. Souls in the condition of having divine life, but not knowing their standing in divine righteousness, find the suitability of the Psalms to their experience. Psalm 16 is the first that brings in Christ's own experience: for the first time here He takes His place in humiliation amongst them. Psalms 2 and 8 are prophetic of Him as King and as Son of man. In Psalm 16 He is taking His own place amongst these excellent of the earth. The first characteristic of the divine life is Christ putting His trust in Jehovah; as a man He does it. Hence in Luke, where we see Him more as a man, we see Him praying, the true expression of dependence. "Preserve me, O God," etc.; there is the principle of trust.

Then another principle of divine life is the consciousness of integrity. In Peter there was the same when he said, "Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee" There may be both these things - trust in God and consciousness of integrity - without peace with God. Job said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him"; and he pleaded his own righteousness against God - "Till I die, I will not remove mine integrity from me." He had the consciousness of sin and the sense of righteousness, integrity in himself, at the same time. The soul cannot be at peace in this state. Job was entirely wrong in making a righteousness of his integrity; his friends thought him a hypocrite, but he had the distinct consciousness of not being one. The second principle you have in Psalm 17. God stays up the souls that are trusting in Him until they see Christ. Having got a promise they trust, but cannot say, I have the righteousness of God. Christ having taken up their condition and borne it, they have the consciousness of integrity through Him, and it is the stay of their souls, but not peace.

What a stay it is to find one's feelings expressed in Scripture! Should not I cry out of the depths? You say, I find it in Scripture, "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee." The word of God gives expression to certain thoughts and feelings; they are in the word. A person taking up Psalm 88, expressing entire darkness under the curse of the law, may say, If one saint has been in that state, another may be, and so I may be a saint after all, and get comfort in that way by the sanction of the word. There is not peace in this, but it is a prop and stay to the soul.

29 This applies to the remnant surrounded by their enemies, as we see here; Psalm 17. We have spiritual enemies. Here is the reality of enemies pressing round Christ. Thousands of hearts will be found trusting in God, come what will, and have the consciousness of integrity, Christ having put Himself in the very place; and they will find every imperfectly formed feeling has been perfectly expressed by Him. In the perfect unconsciousness of sin (2 Cor. 5: 21), He has come into all the trial and given expression to it. He has borne the sin too.

There is another thing in the Psalms - mercy always going before righteousness; and they never meet till Christ appears at the end to the remnant. I cannot say righteousness and peace have kissed each other until I know the perfectness of redemption. I may get hope, but I cannot have peace until I get righteousness. It may be said, "Righteousness and peace have kissed," etc., when Christ comes again (this for the Jew). A Jew under law would put righteousness before mercy; this is the law, and Israel never stood on that ground. They had made the golden calf before the law was given to them. Then God retires into His own sovereignty, and, to spare any, mercy comes in. It was the resource of God when wickedness came in. They were going about to establish their own righteousness and would not have Christ, who is the end of the law for righteousness; but when they come back, it will be on the ground of mercy and hope. How many Christians are on this ground instead of in the certainty of possessing righteousness! It is mercy and hope, instead of righteousness the ground of hope. They think of the throne of mercy, and promises coming out to help them, not being founded on righteousness. Of course they could not be saved without it; but the state of their souls is that they have not got into it.

We are not like those who refuse to believe till they have seen Him; we have the end of our faith now, even the salvation of our souls. We know that righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Christ is gone into the holy place, and the Holy Ghost has come out, to us the proof of it, and we are certain of the reception of Christ within and of the accomplishment of divine righteousness. "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight," etc. (Rom. 3: 20.) "But," it is said, "in Jehovah shall all the seed of Israel be justified and shall glory." It is not 'shall' to us, but "being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus." God had been forbearing in mercy with the Old Testament saints, because He knew what He was going to bring in. Now it is declared - it was not declared then. "Not to themselves, but to us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven" - "to declare at this time his righteousness" - "being fully persuaded that what he had spoken he was able to perform."

30 I do not simply believe that God is able, but that He has raised up His Son from the dead. One may trust He will help, but not be conscious of being helped yet; this was the patriarch's portion. But I do not expect Him to do it, but know that He has done it. It is "the ministration of righteousness." I am not merely hoping in His mercy to do something for me to stay me up; but, besides this trust and consciousness of integrity in the heart, there is the knowledge of accomplished righteousness: righteousness is declared. They could not judge sin in the same way when they had not righteousness as a settled question, which it now is for ever. The Spirit of God now demonstrates righteousness to the world by setting Christ at God's right hand. Christ said, "I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do"; and God says to Him, "Sit thou on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool." And, as regards the believer, righteousness is on the right hand of God for him. The affections ought to be more lively, now there is the certainty of accomplished righteousness, than when there was only the hope. The Spirit of adoption is given us: we can cry "Abba, Father."

But, note, there is another sense connected with righteousness here - mercy going before righteousness, but righteousness appealed to on the ground of promises: the soul in the lowest depth of feeling; Psalm 42. "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts"; "Out of the depths have I cried," etc.; "Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps," is in quite a natural kind of experience. There is either the sense of hope in His mercy, or consciousness of sins: when thinking of the mercy, trusting in God; when under the sense of sin, down in the depths. This is not having the sense of everlasting righteousness brought in. All these exercises of soul being expressed give warrant, as it were, to these experiences of heart. It will give comfort, when down in the depths, to know that One has gone down into the depths for him; the soul will find Christ has traced all the way for him. The Spirit of God in Him, going through all these things for us, shews that not one place, from the dust of death to the highest place in glory, but He has been in for us, sins and all having been gone under. The feeblest Christian now knows more than the apostles could when Christ was on earth. Should we be surprised at His speaking of the cross and His rising again? The Holy Ghost has shewn it to us. We feed upon that which frightened them - " Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood," etc. What frightened them was a dead Christ; they fled from it when they saw it in the distance. When once founded on righteousness, it is different. How sad to see a saint crouching on the other side of divine righteousness, instead of having on the "helmet of salvation," having communion with Him in the efficacy of His death!

There is another thing to mark in these two Psalms: the character of hope flowing through them, now we tread in this path of life. What was the trust Christ had? He trusted in the goodness, in the infallible love of God. He delighted in communion with His Father; it was the spring of His joy. With us it is the same thing, though mixed up with all sorts of things. What did He delight in? In God Himself. Then as to righteousness, what was that? (See end of Psalm 17.) In Psalm 16, where we see Him trusting in God's love, what is the consequence? Reward in glory? Not a bit; but, "In thy presence is fulness of joy; and at thy right hand," etc. In Psalm 17, glory is looked for as the crown for a faithful walk. "I shall be satisfied when I awake up in thy likeness."

Christ looked to return to the glory He had left, from the path of humiliation down here: the reward for it would be glory as a crown. This applies to us: when we see Him, we shall be like Him. The highest and most blessed thing is to be with Him in the Father's house; this will be infinite, unspeakable joy; but there will also be the crowning with glory and honour. Paul speaks of this: "The crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me in that day, and not to me only, but also to all them that love his appearing." But his brightest hope was to win Christ. As the reward of walking with Him in communion, there will be joy in His presence; as the reward for faithful walk, it will be the place in glory.

32 He will come to set everything to rights in power; "judgment will return to righteousness, and all the meek of the earth shall," etc. That has never been known yet. When Christ comes in power, judgment and righteousness will go together. Power will be given to the Judge, who will act in righteousness. Is that all I am looking for? No; I am going up to meet the Lord in the air; the hope is founded on righteousness of course, but I am not looking to be justified. What the church gets in the rapture is (as Christ was raised up by the "glory of the Father," and so taken up into His presence), we shall have the blessed joy of being with Him for ever; 1 Thess. 4. No getting righteousness is there; the best thing is looking out for Himself - to see Him as He is - to be ever with the Lord. When responsibility is spoken of, it is always connected with the appearing; there is the crown, the principle of integrity and faithfulness owned (Psalm 17), connected with the life down here. When speaking of going to be with Christ - the rapture, all go together to enjoy the grace and presence of Him who has done it all. It is very important to lay hold by faith of the truth of the rapture to Christ of the church of God.

Receiving crowns differing each from each is one thing; but all going together is another thing, all alike being associated in His own blessedness, as He said, "I go to prepare a place for you," etc.

The exercise of soul after divine righteousness is very different from these things before one stands in the divine righteousness. One who has this does not speak of crying out of the "depths." There is an immense change. We have the Spirit of adoption. If I am going through all the difficulties and trials of the world, it is as a child I am going through them. My feelings and affections flow from the certainty of relationship. "I have declared thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them." What was Christ's place on earth? Was He uncertain as to His Father's love? Never; but, on the cross, bearing our sin under the hiding of God's face. There was in Him perfect obedience, but as a Son. If we are led by the Spirit, we have liberty, "not bondage again to fear." Have you liberty? If I have the consciousness of Christ having been in the depths for me, I am out of them, and am no more to be in them; consequently I am sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. The cross behind me, having come by that to God, I look by the Holy Ghost at the cross and see my sins put away there.

33 Faith is my thinking God's thoughts instead of my own. God says, "Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more"; I think so too. God says, "children of God through faith in Christ Jesus"; I think so too. God says, we stand in favour; I think so too. I do not know how God could prove His favour more than by sending His Son. He says, an "heir of glory," "joint-heir with Christ." I have everything Christ has, as a child with my Father. Now comes conflict; but I have the experience of a free man with God. One dead, quickened, and raised up together with Christ is the experience of a Christian, into all which he enters by virtue of divine righteousness in Christ. In the "fulness of time" He came. They were servants before He came; but now we are sons, and the Spirit of God is in us the Spirit of adoption. This is my place. I do not always act rightly in it: the Holy Ghost reproves and humbles me; but that is my place.

Jehovah my Shepherd

Psalm 23

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The blessings into which, as the Shepherd, the Lord leads the flock are not merely temporal but spiritual. The veil is now rent from top to bottom, and we are brought to God. God is not only caring for us all the way, but the exercise of our souls should be to walk in the light with Him, and, if by any means, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. The care He takes is to bring us up to walk in the power of that heavenly glory with Himself. "Keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me." God is not only known to us as Jehovah, giving us mercies all the way along the road; but it is the Father blessing us with spiritual things. True, the hairs of our head are all numbered; but there is discipline for our souls as well, which leads into blessing.

Any pious Jew, having a renewed nature, in old time might know and use this psalm, saying, "Jehovah, my Shepherd." The holiness of God was not fully revealed; and therefore the conscience not disquieted, and the distance not felt. They knew the favour of God and counted on His goodness then; but now we are brought into the light and see what judgment is The veil is rent, and God's holiness is manifested; for we are in the light, as He is in the light, through Jesus. "The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth."

Now that sin has been fully shewn out - the death of Christ proving what the enmity of the heart was - this matter must be settled. I cannot say, "I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever," if I have not the knowledge of sin forgiven. I cannot talk of confidence, if I have a fear of judgment and I see the desert of sin in the light of His holiness. I cannot consistently speak of One who may be my Judge, that He is my Shepherd, and I shall dwell with Him. To know Him as our Shepherd, we must not have it an unsettled matter about sins being forgiven. God cannot let sin into His presence.

There must be a conscience purged. Christ has been accepted, and He puts us into His place, having made peace through the blood of His cross. "He has put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." He has "entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption." God does not see sin in Jesus; indeed in Him was no sin: and we who believe are in Him; therefore He sees no sin in us. The comfort and peace Christ had, as a man walking on the earth, He gives us. "My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." Now I have come to put you in the place of unhindered confidence with the Father; and that is, what you could never have, if the least sense of sin were upon you. The peace is made: therefore He can not only say, "Peace I leave with you," but "My peace I give unto you." These were not idle words, and we can see how He could give it to us, having brought us to God and put away everything against us.

35 Now the question is one of happiness with God. Conflict by the way there is also of course; but God is my Shepherd. Not only has He done something for me, but He is something to me: therefore it is said "that your faith and hope might be IN GOD." I believe in God as seen in Christ, as one who has loved me perfectly and manifested His love by putting away my sins. "The kindness and love of God our Saviour towards men hath appeared." The thought I may now have of God is that He has done all this for me, and that He is all this to me. I may fail and so get into evil, and this will make me ashamed; but it should not destroy my confidence, because my faith and hope are in God Himself. Now God is my Shepherd, and we may have confidence in Himself, for it is not merely said, He has done this, and He will do that, but "I shall not want." There never can be a want to the soul that has the supply. It is the application of this power and goodness of God to my every-day need that I shall feel, and all this must go on the ground of sin forgiven. Now I have found out, not only my need of being justified, but that He has justified me. Whom He called, them He also justified; Rom. 8.

The starting-point of Christian experience is "God for us"; and "if God be for us, who can be against us?" I am the object of His favour, which is better than life. "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters." I shall find good everywhere. I shall lie down, no one making me afraid. Though the wolf may prowl in the way, I lie down in green pastures. It is "He leadeth me," and that must be in perfect peace and enjoyment "beside the still waters." This is the natural Christian state. We realise all things ours, for God is for us; therefore we may lie down. We shall have conflict, etc., but amidst it all enjoyment. If the sorrow gets between our souls and God so as to produce distrust, it is sin. Even if sin comes in, sad as it is, He can restore the soul. Whether from trouble, or from offending, He can restore. See what thoughts are here given about God! The Psalmist does not say, I must get my soul restored, and then go to God, but "He restoreth my soul." So "if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father." Who can restore but He? There may be something to correct in us, if not actually a fall. There may be hardness in my heart, which trouble shews me, and the like. For our good in this way He sends trouble, as well as that which is our proper portion following Him who was the "Man of sorrows." But if He restores, it is "for His name's sake." Here am I, a poor, fainting, wretched creature, and the Lord comes in and lifts me up - why? "For his name's sake." Whatever I am, God is for me; and not only in this way, but also against enemies. "For, though I walk through the valley," etc. (v. 4). Man had reason to quail at death before Christ came; but now in the fullest sense, we need "fear no evil." Death is "ours" now. "We have the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead." If they took my life, they could not hurt me, for I am trusting to One who could raise me. Paul as good as says, If they take this life, I have lost nothing; nay, it is positive gain, for it hastens me on the road. Death is not terrible now. Why? "Thou art with me." It is terrible without this. "Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." It is not a rod, but Thine, so I shall fear no evil. No one can compete with God. Death is the very thing by which Christ has saved me, and it is that by which He will take me into His presence - " Absent from the body, present with the Lord." It may come as a trial to exercise my soul. Well, I have to remember, "Thou art with me."

There is not only failure in life and failure in death to meet, but there are mighty enemies (v. 5). Nevertheless I can sit down amongst them, and find everything given me for food. I feed on this dying Christ, and it was in His death Satan's power was most put forth. In another light Satan comes and tempts me with the flesh, but I can say to him, I am dead; I have a right to say it - I may fail in saying it, but that is another thing. Satan cannot touch anything but my flesh; and if I am mortifying my members, he has no power. If my members are alive, Satan cannot count me dead. In the presence of all then I can sit down and say, I have done with them all - "for Thou art with me." I have found that power by which they are made nothing to me. Then we arrive at further security, joy, and blessedness still: "Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over." Now that Christ has ascended and the Holy Ghost has been given, there is triumphant peace and abounding in joy through the power of the Holy Ghost.

37 I now find God Himself the source of all, and not only this as a present thing, but seeing what God is, I can say, "goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of Jehovah for ever." We shall never want goodness and not find it. "Goodness shall follow me." Assuredly the goodness of God is better than man's, even if we could get this. There is a place to dwell in: that is my hope. For us it is the Father's house. There are not only blessings conferred, but a place to dwell in with the Father for ever. As He brought Christ through, of course He will bring me through too, and I am there now by faith. I am at home with my Father. He would have us feel that all the correctings and chastenings by the way are founded upon the fact that He is for us. When peace is really settled through the work of Christ, I have all these exercises; and what is known only to faith at the beginning becomes afterwards experience, though always faith too; but, every step having had this experience, we can say that we know it. Whatever it be we meet with by the way, we know it is all for good, and we shall dwell for ever with Him. Wonderful grace!

The Soul in Adversity considered

Psalm 31

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The special subject of all the Psalms is connected with a remnant of Israel, or with such of the Jews as have their hearts touched by the Spirit of God, and look out for deliverance from the circumstances in which they are placed. In some of them the interest which God had in them is then taken up, though prophetically, in great detail; and the Lord Jesus is treated of as passing through circumstances of great trial on their account. It is not but that there are many things we may delight in, and godly souls have found great comfort in all ages in the Psalms, and rightly so. Still it is well to understand what the purpose and intention of the Holy Ghost is in them.

In Psalm 1 (which, with the second, is a sort of preface to the book), it is the distinction between the godly and ungodly man. The godly are called the righteous, and the ungodly are always called enemies. That the Lord should not spare any wicked transgressors is not the grace of the gospel. There are many passages where there is the call for judgment, because there must be the destruction of the enemy to allow of the deliverance of the Jewish remnant who seek rest on the earth. We could not consistently use this language, just as it is in itself, and say, "spare not any transgressor." Having received grace we cry, "Spare them, pity them, save them, O Lord." But judgment will be executed another day - when the church is out of, and the Jews are in, the scene. If they have taken the place of adversary against the Lord, then it must be judgment. When the patience of God has been fully exercised, and the continuance of mercy would only be to sanction and perpetuate iniquity in the earth, "the master will rise up and shut to the door." Then will be a time, not of grace as now, but of judgment. And then it will be seasonable. The Holy Spirit will warrant their looking for the deliverance which will cut off the enemies. The distinction in Psalm 1, and so throughout the whole book, is between the righteous and the wicked. "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly," etc. "The ungodly are not so," etc. "Therefore the ungodly shall not stand," etc.

In Psalm 2 the heathen are raging, the kings or rulers of the earth set themselves against Jehovah and His Christ. But God asserts and will enforce the rights of His Son on earth. Wherever the Spirit of God is working, there is the cry of the Spirit in the soul which must meet an answer. Now is a day of unmingled grace; but here the Spirit of Christ speaks of them as enemies, and is looking forward, as the only remedy, to their being cut off in judgment, unless they bow. Christ Himself is interested in this remnant, and is brought in as bearing their burdens. "They parted my garments among them" is a direct prophecy about the Lord. He joins Himself with their sighs. He has been with them for their sins, and He will deliver them from their foes. The tone and character of this book gives us the expectant blessings to Israel in letter: the spirit of it we take to our soul's comfort. I find in my soul certain anxiety and distress - no doubt very imperfectly expressed - but it is more or less the same in us as in the remnant; I look up to the Lord, but it may be my own fault brought me into the trouble, and I do not know what to say: then the Spirit gives me in the Psalms an inspired feeling of what is right under such circumstances. Thus I hear God's expression of my sorrow. It is a great comfort to the soul, but it must be understood how far they apply. Then again there is sin or Satan. In either case it is wrath against sin which is the source of wrath on our departure from God. Here is the power of Satan and the wrath of God. Christ had to come under the power of death, and therefore He had to come under the sin, I do not say morally, but substitutionally, as bearing the whole burden of our sin; to deliver us He must take it on Himself. He had to drink up the cup of wrath for us - whether for Israel for earthly blessing, or for Christians for heavenly blessing. It is important to see the special bearing. Yet there are certain principles, immutable and that always apply, eternal truths that never vary - whether earthly people or heavenly people are concerned. Only Christ can put us into blessing. The displayed ways may change, but the fundamental principle must always be the same. Sin is at bottom the same, and love is the same too; though the development of both may not be so.

In this Psalm the evil looked at is the bondage of sin; not only servants of sin, but slaves of Satan. He is the god of this world and the prince of its course, and he holds it under thraldom. There are two points in verses 7, 8, I wish to speak about. "Thou hast considered my trouble, thou hast known my soul in adversities and hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy: thou hast set my feet in a large room." These are the two things God has taken notice of. I would take the great principle of it; true to a Jew, but in a much larger way to us. We are now identified with Christ at the right hand of God. The High Priest is there. He is carrying on His work there. His place is there. Aaron's place is on the earth. God's love is set on this remnant. There they are - there we may be - held in bitter bondage. It may seem liberty because our wills are in it, but it is real and thorough bondage. A man knows a thing is wrong and foolish, yet he goes on doing it. He is away from God; so that there is no power to deliver himself from sin, from his passion, and he is not able to keep from it until he gets back to God. What he did, he did to render himself independent of God. This ruined Eve. Adam was led astray by her, and lost all his blessing, though our blessings are more than Adam lost. Adam thus cast off God's authority and became the slave of Satan's power.

40 There is no such thing as independence: man is perfectly incapable of it. He must have something to govern the heart. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Not where your heart is, there your treasure is. A thousand things may govern the heart, but there is something - it may be vanity, or anything else; but naturally it is governed without God. If you had been in paradise now, it would not be independence. "All power is of God." If not, He would not be God. There can be nothing independent of Him. Creature independence is but setting up another god; any other power is not God. Nothing is independent of God. Satan, cast at last into the lake of burning brimstone, will shew that he is not independent. The moment the heart departs from God, it must get some other object. When Adam hears the voice of God in the garden, he hides himself: that is not to be happy. Sin gave him the consciousness of his nakedness, and God had immediately, in his eyes, the character of a judge. Worship and prayer are vanished, the moment we have sinned and God takes this character before us. Man goes out of his mind if he has not an object. He has lost God as such, and he seeks some other, of which he makes himself the centre. We have left God, and He has got the character of a judge, and so the heart seeks something below itself - looked at as made for God, something to satisfy its nature. An animal could not carry on a course of sin - it has no intellect to indulge in sin - but man does; and thus the superiority of our human nature is used to corrupt ourselves by vices. Man is a slave: the god of this world, the enemy of our souls, has got power over him through his passions, and it is thraldom. A man dare not do anything that would set him at variance with the world.

41 Man has lost the knowledge of God (not that there is a God, but the knowledge of God), and this aggravates his guilt. He has a knowledge that there is a God, but he does not know Him. I may know there is a great potentate, but I may not know him. A man's intellect may say, "No God"; but his conscience says there is a God, though he has shut God out, and does not know Him. We have lost, in a great degree, the power of measuring good and evil. Would not the young man have known it was unseemly to be feeding on the husks the swine did eat, if he had been living happily in his father's house? We are by nature darkness; God is light. By the fall man lost the image of God - gained the knowledge of good and evil, but not the knowledge of God by which we can judge the things around us. Satan has blinded you by motives. "I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained unto life, I found to be unto death." The moment the word reaches the conscience, then you say, "I am all wrong." There may be almost despair, but the revelation of God's light alone comes in and shews me I was in darkness. Man's very unconsciousness of evil, and contentedness with what he is without God, the thirst in his heart for other things, and the asking, "What harm is there?" prove he has not God. If you talk of sin when men are enjoying what they call innocent pleasures, and speak of either grace or judgment, it stops them immediately; it is all gone. They will tell you, "It is not the time." Man's pleasure is never the time for God's presence. They will talk about God, will tell you what He ought to be, but they cannot bear His presence. The Lord may use outward means, trouble, etc., as in the Psalms; or work without outward means, and then we know the struggle against sin. "Thou hast known my soul in adversity." It is better to be struggling against the tide than going down the stream with the world. When the light shines in, there is the consciousness of need; the world sees it; Satan sees it and says, There is a soul escaping. He has got the consciousness that God is not there. It will be detected if the divine nature is at work in a man.

42 "Thou hast known my soul in adversity" - not my soul has known thee. There is as yet no full apprehension of His grace. I know I have been wrong, but "Thou hast considered my trouble." I am in distress. What am I to do? Well, God has considered my trouble. There is not liberty yet; but if the word has reached the heart, there may be ever so little perception of God, but there is a link between the soul and God. "Thou hast known my soul in adversity." "Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a pleasant child, for since I spake," etc. If there is any reader that knows he has been going wrong as connected with the conscience, and he wishes to get back to God, I say, God knows it, He considers it - weighs the whole process, and He will surely deliver. The soul may know and have to pass through a good deal of exercise; but He is considering it. "Since I spake against thee," etc. His eye is always upon it. "Thou hast known my soul in adversity."

There is not only sin but the power of Satan to overcome. You cannot be independent of Satan. You cannot go after the smallest vanity, not even a little bit of dress for vanity's sake, without making God a liar and believing Satan. Eve did this when Satan said, "Thou shalt not surely die" - God knows if you disobey, you will become as He is. He treated God as a liar, and she trusted Satan for truth, and so God was entirely cast off. In everything you may be deceived by the same enemy.

Man incautiously trusts Satan for truth, and even for goodness. But when you begin to struggle with Satan, he will trouble your soul, if he sees you want to get away from him. He will send friends and temptations to you, so as to deceive (and that is the difference between the devil and Satan). The Lord comes in; Satan claims his right over us and says, You have sold yourself to me already; but God says, "Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?" Satan was displayed specially as the adversary when he said, "Fall down and worship me." Then the Lord said, "Get thee hence, SATAN." Satan uses scripture for his own wicked purposes and quotes what God has said - "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." You sold yourself to me. No, says the Lord, My eye is upon you: thou shalt not die. The judgment of death is with God, the power of death is with the devil! Christ comes and places Himself in blessed grace in our place to bear the whole weight of Satan's power - puts Himself under the consequences of our sin: "was made sin for us." Thus grace brought Him where sin brought us, that He might deliver us from the whole force of evil. Christ, having not only delivered us but glorified God perfectly by the cross, having made good His tide at all cost, goes into that glory by virtue of redemption, with the full joy of the firstborn among many brethren, enters as Man into the presence of His Father.

43 This gives the character of what we are made partakers of. If He enters there, it is in a certain sense our entering; it is for us, as "our forerunner," in virtue of His entering. We have entered in Him as our Head; we sit "in heavenly places in Christ." "Thou hast not shut me up in the hand of the enemy, but thou hast set my feet in a large room." There is liberty. The state of the heart delivered corresponds with the deliverance into a large place. "Set my feet in a large room." We are in the presence of God without the possibility of wrath. The cup of wrath has been drunk - it is not now to drink. God's eye was upon me when I was in my sins. He has "known my soul in adversity," and I am brought into the presence of God - into the sunshine of His glory, without a cloud, by virtue of redemption. It is after I was a sinner, I am brought there through the efficacy of the work of Christ. I am there necessarily to be the proof of the value of His blood. God looks upon me as the fruit of His Son's work: I am set according to the value of God's Son in His sight. This is how I know His love, in the perfect favour of God - not only in divine favour without a cloud, but assured that there never can be a cloud. And there is another thing - "Sin shall not have dominion over you." Not that it will not be there; but that we are set free from sin and death. The same power that raised Christ into the presence of God has delivered me. I may slip through unbelief, but I am delivered, and am then one spirit with the Lord.

Satan has no power against Christ up on high; all his power was exhausted at the cross, and it is all gone. God "hath delivered us from the power of darkness," and set our feet "in a large room." That we may enjoy this large room, the Holy Ghost is given. "Stand fast in the liberty." Satan has no right or title against Christ. In Him I am delivered. I am entirely out of the enemy's reach (I do not mean if going on in the flesh): in Christ is my title and portion. I have received the Holy Ghost. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." "If led by the Spirit, we are not under the law." By the Holy Ghost, I "know the things that are freely given of God," and have the power of enjoying them (1 Cor. 2), an "earnest in our hearts," 2 Cor. 1.

44 I add another thing that puts the crown to all: "we joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ." I know it is for ever. The Spirit has sealed me "until the day of redemption." Well, now I can trust and joy in God. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" No creature can separate us from the love of God. There we find ourselves; and the apostle is not afraid to say, "We joy in God." This is a "large room." All the holiness of God is our delight. He that first descended is ascended into the proper glory; and we are brought into it all. If I cannot see the end of it, I can see it is boundless blessedness. And Christ is all and in all. The Lord give us to dwell there! Surely it is "a large place."

God's House and the Way

Psalm 84

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We get ourselves so accustomed to certain things by their constant use that the power of their meaning becomes destroyed. It may be a bad word or a good word, but words that would deeply affect others thus fail to move us. This we find but too true, as regards the scripture-truth itself. What an effect such an announcement as that in John 3 ("God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son," etc.), would have upon us, if listened to for the first time, and the value of its meaning entered into! Just the same is it with this scripture before us. "How amiable are thy tabernacles O Jehovah of hosts," etc. Would not such a thought as being in God's court, as men dwelling in God's own house, greatly delight and surprise us, if heard for the first time and its meaning understood? What an effect such a truth as this would have upon us if fully believed - God going to make us dwell with Himself in His own house!

He does dwell with us now, as we know; but we are not yet dwelling in His house. God never dwelt with Adam, nor did Adam dwell with God. He made a suitable dwelling-place for man and put Adam in it. He did come down to visit him, but He did not dwell with him. Indeed the first time we read of God coming down His word is, Adam, where art thou? The paradise on earth was not God's dwelling-place. We read in the Revelation, the tabernacle of God is with men, and the Lamb is the light and the temple of it.

"How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Jehovah of hosts! my soul longeth, yea fainteth for the courts of Jehovah." The heart that has found God longs for a dwelling-place with Him. It was this desire that moved the disciples on the mount of transfiguration to make a request for three tabernacles. It was Jewish of course; but they could not bear the thought of the Lord Jesus going away. They wished Him to stay with them; they wanted to keep Him down here. He could not remain, but left them and us words of comfort. "Let not your heart be troubled . . . . In my Father's house are many mansions," many chambers. "I go to prepare a place for you . . . . I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." This new thing is brought out here most blessedly - that man shall dwell with God in His own house. The Lord Jesus could not stay with His beloved disciples down here, because it is polluted; but He will have his people with Himself, where there is holiness, and everything suited to meet the need and claims of holiness. His people shall dwell with Him. "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am."

46 The first thought in the heart of Moses (Ex. 15), whilst recounting God's acts of power and delivering grace, is the desire to make Him a house: "He is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation." But verse 13 gives us a fuller thought of faith: "Thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation" - the redemption song of the Lord's strength and power. In verse 17 we get the clear promise of this new thing - a dwelling-place with God, which He Himself has made. That is what He will do for them: not merely a rest in the wilderness, but the blessed purpose of God is to bring His people into His sanctuary which He has made. What! man to dwell with God! Wondrous fact! The thought of this new thing fills my soul with the deepest joy.

The heart that longs for God finds rest in the altar of God. "Thine altars, O Jehovah of hosts," etc. "My heart . . . crieth out for the living God. Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young." How beautifully this parenthesis shews us the tender care God has over all His creatures! He fails not to find a house for the most worthless of birds, and a nest for the most restless. What confidence this should give us! How we should rest! What repose the soul gets that casts itself upon the watchful tender care of Him who provides so fully for the need of all His creatures! We know what the expression of "nest" conveys, just as well as that of "a house." Is it not a place of security - a shelter from storm - a covert to hide oneself in from every evil - a protection from all that can harm - a place to rest in, to nestle in, to joy in? The term is just as familiar in the scripture as that of "the house." The prodigal well understood the comfort and plenty of the Father's house before he turned his face towards it; but it was the Father that knew the claims of the house, and He must clothe him suitably for it before he is admitted into it.

"Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee." It is this new thing - that men should dwell in God's own house; not be there merely as a visitor, but a dweller. The visitor does not know all that belongs to the house; but nothing can be kept back from a dweller: he is at home, and must know all the privileges and blessings of the house. Surely there will be perfect blessedness in that house, where Christ has prepared everything - where God is at home and has arranged all according to His own wisdom and power and glory - the Lamb being the light and the temple. Now those who dwell there must have the moral qualities of the house; their tastes, and enjoyments, and nature, must be suited to the house.

47 In time past God did come into the temple after a Jewish order; but the people were shut out from even this glory - the very opposite to dwelling with God. They were a favoured people, it is true - separated from the nations by God's grace; but they knew not the constant increasing blessing of the house.

There is another thing - the way to this house; the road to that place where God and His people shall dwell. He has been dwelling with them, but He will have them to dwell with Him, and His heart has ordered the way. When we were sinners - merely sinners - and could do nothing but sin, He put it all away. "Christ suffered, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God." He has given us a new nature, which has the moral capabilities of enjoying a dwelling-place with Him in His own house.

God has dwelt with man; the God-man Christ Jesus has tabernacled down here, and His glory was displayed in grace and truth.

In Exodus 29 we learn a further truth of the tabernacle and the altar; but the grand thought all through is not only God dwelling with His people, but He must have them to dwell with Him.

In Ezekiel we see the glory that had rested on the temple departing gradually, reluctantly, yet really. But this had not been the fulness of His indwelling in the Christian; neither was it His presence in the church which is His body. "Ye are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit."

How this new thing occupies God - the thought of His own house! His word declares it; "prophets tell of it"; grace puts us in possession of it; faith gives us the enjoyment of it; the Lord Jesus is the way to it. The First Epistle of John brings out this truth very fully. (See chaps. 3 and 4.)

48 Now, how is it that we feel ourselves wonderfully more united to a Christian we may only have known for half-an-hour, than to a mere acquaintance we may have known all our lives? Is it not the reality of the truth, God is there? God dwells in us, and we in Him. It is something more than a new nature, for it goes on to say, "We know that he abideth in us by the Spirit he hath given us." In the next chapter we get that wonderful word, "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love," etc. Oh, the joy this knowledge gives the heart! What comfort the soul gets in such proximity to God! How the thought of this house delights one! - this house that God is bringing us to, where we shall learn Him most fully, and love Him without hindrance.

How complete, how perfect, is God's work! He gave Jesus to die for us, and He has sent down the Holy Ghost to teach us, to assure our hearts that the Lord Jesus Christ has done everything for us. He has fitted us for this house, and we have in Him all we need. He gives us the moral qualities of the dwellers of the house, the new nature that can enjoy the glory of the house. "Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee." Nothing but praise becomes those who shall dwell in God's house; it will be their unwearied untiring employ - continual praise. "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are the ways." If by faith I am dwelling in God's house, I have perfect rest. If I am counting on His strength, let my difficulty be what it may, I have entire repose. Communion with God always gives confidence in His power. This is the key to the psalm before us. If my heart has learnt the love God has for me, and what His purposes are towards me, I can trust Him to order the way. God's love was displayed in His Son - revealed in the gift of Him; and the Son will give grace and strength for the way. "Of those thou hast given me have I lost none." God has fully provided for our need. He has quickened us - cleansed us - sealed us. If Paul had to say, I am not already perfect, he knew it was the way up, the way to the house, the way home. If my heart is set upon this glorious dwelling-place, I shall not be so much occupied about the ease or comfort of the way, as I shall be to know that it is the way. The glory of the inheritance will be far more to me than the character of the things that are round the pathway to it.

49 Everything may be against me - all may seem united to hinder my progress. Should I be trying to make myself comfortable, desiring to settle down in a place and a world which is striving to keep me from my house and my home, depriving me of enjoyment and blessing? No; the one thing that should occupy me is the way out. I shall not be distressed much by what is going on down here if I can but learn that it leads up there. Is it the way home? Will it take me to the house? This will be a vast deal more important to me than all else. It may be a dangerous road, a rough road, a difficult road; but is it the way up there? If I do but know that, I shall not care for the difficulties of the hill, nor fear the danger of the descent. Shall I be looking for an easier road, a smoother road? No. Is it the road? Is it the way there? If I am told there is a lion in the way - well, I have no fear: God is my strength - I cannot go without Him. "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" were the words of Jesus. He had to suffer, so may we; but is it the way there - the way to the home on which my affections are set - the way to the home of blessing which the Lord has prepared? This settles every question, and delivers from ten thousand sorrows. I do not care for the difficulties nor the dangers: it is the way there. I am kept up in it by the strength of God; I am kept up through it by the love of God.

"Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well" (v. 6). The valley of Baca is a place of sorrow and humiliation, but one of blessing also. To Paul it was the thorn in the flesh - something that made him despicable in his ministry to the Galatians. It was truly humbling, and called forth from him a thrice-repeated prayer. But when he heard the Lord say, "My grace is sufficient for thee," he no longer pleaded for its removal. No; he rather gloried in his infirmity, that the power of Christ might be known. This was the place of blessing to Paul: he found it a well. The valley of Baca was turned into a spot of untold intimacy and nearness to God. With some of us this valley may be the loss of that nearest our hearts, or the thwarting of the will - something that will humble us; but it is a place of blessing. We get far more refreshing from the painful than the pleasant things. The valley of Baca is made a well. Of which of your pleasant things can you say, you make it a well? The refreshment and the blessing come from that which has pained us, humbled us, emptied us of self! This is God's way of shewing us what He is; and so, in passing us through the valley of Baca, He makes it a well.

50 So we read in 1 Thessalonians 5, "In everything give thanks." How is this to be done? Did Paul give thanks for the thorn - the very thing he supposed would hinder his usefulness? Not whilst looking at the thing itself: it was only when his eye was fixed on the heart and the hand that had done it. There are many things in themselves that we cannot give thanks for - the snapping of the cord nearest the heart, or the cutting to pieces of what our affections are set upon. We must see the love that has ordered it, and the hand that has appointed it; and then we can give thanks.

"The rain also filleth the pools." The Lord can make springs in the desert to meet His people's need, or send down rain from heaven to supply their wants. He knows neither difficulties nor impossibilities: to lean upon Him is undisturbed security. He will bring His people safely through every trial; and every fresh victory should increase the strength of their confidence in Him.

"Behold O God, our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed." In every sorrow God is our shield. Oh! but some may say, My sorrow is brought on by my sin. Sad it should be so! But even then we can say, "Look upon the face of thine anointed." God can always look upon His Son with delight; He is ever well pleased in Him: and we can plead what Christ is. There is no position a saint can be in but that he may go to God for help. No; although his very sorrow is the fruit of his sin, and there is no other way of getting rid of your sin and out of your sorrow but by going to God and hiding yourself behind His Anointed. You may not choose to say, Look upon me; but you can ever say, "Look upon the face of thine Anointed." Christ is your only shelter. He is a covert in every storm - ah! even that which your own failure has brought upon you. There is no getting back to God but by hiding yourself in Christ - taking shelter behind Him.

There is just one other word about the way, and I have done. Now, what are your ways? What is your walk in the way to the place you are going to? Is it in keeping with the character of the house? Are your ways suited to the home God has prepared you for? - His own dwelling which He has prepared for you? Are you so behaving yourselves as to rejoice in the thought that this world is crumbling? Is the hope of the Lord's coming your daily delight? Does it influence you in the ten thousand details of your every-day life? Or are you so walking hand in hand with the world that the very thought of His coming fills you with shame? May the Lord grant you grace to take heed to your ways! May you walk well-pleasing in His sight, caring more for His glory than your own ease! "No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly." "Blessed is the man that trusteth in Jehovah."

Emmanuel

Matthew 3

J. N. Darby.

<21010E> 52

The word of God presents to us this very precious fact, that we do not only find there certain truths and doctrines, but also every relation between God and man fully developed on earth, and each day we can clearly see all these things in the Person of Jesus. It is a great mercy of God to have brought Him so near to us, as so to make known to us those relationships in the circumstances in which we are ourselves found. At bottom the life of Jesus was like ours. He was in all things tempted in like manner as ourselves. It was indeed God manifested in flesh; but it was also life, and the expression of a life; perfectly acceptable to God.

In order to make progress in spiritual life we must study the Lord Jesus; whether in the grace of His Person or in the circumstances of His life; or, lastly, in the glorious position He has near the Father, and which we shall by-and-by share with Him.

We see in Christ, from the beginning, the accomplishment of the life of faith, which was tested in Him, and of which He manifested all the perfection.

Jesus is to us a tender and mighty friend; and, while travelling through the wilderness, we know that at the end of the way will be found the glory in which He now is. That is what is said in Hebrews 12: 1-3: "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith" - rather "the leader and completer of faith." As captain, He has gone before us; as shepherd, "he putteth forth his own sheep," and also "goeth before them." He "despised the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds."

Divine life is seen in that Man who walked in the midst of all difficulties and temptations, who surmounted all, and who, alone amongst all, was not touched by the evil one.

Now He has entered the glory at the right hand of God; and we shall share with Him that glory when He shall appear, since we shall be made like unto Him.

53 We shall see a little how the Spirit of God presents Jesus to us, at the beginning of His life, when He enters that painful race of faith.

An important thing to remark is, that the light manifests all that is in man.

It is true that God saw what was in the heart of Abel and of Cain, before anything of it was manifested; just as He saw a remnant in the midst of the Jews, in whom grace was working; but things were never brought to light under the law. God was, as it were, hidden behind a veil, and He allowed many things because of the hardness of their hearts, as Jesus told His disciples; for the full light was not yet manifested. But in Christ the light shone in the world.

In the Christian, who possesses the life of Christ, that which is true in Christ is true in him, as it is said in 1 John 2: 8: "Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth."

It is always well to bear in mind that, in the former dispensation, God hid Himself, but that He sent certain messengers who were to reveal what was entrusted to them, but without making God known. The law did not manifest Him fully. It is true it says, Thou shalt love; but not, I love thee; it does not reveal a God of love. It does not shew us what God is, save that He is a just God and executes vengeance. It tells us nothing at all of what God is for man, nor of what He is in Himself. The law did indeed make known to men what they ought to be toward God, but it was silent as to what God is for them.

A man is always under law, as long as he is occupied with what God demands from him, instead of understanding what God is for him; for this would produce much more excellent effects. God, being thus hidden, required obedience in order to grant life. It was no question of being able to place oneself in the presence of God. The high priest alone presented himself once every year into the holiest of all; for the way into it was not yet made manifest, and there were many things that God bore with, without approving them. There were ceremonies and ordinances, which were intended to remind man of his dependence, and to bring him into relationship with God, according to certain things which acted upon the flesh and adapted to the flesh, because man was in it, and God placed Himself in a relationship with him. The holiness of God who was hidden was not seen, but there were ceremonies which maintained the relationships between that God who remained hidden and man.

54 But when God manifests Himself, it can no longer be so; for God is holy, and He is love. He is perfect in holiness, and man must necessarily enter into relationship with what God is. God can forgive sinners - can wash them; but He cannot bear with anything that does not answer to His holiness. If there is grace, there is also holiness, but God cannot, because of His holiness, bear with man, a sinner, just as he is; for God is "of purer eyes than to behold evil."

Let us meditate upon the example of Jesus, the Light upon earth, entirely separated from sinners, which constituted the perfect beauty of His life. On one hand, we see that He is alone, perfectly alone; He is the most isolated man that one can imagine. The disciples themselves know not how to sympathise with Him. The woman of Samaria, to whom He addressed such touching words about the water "springing up into everlasting life," can understand nothing else but "the well is deep." She says, "From whence then hast thou that living water?" If Jesus says, "Look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest"; if He speaks of "a meat to eat" that His disciples "know not of," it is ever the same He meets with no real sympathy in the midst of men. We feel that this was painful to Him, because He had a man's heart, and would have desired to find some one who could understand Him; but He found nothing anywhere. On the contrary, as to Him, we see that He has a perfect sympathy toward all. Jesus was the most accessible man, most within the reach of the simple, of the ignorant, and even of the most degraded of sinners. He manifested in His life something that had not its equal. No, there never was all that holiness and love, which is above all our thoughts.

There is so much selfishness in the heart of man that the love of God is to him an enigma still more incomprehensible than His holiness. No one understood Jesus, because He manifested God. I do not as yet speak of His work, but of what He was, when He was manifested in the midst of the world. He had to shew that all the ceremonies cannot make God known; for the thing is impossible. Jesus alone manifested God as He is, and man also as he is.

55 No religion as such can change man. Man puts on religion as a clothing; but his religion leads him farther away from God.

The first thing God does is to lay us bare in His presence; He takes away everything. He is occupied with us, and not with our religion. Then is all quite removed, and we stand before Him, such as we are. Well! that is what took place when Jesus was here below; and therefore He was unwelcome and found Himself in conflict with every one.

It is impossible we could like to find ourselves in the presence of God, just as we are. A man accustomed to dirt does not know he is dirty, because his whole way of living is fashioned to it; but if he finds himself in certain circumstances, which give him light as to himself, he will feel disgusted to see what his whole life has been. Such is the heart of man; but when the light of God shines in his conscience and in his soul, he sees himself such as he really is in the sight of God, although there be doubtless some defect in the perception of it. This is very humbling; one does not like it, for it is too painful. Once more I say, before God it is not a question of our religion but of ourselves.

Such is the necessary effect of the presence of God in the world. The light shews us in God all condescension, all goodness, all grace: and in man a selfishness which betrays itself before God. One sees that man cannot be saved through himself. A certain man says, "Suffer me first to go and bury my father." Is it not as good as saying, There is something else that holds the first place when Christ calls me? It is not my will to serve God entirely. "I have bought five yoke of oxen," says another; and a third, "I have married a wife." What does this mean? That the heart is fixed on quite another thing; that it prefers its oxen to the feast that God has prepared. Thus all is made manifest, and the heart is laid bare.

All disappears before the testimony of God. Man's self-righteousness and his pride lead him to hide from himself his own state, in order to take advantage of a religion which descends from his ancestors. But John the Baptist said (Matt. 3: 7-9), when he saw the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance; and think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." It is God who works as He pleases, and in His own power, to create children unto Himself. All your pretensions, as Jews, descendants of Abraham, God takes no account of. He works in that supreme power, in which He is able, even of stones, to raise up children unto Abraham; and that is the reason why He takes no account of your righteousness: He must first have sinners.

56 There is yet another thing to observe here. John says (Matt. 3: 11, 12), "He shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

Jesus is going to establish His kingdom, and that will soon come to pass. It is a kingdom in which that which is not according to His heart will be burnt with fire. Such was the testimony of John. "The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached." God had given the law to that people which He had gathered and ranged round Himself; He had sent prophets who, as witnesses for the moment, called upon the Jews to walk according to the law. John the Baptist came to announce to them quite another thing: The kingdom of heaven is at hand. God is about to establish a new order of things: are you in a state to enter it? Have you energy to penetrate there? Judgment is there also. He has His fan in His hand. Have you any fruit? If not, "the axe is laid unto the root of the trees." "Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father." Thus it was that John taught; such is the place he takes. As to Jerusalem, it is about to be set aside, and John preaches the testimony of repentance and of the kingdom about to be established; he presents himself in order to draw out every thought towards Jesus. After having announced the testimony of repentance, the Lord Jesus presents Himself to our hearts and souls. Let us rest - rest our thoughts upon Him, who shews Himself to us personally.

The object of God is not only to cause sin to be felt, although that must take place, but to make Jesus known and to place the soul in the enjoyment of God Himself - to act in grace towards it in order that it may forget itself and be filled with the thought of Jesus. This is the way God does it. He presents the Lord "as a root out of a dry ground." There is in Him no beauty for man, as there was in the temple; nay, nothing of that which attracts the flesh and might tempt it - nothing of all that. It is on the contrary, a root that none "should desire." To the eyes of flesh there is absolutely nothing to render Him lovely. Who is it then? It is a poor man who goes preaching! He "hath not where to lay his head." He is a man condemned by every clerical authority, by all the wise men and all the Pharisees. The Sadducees condemn Him, the priests condemn Him. Thus was Jesus received. In Him is "no beauty that we should desire him." It was needful He should present Himself thus, that it might be shewn if the heart could discern God, and because He would not supply food to fleshly feeling. He must put the heart to the test, to prove whether God is enough for the heart, and whether the moral beauty that is in God - His love, His holiness, His word that penetrates within the heart; whether, in a word, all that is infinitely precious in the divine nature - can be discerned by man.

57 When He comes as the light, He never adapts Himself to that which He is going to destroy in the heart: man would do it, and he would call this religion; but it would only be to hide God, or to deny Him. Thus the Lord Jesus presents Himself without anything which could attract man, and that is what we find here. Of course every testimony of grace and goodness, necessary to our poor heart, is there; but nothing to meet its desires. The testimony given by Jesus was perfect and placed before the heart the grace it needed, to be rendered capable of tasting the grace of God itself.

Jesus has shewn Himself to our faith in all the grace of His divine Person; but He took His place among men as being nothing, save as the object of faith.

The angel appears to Joseph in a dream and says to him: "Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins," Matt. 1: 20, 21.

It was as Oshea that God caused Joshua to be called, which means Saviour, for God had charged him to bring Israel into the land of Canaan. It is God Himself, it is Jehovah, who comes as Saviour. It is the first thing that is presented to us: "Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." What a great and precious truth - "God with us!" Then God, so to speak, begins over again with man.

58 As soon as Jesus appears, Satan seeks to destroy Him. It is astonishing to see how forgetful man is. The magi who came from the East had owned Jesus as King of the Jews born in Bethlehem; they had borne a testimony to Emmanuel, to the Son of David. The shepherds, after having worshipped, had spread abroad what the angels had told them; and in spite of that, Jesus, although approved of God, was disowned and rejected by men.

God begins over again the whole history of Israel in the Person of Jesus. He must call His Son out of Egypt, where He had sent Him, because men wanted to slay Him the moment He had come into this world. Israel was really lost, and God must begin over again all their history in the Person of Jesus. Herod seeks the young child to destroy Him. Thus we find that opposition shews itself against Jesus, even from His cradle.

Satan has carnal motives enough to persuade souls to do away with God. His great work is to supply us with motives powerful enough to lead us to do without God, and to shut Him out of our hearts. Here we find the way he begins. He stirs up Herod against Jesus. Then Joseph takes the young child and departs into Egypt. After that he returns into the land of Israel and dwells in Nazareth, for it was written, "He shall be called a Nazarene." This is in fact where Jesus begins in the midst of the world. And who is it who dwells there in Nazareth? It is Jehovah, the Saviour; it is "Emmanuel." And what is that city? It is so bad a place, that to be found there is enough to make men say, Ah! I will have none of it. Nathanael said to Philip, "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? "

It is God whom I first see in the Person of Jesus; but God in the circumstances which the flesh repels, because it is wicked. To know God the flesh must be entirely mortified, and grace in our hearts must lead us to value the love of God in spite of the flesh. This is the history of Christian life.

Outwardly Jesus was only a poor Nazarene; but perfection was in His ways and in His heart, and it manifested itself in the midst of every difficulty, of all contempt, and all that was false. Faith alone could discern the ways of Jesus through want and every misery. The broken heart saw this perfection of goodness manifesting itself in the midst of every care. It is necessary our hearts should see also, in that despised man, God Himself, who reveals Himself to our souls and takes His place in our midst.

59 Then Jesus comes to John to be baptised. John forbad Him, because he owned the dignity of His Person. "I have need to be baptised of thee; and comest thou to me?" Jesus then "said unto him, Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." Whom do I find here? It is the Lord Jesus and His Person owned; but, in spite of that, His will is to take His place with the least of the saints. "Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." Who are they, these we? It is John and Himself. Where does He place Himself? He places Himself there, in connection with the first movement of His Spirit in the heart. I place Myself with those who repent, said Jesus. There are some who come to be baptised; I also, I come to be baptised. As soon as there is a movement of repentance in the heart of the sinner - a response to the testimony rendered by the word - Jesus takes His place there with that heart. It is not only that He manifests as an object that which, by faith, becomes the crucifying of the flesh, but He goes with the heart also, and the poor heart sees all that; and what a consolation for us! The one in whom the fulness of the Father was manifested is there, and it is the Son Himself. If a soul is broken down - well! Jesus is with it. If it is in fear, because already "the axe is laid unto the root of the trees," He is there to encourage it and to shew unto it His grace. He takes His place with His people, and thus we see the perfect goodness of God. It was He Himself who produced this movement of repentance in that heart, and He takes His place with that soul; Jesus is there. If He is to us the most high God, the One who manifests all this light, He is there also as man, meeting the least of our feelings. He is with us, believers, in all our misery and in all our circumstances.

The consequence of the baptism of Jesus is that the heavens are opened unto Him. It is not only the God incarnate, but heaven is opened over Him; He has the full approbation of God, and thereby we see all the extent of that grace presented to sinners. Never was heaven opened before. God had sent messengers, but never had there been on earth a man upon whom heaven opened.

60 When Jesus has accomplished the work of atonement, He places us in the same position as Himself. "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God." Heaven is open. There is no longer any veil on our heart.

As man, Jesus was perfectly righteous, and although He placed Himself in the position of those poor sinners who drew nigh to God, He was none the less acceptable to God; and indeed never was Jesus so acceptable to God, as when He bare our sins on the tree. It was at the moment of His death that He perfectly glorified God in all that He was as man, and that He also at the same time bore testimony to the perfect and infinite love of God towards sinners.

Heaven is opened on Jesus - well! it is also entirely opened on us. No sin can be tolerated before God; all that is not of Christ, on whom heaven could be opened, God beholds, and He cannot tolerate sin. But there is no longer a veil as to us: we look on His glory in Jesus with unveiled face; and the glory of God shines on man as he is in Jesus, just as it shone on Jesus Himself. All that is not Christ is condemned. All that is reprobate is manifested by Himself.

There is another consequence of the acceptance of Jesus; it is the Spirit of God, who descended upon Him like a dove, and the voice from heaven, which made itself heard, "saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

Such is the position Jesus takes. He manifests His grace in testimony to man when he is in his sins. He adapts Himself to the circumstances of the sinner in his lowest state; He identifies Himself with him in the first step he takes under grace, but at the same time we see as to Himself that there is a voice "saying, This is my beloved Son." This is the perfect Man in the presence of God - the friend of poor sinners, and the expression of all that God loves to see in man in the midst of the world.

But further (Matt. 4), if we are the children of God, His beloved children, as we believe, loved as Jesus is loved (as He said Himself: "That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them"), we are through grace in the same position as Himself in the sight of God. But it is needful that this perfectly beloved Person should be tested, and we, not merely to know if we are children of God, nor as sinners; as such, we have already been tested, and we know we are lost. It is needful that grace should work; and when it is a question of grace, it is always the perfect grace of God toward sinners. All that is good must be on God's side, for in man there is nothing. The light manifests that in God there is nothing but that which is good, and in us no good thing. This love of God, in us, produces a new life. We are in the position of children of God, like Jesus; but then, the Spirit of God being in us, we must be put to the test. There are many things which hinder us from enjoying the love of God. There is selfishness, self-love, levity: therefore we must be put to the test, as Jesus Himself was. Paul says, "We glory in tribulations also . . . and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts."

61 Thus we are conscious of being children of God, being looked upon by Him as Jesus Himself. Then all is begun; but all is not finished. As to acceptance indeed all is finished. The child that God may have just given me is truly my child, though its education be not gone through; but it is as much my child, though just born, as when he will be twenty.

Jesus, owned of God, takes His place according to our weakness, and He is "led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." What Satan always seeks is to make us forget our position as children. In ourselves we are slaves of the devil; but we have been set free by God. Satan wanted man to abandon his first estate which he had in Eden; and he succeeded. There were "angels which kept not their first estate," neither did Adam keep his. Whatever the position in which man was placed, he always failed. Nadab, Abihu, Solomon, were not able to keep the estate in which they had been placed. Satan always seeks to make us fall. Hence, although God brings into blessing, He brings us also into trial; yet we know that "He who hath begun the good work will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." If Jesus leads His sheep out, "he goeth before them." Satan rises up to make us fall if he can; but man must in this world undergo the temptations of the devil. Well, Christ also underwent them, and in that position He acted as we ought to do ourselves. He does not at first say to Satan, "Get thee hence "; but He places Himself in the same position as ourselves, and He fasts forty days and forty nights. But He is there with Him who said to Him, "This is my beloved Son." He was conscious of being the Son of God; yet, as man, Satan begins to tempt Him. Do something, he says, inconsistent with your position, something that is not obedience, to please yourself, to satisfy your own will. "If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." But Jesus answers him, "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

62 If Jesus had obeyed Satan as the first Adam did, He would have fallen; but He could not. Grace places Him in all the difficulties in which we may be found ourselves. What is precious for us (it matters little in what circumstances) is that in Jesus we find not only life but also the maintenance of that life.

I have life, because God gave it to me; but in a practical sense, if I do not eat I cannot live; John 6. There is not in our souls one single spiritual quality but what comes from God. And, besides, see how Jesus acts practically. There is not a single word in the book of God which cannot feed our souls; and therefore it is important for us to know how to handle that word by the power of the Holy Ghost, in order to be enabled to keep Satan at a distance.

"Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." Satan quotes to Him a promise, but Christ will not abandon the position of obedience, and He answers him, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." We have here a principle of the utmost importance. We have indeed the whole word of God, as a means to gain the victory over Satan; but it is in the most simple obedience that we find strength. If Christ has not a word from God, He does nothing. He came to do the will of His Father; and if that which He is asked to do is not according to that will, He does not act.

The true affection of Martha and Mary leads them to beg of Jesus to come, saying to Him, "He whom thou lovest is sick." This appeal was very touching; but the Lord does not respond to it immediately: He had received nothing from God, and He does not go. He does not listen to His natural affections. He had indeed healed others that were sick; but if He had healed Lazarus, Martha and Mary would have learnt nothing more. Jesus then suffers Lazarus to die, and allows their heart to feel all the bitterness of death, that they may learn that the resurrection and the life are there.

63 Such is the obedience which is the principle of the life, and not the rule only; and, as a Christian, I ought to do nothing but what God wants me to do.

But besides I find here another important principle, which is, that I should have in God such perfect confidence that I never need to make a trial of it. It is tempting God not to have the certainty that He loves us. I ought so to reckon on His love and faithfulness as not to need even to think of it.

Again, Satan says to Jesus, "Cast thyself down." Ah! I need not do it, thought Jesus; I know full well that God will keep Me. The Jews said, "Is Jehovah amongst us, or not?" Well, in that they tempted Jehovah. We ought to have such assurance in God as to be able to think of nothing else but His will.

As soon as the devil said to Jesus "and worship me," then it is plainly Satan, and the Lord answers, "Get thee hence . . . . Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."

The two great principles in which Jesus walked are obedience to the word without having any will, and perfect confidence in God. We also can reckon upon God, because we are sure to have Him for us.

I would also call your attention to the way in which Jesus placed Himself in our position. We see Him taking His place with sinners who needed repentance, but in the act which was the beginning of the divine life in them, associating Himself with them in that baptism where their heart responded to the testimony of God about their sins. They were truly the excellent of the earth, those poor publicans and sinners.

Jesus is found in the position of the obedient Son, and thus fulfilling all righteousness. Heaven opens. Is the temptation there? Jesus is found there also. He is everywhere in order to sympathise with sinners. When He presents Himself in this world, it is God Himself who comes, and He shews in Him all that He would put in us. It is a God who has placed Himself in such a position that flesh finds nothing there. One must absolutely learn that it is the heart which must value God in His love, in His holiness, and in the midst of a world entirely lying in the wicked one.

How blessed to have Jesus! He puts Himself in our place; and we have to do with a God who has manifested Himself in the midst of the world, and who would have us for Himself, but without sin. Having put away our sins, He draws us to Himself, but without sin, to bring us to enjoy what He is, in spite of every obstacle, and of all that is in the flesh. He would have us to enjoy perfectly that God whom, by His grace, we have known as He is.

64 May God grant unto us to value the perfect beauty of that Jesus who came to us! We know Him. Ah! how happy are we to be enabled to say, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded he is able to keep that which I have committed to him! "

May God shew us all the perfection of Jesus, and that even in temptations; for we shall find the beauty of One who will not forsake us up to the time He will have placed us in the same glory with Him!

"Come unto Me"

Matthew 11: 25-30

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The Lord, though deeply and thoroughly sensible of Israel's rejection of Him, bows completely to the will and wisdom of God in it. (See Isa. 49.) "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." In this His blest supremacy was fully shewn. "Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight." The knowledge of God makes all necessarily good to us, for it comes from Him. It may be very contrary to our nature. To Jesus men's rejection of His message was of course painful. It threw Him on the sovereignty of God His Father whom He knew, in the fact that His Father had hid these things from the sages of the world, and revealed them to the despised and weak. He acknowledged the Father in the thing done, and in its suitableness to the whole order of God's dealings in such a world. That of course was all that the Son of God, or we taught of the Spirit, could desire, but it was in circumstances which required perfect submission of heart and will.

But this perfect submission of the Son gave rest, and brought His Person out to light. If He was thrown entirely on the Father, it was because He was Son, and because of His entire rejection in that character, in which, while perfect and shewing who He was, He had not taken His glory, and would have taken but the earthly dominion. The secret was that this was but "a light thing." All things were delivered to Him of His Father, and by reason of the very glory of His Person, being Son of God, no man knew the Son but the Father His service now was to reveal the Father in the prerogative of grace. For none knew the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. "Come unto me," says this only patient witness of love - "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." Here I am, the rejected One, to whom in sure title all things are delivered of my Father; but One whose heart has bowed in all long-suffering of love, who has learnt submission, who has felt what it is to be pained and scorned and outwardly to find no refuge but submission. Come to Me. Men may have rejected Me, but I am the Son, and none knows the Father but as I reveal Him. Whosoever is burdened and passes not on with this haughty world, whosoever labours and is heavy-laden, here I exercise My love. "Come to me, and I will give you rest." I have learnt how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. (Compare Isaiah 50 and the end of Romans 8, with its full extent of blessing to us.)

66 It was the Lord's submission under such circumstances which brought the sense to His soul, and the revelation to others, of a much better portion than that of Messiah according to the law and the prophets. In regard to this, so to speak, He was rejected, and blessed be God for it! He had manifested patient gracious love to the nation, but they repented not even where His mighty works were done. The dispensation, although Messiah came in Person, ended in failure. "Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and in vain." He had stretched out His hands to a rebellious and gainsaying people. When He came, there was no man. For His love He had hatred. Reproach broke His heart. His hopes for the people, the title that He had, the title of His own love, were cast aside. Still there were babes who saw what was hidden from the great. "So it seemed good in thy sight," was the hinge of the Lord's comfort. This was enough. But what follows on this rejection? "All things are delivered unto me of my Father"; a wider, fuller, and more real glory. Yet, high as He is, He bids all come and declares He will give them rest - the rest of the revealed Father's love.

There is none else to come to. All have proved faithless. Come to Me! Who could say this but the Son of God? Who could give rest to all that come but the Son, Jehovah Himself? But One will give rest freely and bountifully, the meek and lowly Son of God. He gives rest supreme, as one who knew what peace was in trouble as none ever did. He speaks the secret of it to others. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." It is not now "I will give." That He could do as Jehovah and God the Lord; that He would do. But the word here is, "ye shall find." I have learnt the way. ("Lo! I come to do thy will, O God.") It is found in the path which Jesus has trodden. He alone trod it, or could tread it, perfectly in this world.

And yet it is not violent or laborious. In one sense it is easy, as the Lord says. Submit! Say, "Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight." Such is His yoke, and thus we learn of Him, who ascribed all to the Father, not to the circumstances. Hence He gave thanks to the Father always for all things, as we may and ought to do in His name. "It seemed good in thy sight." That was enough. It was perfect submission, and the Father beamed out in it. Its value hangs on the perfect knowledge of sonship. The whole is most blessed, and to be learnt only in Christ. The infiniteness of the Son's divinity was kept up, in His humanity, and therefore apparent humiliation and present inferiority, by His absolute inscrutability therein thus specially and signally maintained; while His oneness with the Father was made known in His competency to reveal, and supremacy of will in revealing, the Father. Both hold their place most beautifully, maintaining the Person in the glory of communion with the Father, and the inscrutability of God thus manifested while the Father was revealed.

67 How wise, perfect, singularly divine, is Scripture! There is nothing at all like it. No wit of man could have framed such a sentence as that.

Jesus the Sufferer

Matthew 26

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I feel some difficulty in speaking of the subject before us here, not as to the doctrine itself but simply for the excellency of it; for where Christ is presented in His own perfectness all our thoughts are so inadequate. The excellency of the Lord so surpasses all our thoughts. He is sufficient to be the Father's delight: surely He ought to be ours. But it is of importance that our hearts should be occupied with Him, and this in His low estate. He is at the right hand of God now: we should look at Him in glory that we may be changed into the same image; but when we look to be the same mind as Christ, we must look at Him down here. Thus in Philippians 2, "let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus" - when was that? When He who being in the. form of God in all the glory up there thought it not robbery to be equal with God, made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men; then when He was a man, found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. There are the two steps as it were as He is descending: first, when being in the form of God He came down to be a man; and then when He who so humbled Himself became obedient unto the death of the cross.

This is the way in which He came from the actual glory of God - came down: nothing stopped Him even then. But here He is before men. Putting away sin He was alone with God. It was all darkness: man had done his worst, and Satan. It was what the twenty-second Psalm brings before us when He speaks of the bulls of Bashan (v. 11-18). "But be not thou far from me" - it was an appeal to God in what I may call human trials; He was cast into that - all this wickedness; His rejection in His perfectness cast Him upon God; and then to find He was forsaken of God! There we get the efficacy of the sacrifice in putting away sin. But it is the traits of Christ's character in the path I desire to speak of.

If we come to the cross, we must come by our wants and sins; no one comes truly, unless he comes as a sinner whose sins brought him there. But when we pass through the rent veil into the presence of God in perfect peace through the efficacy of the work He accomplished, and look back at the cross by which we came, in contemplating it in a divine way we find that the cross then has in it a glory and excellency all its own, of which everything in God's ways is the result - even the new heavens and the new earth. God was perfectly glorified in it. It was the climax of good and evil: all was met there. We must come to the cross as sinners to find the good of it; but if we have found peace by it, coming into God's presence reconciled, it is everything we shall see for ever. We never shall forget the Lamb that was slain. But still we can contemplate it in a divine way.

69 I get in the cross the perfectness of man's sin, positive enmity against God present in goodness. Nothing would do for man but to get rid of Him - "Him ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." "If I had not come and done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin," then they would have been justified in rejecting Him, "but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father." There I get the extreme of man's wickedness: when God was presented in goodness, it only drew out his hatred. The power was present in Christ to meet all the effects of sin by His word: the manifestation of it drew out the enmity of man's heart against Him, and they crucified Him. There you get all that man is brought out in the presence of God. He had broken the law before; and now God had come in in perfect goodness and power (power that could remove all their distresses), but it was God's power; and they would not have it, they crucified Him. On the other hand we see there all the power of Satan: therefore it says, "Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out": they were all led by him against Christ: "this is your hour and the power of darkness." He had overcome him in the temptation in the wilderness; it is said in Luke he departed from Him for a season. Now He says, "The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me": he who had power over the earth (for Satan was really the prince of this world) had come back and succeeded in moving up the hatred of man's heart against Him.

But now see the absolute perfectness of the second Man - "But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, so I do." I get in man (more than man) perfect love to the Father and perfect obedience, and when He had the dreadful cup to drink (mark the absolute need there was of it!) that perfect obedience and love to the Father made good in the very place where He stood as sin. On the other hand in the cross I find God's infinite love and grace abounding over sin: perfect love, giving His Son for us; and then at the same time perfect righteousness judging against sin, and God's majesty vindicated. "It became him for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." I see thus perfect evil in man and Satan, perfect good in man (but He was God), and perfect love in God, and righteousness in God against sin when it was met as such, all brought out in the cross; evil and good meeting there. And it is what has laid the immutable foundation in righteousness for all that will come in in goodness and blessing in the new heavens and new earth, resting not upon responsibility but upon the accomplishment of the work the value of which never can be known.

The more we think of the cross (we have come as sinners needing it, but as Christians, reconciled to God, we can sit down and contemplate it), we see it stands totally alone in the history of eternity. Divine glory, man's sin, Man's perfectness, Satan's evil, God's power and love and righteousness, all were brought out and met there. Accordingly it is the immutable foundation of man's blessing, and of everything that is good in heaven and earth. Then, when our souls are reconciled, we look at Him and learn of Him: "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest." He sees that the world had given Him up: there was no rest upon earth. He searched with wonderful patience for a place of rest, but there was no such thing to be found. He knew it, and had tried it; the Son of man had not where to lay (not merely outwardly) His head, but to rest His heart; no more than Noah's dove found rest for the sole of her feet. "I looked for some man to take compassion, but there was none." Yet feeling this, it is just there He says, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest: take my yoke," etc., "and ye shall find rest unto your souls."

I desire then that, while we rest in the blessed efficacy of the sacrifice, our thoughts should be formed by the blessed One - that is the practical secret of going through this world; "He that eateth me shall live by me." No doubt the taste ought to grow continually in us. There are the two sides of Christian life; if it is to give courage, victory over the world, I look at His glory as in Philippians 3. There it is the energy that runs after to win Christ at the end, counting all else dross and dung. In the second chapter it is the other side, not the object, but His lowliness in coming down is set before us.

71 In Matthew He is specially the victim. All through in a wonderful way you get His entire submission, but along with that, what is most striking, the depths of His path of suffering, Thinking of the cup He says, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." In Luke we read of His sweating as it were great drops of blood; it is as a man there. But you find this extreme sense of what the terribleness of God's wrath was. In the measure in which He knew what it was to be holy, He felt what it was to be made sin before God. In the measure in which He knew the love of God, He felt what it was to be forsaken of God. His suffering was in that sense perfect, infinite, in that He was contemplating it with His Father. Looking at it with Him, He says, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." You find His soul going through this utter depth, so that He sweat as it were great drops of blood; but when He comes back to His disciples, there is not a trace of it. He speaks to them as graciously and tenderly, entering into their thoughts as if there was no cup at all to drink. "What! could ye not watch with me one hour?" It is wonderful to trace this, you will find it all through Christ's life, perfect sensibility to all that was around Him (except in the extreme case when He was forsaken of God), but always Himself - never governed by it though He felt it all perfectly. The instant He turns round to the disciples, He has nothing to do but manifest the greatest tenderness and kindness. You see it all through; even before Pontius Pilate He says nothing, He is as a lamb led to the slaughter; as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth; He was dumb unless kindness and good was to be done to another: then He is as if nothing was happening, perfect goodness, perfect sensibility to all. It is His perfect submission, His perfect sense of the dreadful thing He was just about to go through we see; yet, because He felt it entirely with His Father, He could turn round and be just as perfect as to it with His disciples.

72 Now they come to take Him. He looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters but found none. He is God over all, yet still and thoroughly a man. Yet, as another has said, He never asked them to pray for Him; but says, "Tarry ye here and watch with me." To me it is most precious to find thus, that He who was with God and was God made flesh, felt as a man in everything. When asking His disciples to watch with Him, He knew the world was against Him: He looked to those that He had been most with, that they should be with Him. But He must have nothing. He was tested and tried to the last degree of human suffering and sorrow, standing alone in this, praying in an agony and alone. Where were the people that were going to prison and death with Him? They were asleep, deceived; asleep in the presence of the glory of the kingdom on the mount, asleep in the garden! That shews what poor things we are - not sin exactly; but it shews what Christ was to have as His portion in this world; none to sympathise with Him. Mary of Bethany was the only one, but for the rest never one had sympathy with Him; never one that wanted it that He had not sympathy with. Moved by Judas they say, "To what purpose is this waste?" What kind of hearts had they? It is just there God gives testimony to Him. In John (chap. 11) you have testimony borne to Him as Son of God in raising Lazarus. God would not allow Him to be rejected unless there was this testimony. Then Mary puts this ointment upon Him; and when all were against Him, the Greeks come up desiring to see Him; and the hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." There is that care in which God secures a testimony to Him; but I do not think you will ever find another instance of sympathy with the Lord's heart. How would you like that? It is dreadful! It was a dreadful world to Him. He was perfect and went through it. Here at the very moment that He asked them to watch with Him, they are asleep.

Then He goes all alone with His Father, going through it in spirit with Him. Now, that the answer to that cup might be fully drawn out, He cries, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not as I will but as thou wilt." It was not possible. "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." Now having been in this agony He comes back to His disciples and says to them in the gentlest way, "What! could ye not watch with me one hour?" What gentleness of grace - "watch and pray lest ye enter into temptation." Now He is thinking only of them. Where is the cup? He had gone through it all with the Father, and therefore His heart is ready in service; even at that very moment He is ready for any service. If we in our little measure carried all our exercises, our little troubles, to God, to go fully through all with Him, our hearts would be all free and happy to turn round and care for others.

73 The depth of His misery He went through perfectly in His spirit with God; it was fully out with God: and for that reason being thus fully out, He could turn with perfect peace to say to others, "Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation." It is the only place you get His sense of where He was - His saying, "Watch and pray." Everything that meets us is either a temptation or an occasion of obedience. It was to Him an occasion of perfect obedience: "The cup which my Father hath given me shall I not drink it?" Everything you meet with is a case in which you serve Christ or do your own will, and this is entering into temptation. See how He speaks in grace to Peter: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Oh I know you love Me; your hearts are all right, but it is this poor weakness. What perfect grace! Counting on their hearts in one sense when the temptation was coming; and when they had totally failed, He thought of the danger to them and says as to it, "Watch and pray . . . the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak"; when the instant before His sweat was as it were great drops of blood. What perfect submission! What lowliness of heart! And therefore what perfection of service, of love to God and to others! Just what we should do. "He went away again the second time and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me except I drink it, thy will be done. And he came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. And he left them and went away again, and prayed the third time saying the same words. Then cometh he to his disciples and saith unto them, Sleep on now and take your rest, behold the hour is at hand." You have no need to watch now; the time for it is over.

74 All through this is the character of Christ - He had gone through it with His Father. On the cross it is - as in all the rest - entire complete submission. He is a victim here, led as a lamb to the slaughter. Even with Judas - "he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss that same is he: hold him fast." It is terrible to think of Judas urging them to hold Him fast! In Judas you get lust of money; you see a progress of sin. He was a thief and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. Then Satan tempts him to betray Him, I do not doubt with the idea that He would get free. Then after supper Satan enters into him, and he was hardened against all natural feeling, for many a bad man would not betray his friend by a kiss. "And forthwith he came to Jesus and said, Hail, Master, and kissed him. And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they and laid hands on Jesus and took him."

Then we get simple submission on the part of Jesus, meek and lowly in heart. He might have had more than twelve legions of angels; "but how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must he?" Mark what is most striking here: at this last wonderful moment when He was going to drink that cup of wrath, when the Word, the blessed Son of God as a man, was going into that which none of us can fathom, that there is nothing like in heaven or earth - to endure that which was due to sin - the Scriptures, the word that God had spoken, must be fulfilled. What a testimony of their being the expression of divine thoughts - of His Father's mind, even to the Lord Himself! And so they ought to be to us. When Satan came, he gets a text - "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." When Satan comes again, "It is written." Now at this last moment the Scriptures must be fulfilled. Scripture to Him sufficed as the expression of God's mind. He was in perfect infinite communion with the Father. Look at the gentle patience with which He speaks to the multitudes - "I sat daily with you teaching in the temple and ye laid no hold on me."

In John we look at the divine side of it, "No man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come." The time was come, "All this was done that the scriptures might be fulfilled." What a scene of obedience, of perfect submission to God's mind! The moment it comes to this point, "all the disciples forsook him and fled." He was to have no comforter. When He is brought to the chief priest, He answers nothing until the high priest adjures Him. If a soul sin and hear the voice of swearing, etc., is a witness whether he hath seen or known of it, if he do not utter it, then he shall bear his iniquity. So He utters it then: "Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, From henceforth shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven." On His own testimony they condemn Him. He was the truth, and was put to death for being the truth. It was the same way before Pilate, who asks, "Art thou a king?" Jesus answers, "Thou hast said." We have seen the perfectness of Christ with His Father in all the depths of that which He had to suffer; also His way - the same blessed way - before men. "It was not an enemy that reproached me, then I could have borne it; neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me, then I would have hid myself from him." In every circumstance He went through all that was most absolutely painful to man's heart, and at the same time was there the expression of divine goodness.

75 I will now just look at the same scenes as they are presented in John and Luke. In John it is the other side of these truths; it is all through the divine side. When they come out to meet Him, He asks, "Whom seek ye?" and they went backward and fell to the ground. Looking at it as a Man, He had only to walk away. It is the divine side of power, while we see His absolute submission as man: "therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down and power to take it again." He says the second time, "Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he; if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way." He puts Himself freely forward, the divine Person giving Himself, and lets the disciples escape. There is no attachment to Himself manifest on their part; but He fills the gap, and they are safe. It is the same on the cross: there is no cry of "my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" there; it is His divine perfectness above it all. "After this [having committed His mother to the disciple] Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst." Then He said, "It is finished, and he bowed his head and gave up the ghost." When all that the Spirit of God had said would come was fulfilled and finished, He gave up His own spirit to His Father - it is the divine side of it all you see in John.

76 In Matthew we get the victim; He is the lamb going to the slaughter. But I must say a word on Luke.

In Luke we get the perfect blessedness of the Lord and His sufferings in Gethsemane more fully than anywhere else, but on the cross not one expression of sorrow; He is fulfilling Scripture. Just as in John we have seen the divine side, here I find Him still more distinctly brought out as a Man. "Being in an agony," in deep affliction of soul, He is cast as man on His Father - "he prayed more earnestly." So great was His confidence, perfect in His agony. It is there we find "his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground," and an angel from heaven strengthening Him. So also in Luke you get Christ praying much more often than in the other Gospels, because the object is to present Him to us as Son of man. On the cross you do not get one expression of sorrow - He had gone through it perfectly (I speak of the cup). "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" is not in Luke. The sorrow was there, it is true, but it is not that side. We get then the perfectness of Jesus who had gone through it all with His Father in the garden. And so entirely is He above it that at the close occur the words, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said this he expired." We have the blessed Lord thus presented in these various characters.

John gives a divine Person: "as soon as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward and fell to the ground"; He could have gone away, but it was not for that He had come: "If ye seek me, let these go their way." You see divine power and the divine perfectness of love, not exercising the power, but putting Himself forward to stand in the gap that they might escape. And on the cross He gives up His own spirit. In Luke I find His own sorrow and suffering as man in Gethsemane, more than in the other Gospels: and on the cross above all the circumstances He commends His spirit to the Father. In Matthew He is the sheep going to the slaughter.

The more we look to follow the blessed Lord in His path here, the more our hearts are bound in right affections to Him. He stood alone, ever as a man down here perfectly alone; and there is nothing more trying. "All ye shall be offended because of me this night." Again He says, "Behold the hour cometh, yea is now come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own and shall leave me alone, and yet I am not alone because the Father is with me" - nobody else! He looked for compassion, and got none; for some to watch with Him, and they fell asleep: to stand by Him, and they all forsook Him and fled. He is betrayed with a kiss. He felt it all: it was not an enemy, but thou, a man, my companion; "yea mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted which did eat of my bread has lifted up his heel against me." Follow Him all through: it puts down the pride of the heart; it sets us men very low, but it sets Him as man in a wonderful perfectness; not man in the glory, but a man going through everything that could test the heart in the purest possible way; a man tested in every possible way, bowing His head as a victim, feeling it so that His sweat was as it were great drops of blood, going through it all as man so that our hearts might follow Him - going through every depth, and we poor creatures only standing by to look at Him. It is well if we are not asleep too! That is where it draws out the affections. It sifts the will. The will and affections never go together; will is self, affections rest necessarily in another. He is the perfect object - "therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life that I might take it again." To see Him in the meekness of His path giving Himself for us, never turning Himself aside, perfect in going through all, just as quiet with Him as if nothing had happened. He suffered it so with God. We want our hearts to get right; we want our wills to be broken down; if we go and look at Christ as thus presented to us in Gethsemane, can we seek to satisfy the will now?

77 Thus I get what is outside myself as an object that sets my affections perfectly right, and that does not leave a possibility of my will working. Looking at One that is beyond me, I find One that does not leave the possibility of the working of my will, but that draws out the energy of the affections of my heart and sets my will aside. He could say, "Therefore doth my Father love me ": so blessed was it, so perfect was He in it, that it gave a cause to God to love Him. Only divine perfectness could give a cause for divine love. The heart knowing that He is now in glory gets filled. "I am the bread that came down from heaven," that we might abide in Him. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." We are to be like Him in this character - He humbled Himself, He went always down till God took Him up. Are we content to follow Him? Looking at Him and seeing His perfectness, are we content to have all our affections filled with Christ, and no will at all? We are going to be with Him for ever; and we can enjoy what He is in heaven, in which His perfect blessedness is before our hearts and has been tested by us. How far have our hearts tasted of that bread, and how far are we kept, our wills subdued and occupied with Christ? It is what God the Father delights in. There is the efficacy of His work as the foundation; but how far is Christ Himself the object of our souls' delight, dwelling on Him so that they are kept awake? There is nothing that forms the heart, breaking down the will in us, like the delight that we have in Christ in fellowship with the Father.

78 The Lord give us while resting in His precious blood to go and contemplate Him, feed upon Him and live by Him: "He that eateth me, even he shall live by me." See Him the lowly blessed patient One at God's right hand now, the One that God has given to keep our hearts right in the world of folly and pride. The Lord give us to live by Him.

Christ dealing with Conscience and Heart

Mark 7

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It is said that the Lord is the truth, "I am the way, the truth, and the life"; and He does bring out everything in a remarkable way. He shews out what God is in Himself, and what man is; and God's grace has come with Him: "grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."

In this chapter we find truth first, truth as to man's condition; but there is also the grace of God's heart. It is a great thing to have the two together. If truth had come without grace, we could not have borne it a moment. Man is a sinner utterly unfit for heaven; but it is immense comfort that grace and truth have come together. God's two essential names are Love and Light. If we had not love with light, it would have condemned us; but we have perfect light in presence of perfect love. Our comfort is that light does come and reveal everything. Being in God's very nature, we cannot separate the two things, light and love. Just the same things appear in the details of the Christian's life.

In many instances in Scripture we see how light penetrates: but there is an attractive power along with it. There is never real working in man's soul without attractive power. The Christian stands "accepted in the beloved"; but the light of God comes in on all his ways. Take the prodigal: the light shines in and shews that he is a lost sinner, but there is attractive power too. "I will arise and go to my father." Take the woman that was a sinner. There was a sense of sinfulness because light comes in; but the measure in which light shone into her soul cannot be separated from the love that came with it. Take Peter, falling at Jesus' knees, and saying at the same time, "Depart from me." Wherever the blessed God reveals Himself to our souls, nothing is left in the dark. If anything is not completely revealed it may come out in the day of judgment; but all is revealed. We have a perfect revelation of God as light and as love; and both are working in the soul.

If you have an idea of God's love without the conscience being reached, it may pass away as the morning dew. It is a blessed thing that we are brought to God, and that everything is fully out. The blessed Lord bore our sin; there was full light and full love at the cross. There are two parts in the gospel; one is the revelation of God; the other is the work done by the Lord standing as Man for us on the cross. First we find the revelation of God Himself, then the work of the Lord.

80 In the chapter I have read it is rather the character of the Lord as thus revealing God than the work which He has done. Here you see first, religious, very religious, man; the authority of the elders, the cleansing of the outside. It is much easier to wash one's hands than to wash one's heart. Man hides the state of his heart by all these outward things. The Lord comes in, searching and judging all the religion of man. Where the heart has not been purified, where the soul is not right with God, religion only hardens. Cain was just the expression of this; he was just as religious as Abel, and his religion cost him more than Abel's.

"Ought" is not the question now; there is another: what we have done and what we are. The question is not whether the law is right, but whether I am right. Abel recognised that he was wrong, a sinner out of paradise and without hope, unless God would save the lost. Cain's offering was nothing but perfect hardness of heart. If the light of God shines into my soul and finds nothing but sin and impurity, my conviction is that I cannot go to God in myself, unless He has found and given a blessed way. The real question for people's souls is, not what they ought to do, but what they have done and what they are. Think of the audacity of people coming to God as they are! Man is doing all he can; his thought is trying a way to satisfy God and purify himself outwardly - he feels he cannot inwardly. Here it is not professed religiousness, but the heart of man detected. The Lord goes right through this veil that is over the heart of man to the heart itself, and He tells what proceeds from it. What about the good? He says nothing of it whatever. In us dwells "no good thing." Man is a judged creature. He will set up man in a thousand ways; but God has judged him. There are the natural faculties of man - all true; but what has that to do with the soul? "When his breath goeth forth, all his thoughts perish."

When God was not dealing in a special way with man, he became so bad that God had to bring in the flood. Then, when He did deal in a special way, the golden calf was made as soon as the law was given. Last of all He sent His Son. We are now living in a world where man has rejected God in grace.

81 The first thing we read of man was that he departed from God; that was Adam. We see the same in Noah before, in Solomon after, as in the Israelites when they made the golden calf. When the priesthood was instituted, Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire. There was the patience of God going on saving souls all the time: I do not deny this. Man was lawless when he had no law; he broke the law when he got the law: he was God-hating when the Lord Jesus came into the world. It is better that the light should come in and shew me what I am.

God has since set out a meeting-place with man - the one way, the altar of the tabernacle. This is God's one meeting-point with man. If you do not come as a sinner, you do not come in truth, you do not come for grace. Having ripped up the veil with which man tries to cover himself, the Lord shewed what the heart of man is - a terrible picture, and terrible because true. He whose love spoke it, comes as light into the world. When light comes, I do not say, man is a sinner, but I am a sinner; "And we indeed justly." There is truth. So far we have it told, but grace had come to tell it. Then all dispensations are set aside, and God comes out as sovereign. There are two things in the gospel: God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and Christ made sin by God. Here it is God coming into a world of sinners.

People know there is a judgment coming, and they hope to get into some kind of preparation for that judgment. In contrast with this thought we have, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." Those who are Christians ought to judge everything by the judgment-seat of Christ. It is very fruitful to the Christian, but is not in itself Christianity. The grace of the gospel is the very opposite to judgment. God comes into a world of sinners not imputing their sins. The gospel is this blessed truth, that God is dealing with men above all their sins. He comes into this world to shew holiness itself - a holiness that never could be contaminated, and to bear love into a world of sinners. The Syrophenician had no title to promises. Being of a doomed race, as to dispensation, she had only curses, the very opposite to promises. The Lord first deals with her on this ground: "It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs." He brings her to her true place as He always does. You may try and spare the soul, but it must be in truth before it learns grace. Would you all say, "Yes, Lord, but the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their master's table?" She had not a word to say for herself; but she had a word to say for God. The publicans and harlots justified Him, and He justified them. So it always is where He works in grace and truth. I believe there is overflowing goodness for the children; but there is something for the dogs too. Could Jesus say there was not? It was real knowledge of God and herself.

82 The heart must be brought to this, "I have no righteousness, I have no promises, but I have God come into the world to us as sinners, and because we are sinners." He never said "Come to me" till He had first come Himself. There was perfect light to convict, but the convicted sinner finds himself in the presence of perfect love. Have you ever said "Yes, Lord," owning that you had no righteousness and no promises; only that you trust the perfect love that brought Christ into the world? Then the thought of what God is towards you takes the place of what you are towards God. Here I am, just as I am, in the presence of perfect love - love that cannot deny itself. The sinner finds he has a title in God's heart when he can find none in his own. The woman that was a sinner loved much because much was forgiven her. It was a broken heart that met the heart of God, and the heart of God met a broken heart. It is wonderful when the heart of man really meets the heart of God. The moment I am brought through grace into full distinct consciousness that there is no good in me, I find this; I find the perfect blessed love of God which has met me where I am in His presence.

At the cross you see sin meeting God, Christ being made sin for us, and the nature of God glorified - far more than merely sin being put away. While the Lord puts away sin, He prepares the way to the accomplishment of all the counsels of God. At the cross I find man made sin in the presence of God - a divine Person too, of course; and this not to screen but to sustain Him. There is love that has met me in my sins, and now there is righteousness in the presence of God, our Forerunner being there. The truth is there; but there is also the perfect love of God to put away sin. The heart is then free to trust the love unhinderedly.

83 Remember this, beloved friends: I am not my own at all now; I am in a new place altogether - a place into which I have been brought in perfect love, in divine righteousness, in the presence of God Himself. We have power now - the power of the Holy Ghost. The Christian is in this world to shew what Christ is. If you call yourselves Christians, you are the epistle of Christ: it is not merely said you ought to be, but you are. He sends you back to the world to witness what God is. You have responsibility as a Christian now, not as a man. All responsibility flows from the place we are in. If Christian responsibility is measured, as a child of God, nothing that does not suit the blood of Christ suits you. Is Christ the motive of everything you do, and this in things of every-day life? For you are not to be heroes and heroines. Is Christ all and in all? "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children." Walk as children of the Father.

The Sufferings of Christ

Mark 14

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There are two sides in the sufferings of the Lord Jesus; the sufferings which, during His career, He endured from men, and the sufferings which He knew when, taking the cup He had to drink, He bore the weight of the wrath of God.

The extent of man's iniquity appears in two ways; directly in all that man did in opposing and rejecting Jesus, but, above all, in the weight of sin the Lord Jesus had to bear when He drank the cup which the Father had given Him. For Him this was no light thing. He "began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; and saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death" (v. 33).

Among those who may read this, are there not several who have never been saddened because of their sins? Is there anything which more lays bare the folly and levity of the heart of man? We who by sin have made so bitter and awful the cup which Jesus drank, we may consider sin as trifling in the eyes of God! But it is He - it is Jesus who found how horrible it was. If our hearts, miserable as they are, feel not sin, Christ felt it when He drank the cup for us and bore sin for us. If the heart does not understand the gravity of sin, not to the same point as Jesus knew it, but at least in some degree - if, feeble as it may be, the feeling of the gravity of sin is a stranger to us - we have not at all entered into the mind of Jesus.

It is very different to have the heart touched by these things, or merely to have the knowledge of them; for it is not of this knowledge that I would speak here. To have the knowledge of the gravity of sin, of what sin cost Jesus, and not to have the heart touched by it, is even worse than to know nothing about it whatever. The state of the heart is, in one of these cases, even worse than in the other.

We are going to see feebly, very feebly, what were the sufferings of Jesus.

No one alas! can fathom to the bottom what those sufferings were. Every day you have thoughts, you say and do things, you have the sins which caused Christ to drink the cup and undergo the wrath of God. And, in spite of that, you perhaps think that you have not been so wicked! If you have the thought that Christ suffered for your sins, you will find that Christ did not judge that these sins were not most grave. He was sore amazed and very heavy for them. In the garden of Gethsemane Christ prepared Himself for others to meet with His God, according to the holiness of His judgment. His soul was "exceeding sorrowful, even unto death," Matt. 26: 38.

85 You who think to prepare yourselves to meet your God, have you these sorrows and that sore amazement? However vague may be the thought you may have of them, if you would learn what they have been, consider how in Gethsemane Christ was heavy and sore amazed at sin! And if you have not done so, no more have you appreciated the love of Jesus, nor the work of Jesus in grace. What is important and needful is, that our consciences should be touched by the thought that Christ was there for us in suffering, that He might bear our sins. If my soul is not brought to own it, it is necessary that I should pass there myself, and suffer for myself the wrath and justice of God, such as Christ has undergone. If, when His Son, His beloved, who had no sin, was made sin for us, God had to smite sin in Him; if His justice and His holiness could not spare Jesus, think you to escape when you meet the face of God? And when I consider Christ suffering the wrath and curse, can I think that my sins are a trifle? The evil I had done was so serious in the eyes of God and in those of Jesus, that, when Jesus charged Himself with it, this evil made Him agonise, and caused to fall on Him the weight of God's wrath. Christ suffered on the cross the wrath of God, and why? Because you deserved this wrath and eternal condemnation?

Often, without knowing it, souls go to meet God with their sin upon them. Souls are often there without having the consciousness of it. Is it not true, for many among you, that you walk in this life to meet God, and to face His judgment, and that you fear nothing? And if it is thus, if you thus walk at ease in the face of this judgment, what is it to say this, except that the conscience is not awakened (nay, is even hardened) in spite of the agony of Jesus, in spite of the sufferings of Jesus, and in spite of which Jesus had to drink because of sin?

How beautiful it is to contemplate Jesus in the midst of this agony and of these sufferings! We see Him perfectly calm, and weighing with calmness the weight of the cup that He would drink. And in what circumstances? In the midst of all that which was calculated to break and bruise the affections of His heart. The more the world rejects and despises us, the more also have we need of affection. Jesus was full of goodness and of tenderness for His disciples. He had loved and borne with them. What happiness to Him? What does He find in their midst, when the iniquity of man is about to be let loose against Him? What He finds is, that in the midst of those He loved, of those with whom He was at table, and lived as with His friends and companions (v. 18), Jesus can say, "Verily, I say unto you, one of you which eateth with me shall betray me." Yes, one of you who have been with Me, one of you My familiar friends! His heart is wounded to the bottom. And as they began to be sorrowful, and to say unto Him one by one, Is it I? Jesus shews how His heart is broken. "It is one of the twelve that dippeth with me in the dish." One of you who have known me, who have seen me, and who were received into my intimacy. And Jesus was perfectly calm.

Verses 22-26. They went to crucify Him. Of whom does He think? Of His disciples. His body was going to be broken, and His blood shed. He was about to undergo the wrath of God, and He explains to them in peace the cost of what He is going to do for them. He transports Himself beyond those ages in which we live to the time when, satisfied with the travail of His soul (Isa. 53: 11), He will drink anew in the kingdom of God the fruit of the vine (v. 25). How beautiful it is thus to see the Lord Jesus cast His glances through the ages! In the midst of the frightful circumstances in which He is found, His soul is calm enough to think of the everlasting happiness achieved for His disciples by His sufferings, and of the joy that He will experience in again seeing them in this state of glory. Without letting Himself be turned away by the thought of His sufferings, without agitation, without amazement, He contemplates in peace the value of His sacrifice, and the happiness of again finding His disciples at the end. The treason of Judas, the denial of Peter, the forsaking of the disciples, the rejection of the world, the enmity of Satan, nothing troubles Him. "They sung a hymn" (v. 26).

Verses 27, 28. "Jesus saith unto them, All ye shall be offended, because of me this night." To be ashamed of Him, miserable as we are! And yet how this puts in relief the unutterable love of Jesus! He tells His sheep, who are going to be scattered, that He will rejoin them shortly, and that, as soon as He shall have completed all this work which is to save His own - to manifest alas! all the feebleness of the flesh in them, and all the perfection of obedience in Jesus, He will go before them into Galilee.

87 Verses 29, 30. Peter has the false confidence of the flesh. Does Jesus reproach him with it? What does Peter's presumption produce in the heart of Jesus? He warns Peter, and prays for him. His love stedfast, unchangeable, never slackens. His heart is not discouraged. It is He, He who was to bear all the pain, who encourages and consoles His disciples.

Verse 31. It may happen to others beside Peter to say, "If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise," for "likewise also said they all." Where Christ is honoured and owned, in the midst of His own, in the midst of such as confess His name, people may easily own Him, they may well have a Christ, though rejected of men: but in other society, in the midst of those who reject Him, how ready is the heart to conceal that it knows Him! And if you find it evil in Peter to have thus denied Him, is that less awful in you? And if when we are exposed to disgrace for His name, we do not love to confess it, do we not deny Him as much as Peter? And it is done because the conscience is not awakened and touched because Jesus suffered for sin. What I desire is, that the conscience should feel the weight of the sin which made Jesus suffer, and this sin is yours: it is that your heart should be touched by the feeling of the love of Jesus, by this power of love, in virtue of which Jesus has charged Himself before God with the weight and the responsibility of sin, and in virtue of which He has borne all this weight, when He was "wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities" Isa. 53: 5.

Verses 32-39. Jesus tells His disciples to pray (v. 38). It is no more for Him the time of consoling His own. He must meet for them the wrath of God. He now reviews in spirit before God that which He is to suffer in drinking the cup of the wrath of God. Jesus, who was holy, and who had abode in the love of the Father, alone understood what was the holiness of God, and of what cost His love was. He was thence so much the more capable of alone understanding how horrible sin was, and how awful was the wrath of God. Indifference to this wrath cannot be found save in those who, being in sin, know not the holiness of God and who, strangers to God, have not tasted His love. It is awful to see us calm, contented with ourselves, and careless, when one knows the pangs which sin has cost the Lord Jesus, and why He was sore amazed and very heavy.

88 In His career of obedience Jesus suffered the contradiction of sinners. Never did He turn away from them, and never did He demand that such a cup should be taken away from Him. Why this then? Because this was not merely the cup of the iniquity of men or of Satan's malice, but that of the wrath of God. In what He had had to suffer before from men, He had the joy of accomplishing the will of His Father; but in this cup, which was that of wrath, there was not one drop of sweetness. Jesus prays that, if it be possible, this cup might be far removed from Him. And why impossible? Here is the reason. It is impossible that God should endure sin, and (since Jesus Himself was made sin for us) that the wrath of God should not be accomplished against sin.

Behold, dear readers, where you are! If Christ has not borne your sins, impossible that you should escape the judgment that God has pronounced against sin. It is a serious thought. Weigh this expression of Jesus: "If it be possible." Certainly, if that had been possible, God would have heard Jesus, and He would have spared His beloved Son this unparalleled sorrow. Why does Jesus say, "If it be possible?" Because He who knew what the love of God is was also in a condition to know how terrible is His wrath.

What was the state of the disciples? They slept (v. 37). They had not enough affection for Him to watch one hour. Peter, who was willing to face prison or death, could not watch one hour. He had slept on the mountain during the transfiguration (Luke 9: 23), and he sleeps in Gethsemane. This discloses, at the bottom of our hearts, the selfishness which is a stranger to the affections which make our hearts enter into the glory, as well as into the sufferings, of Jesus.

Verses 40-43. Was the love of Jesus disheartened or fatigued by all that? No; He must, He would, glorify His Father, and save His own, and He is not arrested by any difficulty. Impossible that we should be saved if He drink not the cup, and He takes it. His love is mightier than death. He presents all to God. And from the moment He found it impossible for this cup to pass without His drinking it, calm again possesses His soul, and He takes it.

89 Verses 44-50. Of what is not the heart of man capable? God has allowed that all the perfidy of the heart should be laid bare, and that man should betray Jesus by a kiss. Not a pang, not a trial, that Jesus has not to endure in order to put His heart to the test. Without that, something would have been wanting to the cup which He had to drink. The trial of the Lord would not have been complete, and the question of man's iniquity would not have been cleared in the presence of the judgment of God; but Jesus has perfectly glorified God His Father in the midst of all the iniquity of man and all the malice of Satan. All that which could wound and crush, God's wrath, Satan's wickedness, man's iniquity, all bruised His heart to pieces, and all made the immeasurable excellence of Jesus to shine before God. The heart of Jesus was probed to the bottom. And what is, after all that, the position of sinners? There remains nothing but the cost and worth of Jesus for them; and in the eyes of God he that believes has all the worth of Jesus before God. He may present Himself before God, as loved of God, to the point that God has given His Son, and as having the cost of all the sufferings of Jesus.

Christ being presented to you, one of two things results; either you are guilty of the sufferings of Jesus, if you despise them; or, if by grace you lay hold of their infinite value by faith, you enjoy the effect of these sufferings. If you despise them, you will be treated as those who despise them. If by grace your eyes are open to understand what Jesus has done, all the efficacy of His work is applied to you, and you enjoy the love of God. Either you are guilty of the sufferings of Jesus, or you enjoy the cost of His sufferings.

To confess what are your sins which have made Jesus suffer is really to believe that He has borne them. If you say, It is I who have made Christ thus to suffer, you also say, For me, I shall never suffer like that. If Jesus has borne my sins and undergone their consequences, I shall not undergo them, and I am delivered and set free from condemnation.

May God, by the feeling of the love of Jesus, touch your hearts, and make you conscious at what infinite price it is for you that Jesus presented Himself, in order to undergo the wrath of God! Oh, how precious is the love of Jesus!

The Robber Saved

Luke 23: 39-43

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We do not find, except during the three hours of darkness on the cross, that by any sorrow, weariness, or trial, the Lord Jesus was ever hindered from entering into the sorrow of others. None could put Him in a place, except when working out atonement, where He did not enter into human suffering: such unweariness of love do we see in Christ. Still He was light; and the more we look into His history, the more comes out the terribleness of the heart of man. It was never manifested till then. There are amiable natures and unamiable natures; but we never learn what the heart of man is till then. The thing that tries the human heart is, What is its object? not, What are its mere natural qualities? "There is none that seeketh after God." Man saw no beauty in Christ. There is nothing in the heart that looks at the Lord so as to find in Him an object and a delight. There is no root till the conscience is reached; there may be attraction, but until the conscience is in the presence and sight of God, nothing is done; it is like the morning dew which passes away. "The same is he which heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it, yet hath he not root in himself."

Wherever the conscience is reached by God, there is some sense of goodness. Fear and terror may predominate, but there is attraction, and the heart cannot let it go. Faith always gets both: God is love, and yet He reaches the conscience There is that which reaches the conscience, and that which inspires confidence, when the eye is on Christ.

On the authority of Christ Himself we have the certainty of salvation, that is, the Christian state; and no other suits the Christian. It is the only real Christian state which the word of God owns. The condition of the Christian is the effect of the work of Christ. It is not that there is no conflict, but that Another has taken my responsibility. My place before God is not the effect of what I have done, but of what Christ has done. Christ is the ground on which I stand before God: if it be so, what has He done for us? He died for our sins; then they must be put away. He is the Judge, but He cannot judge what He has put away. That we might walk with God in peace, He has sent the One who is to be the judge first to be the Saviour. Confidence is connected with righteousness now.

91 In the history of the robbers we have both sides.

In the other malefactor taunting Christ, we see how the heart of man is enmity to God. It was the triumph for the moment of the first man and of Satan too. It is sad to think what our hearts are if left to themselves. When the heart is let out, where will it stop? Satan is over us. Here then we have the triumph of the wickedness of man over the goodness of God. We cannot get rid of Satan's power yet; we may bind it in a sense. The heart of man cannot bear the presence of God. There is not a vanity, not a bit of dress or money, that has not more power over the heart of man than all that Christ has done or is. You never yet found a man enjoying himself who would hear of Christ. The world would not have Him when He came in grace, nor would it now; but it must have Him when He comes in judgment. Take the majority of people in this city, and suppose them let into heaven! They would get out as fast as they could.

In the repentant robber, on the other hand, we see grace. He was crucified on a gibbet; but no matter, gibbet or no gibbet, when God and the soul meet, we have the simple and immense fact that the soul is brought at once into His presence. When God has dealt with the conscience, we make no more promises for the future. Unlike the naughty child that says, "I'll be better to-morrow," the soul confesses sin to-day. "Dost thou not fear God?" is the word, not "Are you not ashamed of being a thief? "

Have you ever been brought into God's presence? "The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom." If you have not been consciously in God's presence, wisdom has not begun for you. Before Christ you must be, and you must be there in truth: the difference is whether you are before Christ in the fulness of His grace, or before Him in judgment. "We indeed justly." He did not say that the world was guilty, but that he was the guilty one; it is not simply that sin is sin, but that I am a sinner. His thought is that he himself is justly there. It is a personal thing, not merely that God is holy, nor merely that the world is guilty, but that you are guilty.

"This man hath done nothing amiss." He would guarantee the whole life of Christ - it contrariwise was a divine revelation to the soul. Who is there that is a Christian that would not lay down his life for this? "This man hath done nothing amiss." It was a divine revelation of the perfectness of Christ's Person. Could your soul answer for Christ in that way? Here is a man who does so when everybody is deserting Jesus: here is divine faith that He was perfectly sinless: his eye is opened, his heart brought to the consciousness of it. It is not only that he has the fear of God, but he sees the perfectness of Jesus. Heaven was opened when Christ came out for public service; there never was a man before of whom God could say, "That is all I want." Has your heart echoed, and said, "That is all I want"? Nowhere else can the heart so rest when we see the evil around, and the imperfections even of saints. His mind, having got hold of Christ, finds rest in Him. All around is a wide waste of waters, the heart would get wearied, but it turns to Him; and what a rest! Things would be unbearable but for this, but the heart, when it turns there, enters its sanctuary.

92 "Remember me," said the converted robber. What sign was there that Jesus was Christ the Lord? There was not a cloud on this man's heart, because he was divinely taught. One heart recognises that He is Lord in spite of everything. Pilate had washed his hands before all the people, and given Him up to the Jews; He was denied by one of His disciples, betrayed by another. Everything was against it. "Lord, remember me"; without a sign, the robber owns Him - how bright to faith! This man had no time to grow, or serve, or walk; but there was thorough conversion, full faith, a sense of what the Messiah was, and belief in His coming in His kingdom. Faith in itself is always certain; it may lead us to doubt about other things, but it is always absolutely certain. The believer has set to his seal that God is true; he does not say, "Perhaps He is true." Wherever I receive it as the word of God, I receive it with absolute certainty; if it be not so, I do not receive it as the word of God at all.

"Remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." His whole concern was that Christ should remember him. We see in him boldness with a bold sinner, lowliness as to himself, a sense of the perfectness of Jesus and the knowledge that He would come in His kingdom. Happy are we if we are in the state of this robber! If you were in suffering, in trial, is it the only thing you would care about, that Christ should remember you?

Another thing is Christ's answer to him: "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." The character of Luke is to bring in present blessing. Before ever the kingdom came, he would go straight to paradise. Faith never looks at my heart, but at the object God reveals. When brought to the consciousness of what I am, my eye rests on Christ Himself. When the thief looks to Christ, he has Christ's answer. The rest given to our souls is the positive answer of God. We have the positive declaration that this robber, taken up for his crimes, was that day absolutely fit for paradise; so perfect is the work of Christ. Observe this robber, and the woman that was a sinner, how they understand Christ, because they want a Saviour! When I come to God with Christ in my hand (like Abel with his lamb), God says to me, "You are righteous." By faith I see Jesus is sitting on the right hand of the majesty on high; when did He go there? "When he had by himself purged our sins." Then I know my sins are purged before God. There is no progress here, no such thing as being fitted for heaven. Growth there ought to be in us, if left here, progress in likeness to Christ; but it is never in Scripture connected with fitness for heaven: Christ is my title. There is growth, but it is never treated as our fitness. This robber was fit for paradise at once; he went there, any way, that day; I suppose he was fit for it, since he was fit to be with Christ! Suppose I were to make all the progress the most blessed saint ever made, could I say I was fit thus for Christ? God forbid! yet I am fit. Death for the believer is simply that he has done with all that is mortal and sinful.

93 How little the outside is the truth! The Jews sent soldiers to break their legs: how little they thought they were sending the robber straight to heaven, to be the first companion (there were Old Testament saints, of course) that followed the blessed Lord!

It would be well for us if we were as close to Christ as that poor robber. When the veil was rent, the whole thing was changed. The Old Testament was a declaration that man could not go to God in the light: God did not come out, and man could not go in. The gospel says that God did come out, and man can go in. "We have boldness to enter into the holiest through the blood of Jesus." If sin is there, how can I enter into the holiest? I am in Christ, not in the flesh. Our sins He bore; we have died with Him, and should enter into the holiest. Access is free, the veil being rent; we are accepted in the Beloved. Until the work was done, He did not give up the ghost. Now, as a present thing, we have boldness to enter into the holiest. Are you there? The veil is rent; you cannot have God afar off. There is no more a veil; we are before the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. So full and complete is the revelation, that I see God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ, the witness of salvation accomplished. The glory is in the face of the One who bore my sins. In the presence of the absolute light and righteousness of God you must stand, or you cannot stand at all. The world may blind your eyes, but there is no veil on the presence of God.

The Word made Flesh

John 1: 1-13

J. N. Darby.

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There is one remark that furnishes a most important key to the Gospel of John, which is illustrated very simply and manifestly in this first chapter. The object of the Holy Ghost is to assert the personal glory of Jesus; and hence it is that there is not perhaps a single chapter in the New Testament that presents our Lord in so many different aspects, yet all personal, as this opening chapter of his Gospel. His divine glory is carefully guarded. He is said in the most distinct language to be God as to His nature, but withal a man. He is God no less than the Father is, or the Holy Ghost; but He is the Word in a way in which the Father and the Holy Ghost were not. It was Jesus Christ the Son of God who alone was the Word of God. He only after a personal sort expressed God. The Father and the Holy Ghost remained in their own unseeable majesty. The Word had for His place to express God clearly; and this belonged to Him, it is evident, as a distinctive personal glory. It was not merely that He was the Word when He came into the world, but "in the beginning was the Word" when there was no creature. Before anything came into being that was made, the Word was in the beginning with God; not merely in God, as if merged or lost in God, but He had a distinct personal subsistence before a creature existed. He "was in the beginning with God." This is of immense importance, and with these truths our Gospel opens.

Then we find His creation glory stated afterwards. "All things were made by him." There is nothing which more stamps God to be God than giving existence to that which had none, causing to exist by His own will and power. Now all things exist by the Word: and so emphatically true is this that the Spirit has added, "and without him was not anything made that was made."

But there was that which belonged to the Lord Jesus that was not made: "In him was life." It was not only that He could cause a life to exist that had not before existed, but there was a life that belonged to Him from all eternity. "In him was life." Not that this life began to be: all else, all creation, began to be; and it was He that gave them the commencement of their existence. But in Him was life, a life that was not created, a life that was therefore divine in its nature.

96 It was the reality and the manifestation of this life which were of prime importance to man. Everything else that had been since the beginning of the world was only a creature; but in Him was life. Man was destined to have the display of this life on earth. But it was in Him before He came among men. The life was not called the light of angels but of men. Nowhere do we find that eternal life is created. The angels are never said to have life in the Son of God. They were kept by divine power and holy. Theirs is a purely creature life, whereas it is a wonderful fact of revelation that we who believe have the eternal life that was in Jesus Christ the Son of God, and are therefore said to be partakers of the divine nature. This is in no way true of an angel. It is not that we for a moment cease to be creatures, but we have what is above the creature in Christ the Son of God.

And this "light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." It is striking to remark here the entire passing over of all the history of the world of which we are apt to make so much, yea, even of the dispensational dealings of God with men. All is passed by very briefly indeed - those ages that man thinks all but interminable, in which God gave being to the creature and in which He may have changed over and over again the various forms of the creature, where science is endeavouring to pursue its uncertain and weary way. All this is closed up in the few words, "All things were made by him." Scripture, and this chapter in particular, summarises it with striking brevity. "All things were made by him." The details of it were left completely aside. What was good for us to know we are told in Genesis 1. There is nothing like that chapter even in cosmogonies which borrowed from it. And all that man has thought or said or written about a system of the world is not to be named with it for depth or certainty, as well as for simplicity, in the smallest compass.

But there is a reason why all such matters vanish after two or three words. It is because the Lord Jesus, the Word of God, is the object that the Holy Ghost is dwelling on. The moment that He is brought out creation just pays Him homage, owning Him to be the Creator, and is then forthwith dismissed. "All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made." It is enough to say that He created all. He remains in His own grace. Now we learn what is the Spirit's object in this. It was not to give us details of the creation; it was to acquaint us with Jesus as the light of men.

97 In what condition then did He find men? Were there not great differences among them, as was thought? There were some, most indeed, idolaters, yet wise and prudent, worshipping stocks and stones; and others who were not idolaters but very zealous for the law as given by Moses. Not that a word is said yet about the law, nor about any differences, but that the Word of God was the light that manifested everybody: whether Jews or Gentiles, they were only darkness. It is not therefore only that the physical creation is passed by most curtly, but the moral world is closed with almost equal brevity. "The light shineth in darkness," and whatever the boasting of the Gentiles, and the law of the Jews (which was real as compared with the Gentiles), here all is measured and put out, as it were, by the true light, the Word of God. Jew or Gentile, they are but darkness, and the light shines in darkness, and spite of all its pretension and pride, the darkness comprehended it not. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God." When the Holy Ghost is come down, things are also tested and convicted by Him; and He is brought forward by Paul somewhat as John here introduces the Son of God. It shews how poor all of man is in comparison with God, and how little he is capable of appreciating the truth in the Son or by the Spirit.

Then we find John brought in. The reason why he is singled out from all others I believe to be this: he was the immediate forerunner of the Lord Jesus. He would surely not have been named here if it were not, because he was the moon that derived its light from the sun - from the Lord Jesus just about to come. His was only a derivative light, and he seems brought in here because of that peculiarity. Other prophets were too distant from Christ, but John was near enough to be an immediate precursor of the Messiah. "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe." It is no question of law-testing or proving. All this was very important in its place; but the glory that the law had is completely eclipsed by a brighter glory. Scripture therefore takes pains to say, John "was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light." He might be a burning and a shining lamp (as it ought to be in chapter 5), but he was only an earthly and derived light. "He was not that light." "That was the true light"; Jesus is the light, the true light, which (as rightly rendered) on coming into the world lighteth every man. It is speaking of the effect of Christ's coming into the world. It is not every man that cometh into the world; but that, when He comes into the world, He is the One that casts His light on every one here below. There had been a time when, as it is said in the Acts, God winked at the ignorance of men; but now everything must appear in its own light or rather darkness, because the true light was come; and therefore when He comes into the world He lights every man there: all are brought out just as they are and none can escape. "He was in the world, and the world was made by him"; and the awful result of this darkness was that "the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not."

98 The world was guilty enough, it was so dark that it did not even know Him; the Jews had abundance of truth by which they might know Him, but their will was still more set against the Son of God than even the poor Gentiles. "His own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power [title or right] to be children of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." What a blessed place! and blessed to know that this is our place to which grace has entitled us now in His name! May we seek to make Him known to every creature with all our hearts in the measure of power the Lord has given us, honouring thus, and in every other way, the Lord Jesus, whom the Holy Ghost loves to honour.

We have other glories of His brought out afterwards. We hear of Him as the Son, the Lamb of God, the Baptiser with the Holy Ghost, the King of Israel, and the Son of man. All these are successively unfolded to us in this chapter. Indeed it would be difficult to say what glory of our Lord is not presented here except that of Priest and of Head of the church. John never gives us the priesthood of Jesus. He touches what is close on it, when He speaks in his first epistle of advocacy with the Father; but the business of John was to shew His divine personal glory, yet as man on earth. Priest was what He was called to be in heaven; and as Head of the church He is there also. But John shews us what He was in Himself as coming from heaven, and that He does not lose one whit of His glory by becoming a man. In His being Priest and Head of the church we see special glories which He received on going up to heaven, and these Paul develops fully. John's point is God and the Father manifested on earth in the Person of Jesus Christ His Son.

The Presence of the Holy Ghost on Earth consequent on Christ's Exaltation to the Right hand of God

John 1: 29-34

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This chapter is remarkable inasmuch as it brings before us the various titles or names of Christ, almost all that He is in His varied titles, unless indeed the relative ones. You do not see Him as Head of the church, nor as priest, nor Christ; but you get Him as only-begotten Son of God, who reveals the Father, Son of and King of Israel, the Lamb of God, Life, the Light, the Word, the Creator, the Son of man, the Baptiser with the Holy Ghost, all the names that tell what He is in His own Person. In an abstract way you have what His nature is, His personality, light, life: only that, when John brings in man's condition with the testimony to what man is as rejecting Christ, "The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not."

The three other Gospels present Christ to man to be received, and close with His rejection, but this Gospel takes up His rejection from the very beginning, "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not; he came to his own and his own received him not," and you then have what grace does and the objects of grace distinct. After the abstract statement of what He was comes the testimony, not of what Christ was, but what He became. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." There His Person, as incarnate, is brought out, not what He was abstractedly but "became flesh." Then, in the verses I read, you get His work. You have thus what He is essentially and in His nature, then what He became - incarnation in a word, and also His revealing the Father - "No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him"; and also we receive of His fulness. He becomes the source, and He is the fulness of which we have all received; and then in the verses read we get the work of grace from the very starting-point of the Gospel.

101 You get this work in two parts; it is the second I shall chiefly speak of; but the first is Christ as the Lamb of God, and then He is the Baptiser with the Holy Ghost. It is not that He does not exercise also His priesthood - He does; but it is not the subject here. I guard this because it is important to remember that He is Priest. But here He is the Lamb of God, and He that baptiseth with the Holy Ghost.

This last is a wonderful expression, and contains in it the whole power of our relationship with God. It does not weaken the truth that He is the Lamb of God; yea, it is as to us founded on it. He is that, as is said in Genesis 22, "God will provide himself a lamb" - One therefore that is fit every way, perfectly acceptable and accepted, as perfect for the thing He had to do as God's mind was who gave Him to do it. The Son of God is the Lamb of God. Just as the first man brought in sin, so the second was to put it clean out of the way. Those who rejected Him, of course, as He said, died in their sins, but He is the One that takes away the sin of the world. There will be a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness; that, and that only, will be the full result. The sacrifice has been made, the Lamb has been slain; but the grand result will be that God will have a heaven and an earth before Him in which there is not an atom of sin, but wherein shall dwell righteousness.

We had an innocent world, paradise: this was soon over; then a sinful world, though with grace working in it; but we shall have, not an innocent nor a sinful world, but a righteous world; and it will be founded on that which can never lose its value so that itself never can be touched. It is the immutable basis of God's new creation, which is therefore immutable in its blessings where all His ways are manifested. That will be the full result of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The first world was set in blessing, but it depended on the faithfulness of Him who was placed at the head of it; the final one rests secure on the value of that which is perfected, coming after a work finished and done, a work in which God has perfectly glorified Himself. The basis of the new creation on which it is founded is finished, finished completely and absolutely.

The work upon which the security (morally speaking) of the new heavens and the new earth is founded is finished - finished so that Christ who wrought it is sitting at the right hand of God, and sits there until His enemies are to be dealt with. The work is finished, nothing can ever be added to it, nor can it lose its effect with God; and the blessed result is that which will come in as I have said. The work is done: all moral questions have been settled at the cross, what sin is, enmity against God, what perfect love to God the Father and obedience in man to Him is, what righteousness against sin is, what love to sinners, have all been shewn in the same wondrous work. Unless in the cross, men try in vain to reconcile righteousness and love, love and God's dishonoured majesty, truth as to the wages of sin, and His goodness - all the attributes together.

102 If Adam and Eve had been cut off when they ate the fruit, it might be quite righteous (you might say they got what they deserved), but there would have been no love in that. Or suppose, on the other hand, every sin had been passed over, what people call goodness - the natural man would think this very right and call it love, but then sin would be no matter, and righteousness not exist; and so the majesty of God, which has been utterly trampled in the dust by the success of Satan with man, must remain so cast down; there would be no means of conciliating the righteousness and majesty of God with His love.

The moment I get the cross, all that is settled; it became Him; it became God, in bringing many sons unto glory to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering - that became God. His majesty is maintained in the highest way. The Son must suffer if He takes up this cause. Then I find perfect righteousness against sin, but along with it infinite love to me, a poor worthless sinner. There I get, consequently, the Son of man glorified and God glorified in Him, and all moral questions in presence of God's revealed nature settled for ever. All is perfectly settled according to God's nature and for God, and by that which passed between God and Christ alone, perfect consequently according to their perfection. As to myself, if I look at the cross, I say, the only part I had in it was my sins and the enmity that crucified Christ. I am put in my place and humbled, and yet I see the great righteous basis of all-divine counsels in it and infinite love to me; but this brings me to know myself too. Nothing ever shewed like the cross the full development and manifestation of evil. Let people say what they like, the perfect development of evil was there on our part, and the full development of good before and from God.

103 When I look at the present effect of all that in this scene, in a broad sense there is none. The scene is not changed, looking as the general state of things. Christ has gone to heaven when He had by Himself purged our sins; but as to the state of the world at large there is no effect, though many souls are saved. You get new forms of evil - infidelity as to this love and righteousness, and so on; but as to the state of the world, it remains in the same state, modified only by the rejection of Christ. Sin has not gone out of the world; men are trying to bind it and restrain evil, as of old they bound Legion with fetters and chains; they have set to do their best, and a bad set-to it is, but there it is, to be bound. They talk of progress, and in a certain way, as to physical discoveries and conveniences, there is; but is there morally? I do not see any progress in the obedience of children, nor in the devotedness of servants, nor in faithfulness in all the relationships of life; but I see wonderful restlessness, and greater than ever.

There is progress in railways and telegraphs, and so on, or we might not have been here together as we are; but that has nothing whatever to do with the relationship of man to God or to his neighbour. Cleverness in what is merely material is neither here nor there as to moral state: you might get the cleverest man in telegraphs or science, and find he was a blasphemer or a man walking near to God; it has nothing to do with it. And, after all, when you die, what will it be to you whether there is a telegraph or not? The soul's state belongs to another sphere of things, save as it ministers to his will and lusts, in which good and evil are brought to an issue through the cross and God revealed in grace and righteousness, perfectly glorified (as indeed there only) as well as our sins borne. The work is all done and finished on the cross, and accepted too in righteousness; and Christ is sitting down at the right hand of God until He takes His great power and reigns. When the Lord Jesus Christ comes again, He will reign until all His enemies are put under His feet, and blessedness is complete in a new heaven and a new earth.

But then I get a second thing, which is that in order to do all this He became a man, and, consequent upon His going up to God, risen from the dead, the Holy Ghost is now come down. The presence of the Holy Ghost on earth is consequent upon Christ's exaltation to the right hand of God. His presence here is that which puts a man down here who has the Holy Ghost into association and relation with Christ in heaven. And so, further, you get the great truth that God now dwells down here on earth. And this is an immense truth; it never was the case before redemption. God never dwelt with Adam though He came down to visit him innocent, nor with Abraham. But the moment that Israel was redeemed out of Egypt, He says, in Exodus 29: 45, 46, "And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God, and they shall know that I am Jehovah their God, that brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them." And all this was written for our admonition, and God shewed Himself in the shekinah glory of the tabernacle dwelling between the cherubim upon the mercy-seat.

104 Now, however, it is the Holy Ghost who is come down, and who dwells either in the individual believer or in the assembly of God, the temple of the living God; and the consequence of this to me is that I have the knowledge of the whole value of the work that is done, and I have got, through the Holy Ghost here, complete and entire association with Christ where He is, and I rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Until that comes, God dwells already in those who believe in Christ. Mark how it comes in; He was anointed with the Holy Ghost; "And I knew him not, but he that sent me to baptise with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on Him, the same is he which baptiseth with the Holy Ghost." Before I get the baptising (Christ is not said to be baptised but anointed and sealed) on the day of Pentecost, Christ had been anointed and sealed. He had taken this place as a man, as the pattern of it all; as Son, as a man here, the place into which He introduces us by redemption, the relationship in which He is with the Father and into which He introduces us.

Is Christ alive for evermore? Well, He is our life. Is He righteousness? He is my righteousness; and, though all the results are not yet accomplished, we have certain knowledge of the work He wrought, and we now rejoice in hope of the glory. The heaven was opened, the Holy Ghost came down like a dove, and Christ took this place amongst us, the Son of God amongst men - us - Himself the expression of the place into which God by grace brings everyone that believes on Christ. You read in Proverbs 8, "I was daily his delight rejoicing always before him, rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth, and my delights were with the sons of men." And when the Lord Jesus Christ became a man, or the Word became flesh, as set out in this chapter, we get the angels declaring God's predilection as to the race of men: is it not beautiful to hear them, with unjealous hearts, delighting in God's glory, announcing the blessing to others: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in man"?

105 I speak of the thing in itself, not of the accomplishment of the results, for the present effect was not peace but division; but, when His people take the first step in the right path in obedience to the word, He falls in with them, they indeed confessing sin, He fulfilling righteousness. And thus, at His baptism I get the blessed Lord, coming as a man, as He did publicly then, in full obedience, entering by the door; and He then receives the Holy Ghost, who comes down on Him as such. And how could He receive the Holy Ghost? Because He was righteous in Himself, and we through His work. He was both anointed and sealed, and thus we find Him attributing His works to the Spirit: "If I by the Spirit of God cast out devils." It is remarkable how the Trinity is brought before us in this. The Son wrought on earth, cast out demons by the Spirit, and the Father that dwelt in Him, He did the works. His work shewed how the Trinity is brought out in specific connection with that purpose in man, through which the Son became man. It is first fully revealed in the passage in Matthew 3. Christ the Son was there, the Spirit descended upon Him, and the Father owns Him, a man on the earth, as Son. So through the eternal Spirit He offered Himself without spot to God. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth, says Peter, with the Holy Ghost and with power.

I notice all this to shew how He who was God over all, blessed for ever, took, in sovereign grace, His part with man. This was the great preliminary path to all blessing. He upon whom the Holy Ghost descended and abode, He it was who baptised with it: not that it was only this, for we must be sprinkled with blood to have it, and He must be glorified as man to give it. Hence, we read, He being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Spirit, hath shed forth this. But here He entered truthfully on the path of all this, He associated Himself with the godly remnant, Himself to be the channel, through redemption, of His own blessings to others. Thus Christ was anointed as man and was baptised with the Holy Ghost. We enter into the intelligent place of the blessings which are ours in Him before the accomplishment of the result. We are brought into the same place and relationship, and know the fruit of His being the Lamb before the results are actually produced externally.

106 But, further, before we arrive at the glory, He is entered as man, He is glorified, and so I get an object; I rest in the thought of being glorified with Him, but I cannot rest in myself. I look all around in the world and try everything in it; but Christ says "Are you weary of all that?" "Yes." "Then you come to Me and you shall find rest." There is that which gives the heart rest. You may be weary and heavy laden without being able to explain it; now, are you that? Christ is the true rest. God found His rest in Him, and never anywhere else. God could not rest even in the exercise of His love, or any object till Christ was there. He could exercise His love, but not rest in it; but in Christ God did find His rest. I do not talk of His own blessed nature, of course, sufficient to itself; but never anywhere else here could God find rest. And so can I a poor wretched creature, a vile sinner. Well, come, see a man that told me all that ever I did, and this is the One who can be my rest, for He knows all and is perfect love and grace to me when He does. As an object I have nothing more to seek, I have found my rest where God found His, and I have found God Himself in love. As to my circumstances and sinfulness, I find a full discovery of all that, and at the same time in the Lamb of God, who meets it all and puts it all away for ever; and so through Christ I know God. Very glad I am that God does know all. Thus all was in that which He did, and now I can have truth in the inward parts in God's presence. Take the poor woman in the city that was a sinner: the Pharisee says, "If he knew what she was, he would not let her touch him; he is no prophet," but Christ shews He was a prophet, for He tells out what was passing in Simon's heart. He did know all: but there was that which Simon did not know, the perfect grace of God towards the sinner; and then He takes up the poor woman's case, and says to her, "thy sins are forgiven"; "thy faith hath saved thee" (this goes farther), "go in peace."

107 We have the real declaration of the Father in Christ, and His love shewn by the work in which righteousness was established: I find the perfect love of God, honesty in the conscience and heart by the knowledge of it, and I find these nowhere else. I can find no person that is perfect in searching my heart out to the bottom, and with perfect love to me, and that has the right to be perfect love to me. But I have got all that in Christ. I find this blessed One, the perfect sinless Man, and Him sealed with the Holy Ghost that I might understand He so came, and that I might be sealed with the Holy Ghost through the work that He has accomplished.

If an angel wanted to see God, he must look on Man, on Christ, "God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." Then, with all this goodness towards us, where has this Man gone, the One who glorified God perfectly in the place of sin? He was God, manifested in love to man; and if you have not yet got the blessing of it, still it was God coming to win back the confidence of your heart to God.

The beginning of all sin was loss of confidence in God. The devil suggests to Eve, "Why should God keep back the fruit of that tree? He knows if you eat it, you will be like Him"; and so confidence was lost. But, if I do not trust God to make me happy, I must try and make myself happy; and thus enter lust and sin and transgression and ruin. But Christ comes into this world where I am a sinner, and in Him I get God winning back my heart to Himself, not by hiding my faults - I get them all told out and put away - and the confidence of my heart won, so that I can trust God; and more, I know God's heart a great deal better than I know my own. I cannot trust my own heart a minute. Test it: I say I love the brethren; but am I not cold sometimes? I have a double heart (I do not say wilfully but there it is); and I must humble myself before God about it, but I cannot deny it. Do you find anything like that in God? I find the perfect love of God in the gift of His Son, and there is no double heart there. And so I get rest. If our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence before God.

But this is not all. If Christ was the manifestation of God in love to us, He was man made sin before God, and if, won by His grace to confide in God, you set out towards God, you will find the cross in the way, Man made sin before God; but then the whole question settled there, and, coming by faith, the question settled for me touching all my sins in His presence, settled by what is done and finished, and that according to the glory of God's own nature; so that I can even look sin in the face fully, and find it has been judged for me, while also I have the perfect love of God resting on me in perfect holiness and righteousness, and I am standing in the light as God is in the light in virtue of that which is finished. Through Christ I am brought into God's presence, accepted in the Beloved, as white as snow, while God is perfect in righteousness in accepting me, and grace reigns through righteousness.

108 Thus it is we get the double character of Christ manifested down here: God in grace towards us; and man made sin before God, but as putting it away for us by His work in drinking the cup His Father had given Him to drink; and, mark, the only part that we have in that work is the sins that put Him to death; and the hatred that did it, when He gave Himself up to it in love. But this is all finished; and when Christ had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high; and thereupon not only is it the fact that the Holy Ghost comes down, but Christ receives it again, "being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear." And I find this, that in virtue of that work of putting away my sins, and having cleansed me and washed me and justified me and redeemed me to God, the Holy Ghost also is given that I may go and understand and enjoy all that Christ is, all that Christ has done, and that He has made my portion in consequence. True, I am here in weakness, a poor earthen vessel that the excellency of the power may be of God; all quite true. But I have the relationship. I am a child, I want to be taught by my Father; and alas! it may be sometimes a naughty child and I want to be whipped by my Father, but I am a child, a partaker of the divine nature.

Now, it is this distinctive character of the Holy Ghost come down that I want to speak of. It is what constitutes the state of the Christian. He is a man who stands between the first coming of Christ (and the work He then accomplished) and the second coming of Christ, when he is going to enjoy the glory; and, between these two, he has the Holy Ghost. He has all the benefits, not as to his body but as to his standing before God, of Christ's work. Look a little at that.

109 Him that has taken this place, as now redeemed - I speak of those who are believers - the Holy Ghost is come down to dwell in. You get it in the figures. When the leper was cleansed, he was washed with water, sprinkled with blood, and anointed with oil (the figure of the Holy Ghost): the word of God applied to us in the power of the Spirit, the water - the blood, now the blood of atonement - and the anointing. Being quickened, born again of water by the word, must go first; and then the blood; but the Holy Ghost is there too, and the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us. Just trace that a little.

The first thing I find in the third chapter of this Gospel is, we are born of the Spirit, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit; and in that I get an immense truth that I have a nature capable of enjoying all divine things, which the flesh is not. I have often said, if you put a natural man into heaven, he would get out of it as fast as he could; there is nothing there that he likes: even an honest worldly man will own that. Then in John 4 there is another thing: Christ speaks of the gift of God which should be a well of water springing up unto everlasting life. It is not only life holy in its nature, but, in consequence of the Lord Jesus Christ having gone up, I have the whole power of life there, and I go right up into its blessed results, through the Lord Jesus Christ, who has associated my heart livingly as born of God with all the things that belong to one born of God; with that of which he that is born of God is joint-heir with Christ.

He became a man, and will be a man for ever. In one sense He will be a servant for ever. In Exodus 21 a Hebrew slave who had served seven years was to go out free; but if his master had given him a wife, and he said, I love my master, I love my wife, I love my children, I will not go out free, then his master was to bore through his ear with an awl to the door post, and the slave was to remain so for ever. Now the Lord could have had twelve legions of angels, and gone out free. But He would not, and so He is a servant and remains so for ever. In John 13, "When Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, and that he was come from God and went to God, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end"; and, "He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garment, and took a towel and girded himself; after that, he poureth water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded." He would still be a servant, could no longer (it is true) have part down here with them; but He would not give them up, and so they must have part with Him. They were clean by the word spoken, but in their path could pick up dirt. Dirty feet will not do for heaven, and the blessed Lord still does the work of a servant. I, says He, am going to wash them. Peter hesitates, and the Lord says, If I do not wash thee, thou hast no part with Me. You are clean, but you are taking up dirt on your feet in the way; and so the Lord washes them. This is His present service. And in Luke 12 He says, "Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning, and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord." "Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh, shall find watching; verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them." As if the Lord should say, "I am going to be your servant in heaven." We are going to sit down and eat things in heaven which acquire infinite value from His ministering them to us.

110 The next thing is a clear distinct consciousness that the work is finished. The Holy Ghost is sent down from Christ when He is glorified and God has given the positive testimony that He has accepted the work and of that to which it leads. Christ has gone into the glory, and I am going to be like Him, and thus I get the blessed assurance of the efficacy of His work when He came first. He says, "Now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him." No question about that. He came to be a man, all alone, however, amongst men, and ever accessible until He had redeemed us, and now He has taken us into association with Himself, and I know it by the Holy Ghost. By the Holy Ghost also I know that I am in Him there now, as John 14: 20. We have not yet got all the fruits, but I have the knowledge of the fruits of what He has done by the Holy Ghost. In John 14 He says, "I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am ye may be also." This was the first great point and final result in blessing.

3 Then He shews them what they should have upon earth, meanwhile. They knew where He was going and the way, for He was going to the Father, and they had seen the Father in Him. The revelation of the Father in the Son gave that which was the highest heavenly blessedness, was the full revelation of all the blessedness that is to be theirs, and revealed the way, because in coming to Christ they had found the Father. Philip says, "Shew us the Father and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." And now I know what the springs of blessedness are in heaven, because I have seen the Father in the Son. Do not believe for a moment that God has not revealed the things He has prepared for us. "God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit," and "We have received the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God."

I find thus the Father revealed in the Son, but there was yet more present comfort by the Holy Ghost. They ought to have known the revelation of the Father in the Son, but one thing they could not know until the Comforter was come, and "In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father and ye in me, and I in you." You shall know that you are in Me. People tell me I cannot know, that I must wait until the day of judgment; but in that case I cannot have any peace here because I do not know how it will turn out then. Am I not to have part in the day of grace? and that is now. And what it is that I have? What I really have is that Christ has put away the very sins for which otherwise I should have to be judged. And more, I know that I am in Him, and He is in me. But men say it is so presumptuous to say I am in Christ. Presumptuous! why, Christ told me I should know it; very much more presumptuous to doubt it.

"And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." And do you think God dwells in me without my finding it out? I may not be able to explain it to another: that is a question of intelligence in Scripture and even of gift; but "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." "In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." The Holy Ghost dwells in us, and there is the power to overcome temptation, wisdom from God, power to realise the presence of Christ, to live looking on the things that are not seen, joyful liberty in our path with God. Mark the practical consequence of this knowledge as to the character of our walk. I say I am in Christ; but you cannot be in Christ without Christ being in you: then do not let me see anything else in you but Christ; do not let the flesh come out. We fail, I know, but that is the right practical consequence. So what is to be looked for in the Christian is that he is to be the epistle of Christ. This is my place, and the practical measure of my walk is that I am dead and the power of the Holy Ghost within so full that nothing but Christ is seen. We are in Christ and Christ in us.

112 And consequently there is another thing. If I am asked to prove the love of God, I say, "Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us," but, as to enjoying it, "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost." I know the love of God, by His dwelling in me who is love: God is love, and the Holy Ghost dwells in me. Not that you cannot learn more, infinitely more. I know my Father, but there are ten thousand things in His mind that I do not know yet. For a man to say that he does not know his own father would be dreadful, though there are multitudes of things in his father's mind and character that he may not yet know. "We have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but we have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." "I am in the Father," that is Christ's own place, "and we are in Christ." This is not only the fact of acceptance but relationship, for we are sons. And the Holy Ghost gives us the consciousness of it. And what do all duties flow from? Relationship. You cannot have the holy affections and true duties of a child of God without being a child of God, and knowing that you are one. The Spirit of God "beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God," and so I enjoy the affections which belong to a child.

Now is that connected with coming before God as a Judge? It is, in virtue of Christ's work, which put away my sins; I am a child in virtue of that which has made me as white as snow. True, if I merely take a cold dead sense that I am safe, there is no affection in that. But our relationship with God and our Father is identified with our being safe. Christ's death for me is, indeed, a motive to make me feel thankful beyond all expression. But there is beyond this as present power that we are taken into an association with Christ, which is so complete, that we know - know now - that "when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." He would not leave us without our knowing His love perfectly in the way that He has established me in blessing; and, while I have the perception of the glory and the earnest of the inheritance, the love of God is already shed abroad in my heart; the Holy Ghost dwells in me and gives me consciousness of all that has been done for me, of all that has been given to me.

113 And if this is true, if I have indeed come to Christ and drunk, then out of my belly shall flow rivers of living water - flow out, that is, to others. God first gives us to enjoy Himself: "we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ," and then there is the activity of His love reproduced in our little measure, though in the truth of its nature in us.

"You know Me?" He says. "Oh, yes," I say. How do you know it? "Because I was a poor vile sinner, and Christ came and laid down His life for me." "You know that? Then go and carry it to other people." I was a poor sinner, and am made the righteousness of God in Christ. Think what a blessed place that is! And I have that blessed place before God, "blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ," and in spirit I can now enjoy it, and that is the place I get with God: as a son, as Christ is Son; as to relationship with the Father, "my Father and your Father." And then He gives me a share in the activity of His love in carrying it out to others. "This spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet, because that Jesus was not yet glorified." Plainly this is not the Spirit as He wrought in them to make them believe, it is clear, for those who believed should receive Him; but, in virtue of the work of Christ gone into the glory, the Holy Ghost has come down and associated me with Christ in all that He has as man, and then sends me to bear witness to others of it.

But if He takes the things of Christ and shews them to me, what is the effect on me as I pass through this world? "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now"; and, "we groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of the body." What was Christ in this world? and what does He feel about this world? Could He set it to rights? He could not. If He was love, could He look with indifference at its misery? Neither was that possible. His holiness and His love must be sources of sorrow in this world, as of blessed communion above whilst He was here. Having the Spirit of Christ I may be privileged to suffer for Him, I must suffer with Him; my heart takes up the voice of the groans of creation and carries them up to God. I may not know what to ask for as a remedy: there may be none here. But being here with the spring of divine love in me, the mind of the Spirit is there, the Holy Ghost intercedes in me according to God. It shews what an astonishing place we are in, what a wonderfully blessed place God has put us into while not yet in the glory.

114 Again, the Holy Ghost having sealed my pardon and given me the consciousness of my relationship as a son, with all that I am walking in in spirit, I turn to see the full effect before the glory which He has revealed to me is mine in possession. The Holy Ghost cannot reveal a glory to me which He does not reveal as mine; but these glories are given us because we are sons and are joint-heirs with Christ. We are "predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren"; and, whatever the Holy Ghost has revealed of all this blessedness, He reports it to me as mine. "To the glory of God by us," it is said, and again, "which God ordained before the world to our glory." 1 Peter 1: 10-13 shews very clearly the order of the revelation of all this. The prophets of old "searched what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow, unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves" (not that they will not be there, but their actual condition is what he is speaking of) "but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." We have them not yet, but they are revealed and reported to us. Then "gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ."

The Holy Ghost has been sent from heaven for the purpose of this revelation. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him, but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." The apostle does not quote the passage to shew it is our position, as so often quoted, but exactly the contrary. Such was the Old Testament state, but we have received the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. I have got into the relationship of a son and I know it by the Holy Ghost. My chief joy surely is fellowship with the Father and the Son, and this hereafter in glory in the Father's house. Do we know nothing of what is there? Much, in one sense everything; it is revealed; but take yet another blessing besides God's presence. The Holy Ghost shews me another thing: there is not one of you that I shall not see perfectly like Christ in the glory. The Lord Jesus "shall come to be glorified in his saints and to be admired in all them that believe." Think of my seeing Christ admired in all of you!

115 What is my desire now? That you may be like Him. That desire will be satisfied perfectly, and it is an immense joy. Nothing is too great for us to expect, now that we know that the blessed Son of God has suffered for us and been made sin. And see the way that Christ gives: Not as the world giveth give I unto you. The world gives, gives away: Christ never gives away. The way He gives is to take us into the enjoyment of all that He has Himself. He wants to have us in the same blessedness with Himself. "Peace I leave unto you, my peace I give unto you." He says, "My joy fulfilled in themselves." He says, "I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me," and "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them," and "That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them"; but the way of it is, He has brought us into the joy of relationship to the Father with Himself. It is the Giver that makes the blessedness even more than the gift. Suppose my mother gives me a trifle: it is not the value of the trifle in itself, but the giver that makes the value.

And I know all now by the Holy Ghost, so that I abound in hope by the power of the Holy Ghost. There are two kinds of happiness. There is the happiness of hope that we have; and what is the other kind? Rest in perfect affection; God loves me as He loves Jesus, and I rest in that. To talk about our love to anyone is no proof of love. The deepest affection may shew itself, but is not loquacious about itself, at least when it confides in its object; nor is the declaration of our great love a proof that all love much, nor complaint of our want of affection a proof that love is wanting, though it may be often that we are thinking too much about it. If there be confidence, the heart rests in the value of the love of the one confided in, and rests in thinking of its object, which is true affection. Supposing a child told me, "I love my mother quite enough," I say, "You are an unfortunate wight; you do not love your mother a bit if you say that." But suppose a child says, If you only knew my mother, her unwearied love, her patience with me, and I often so foolish, forgetting her wishes! I made a noise when she was sick, and yet her love never falters, never wearies; I say, That child loves its mother. When I have a sense of the love that outreaches all my thoughts, and thank and bless and wonder and adore at its greatness, and in the sense of it, my heart thinking of Him - that is love to God. But, if I look into my own heart (I do not speak of judging known failure) and measure my love, and complain of my not loving God, in such case you are under law as to it. The law required it, and necessarily and rightly: but that is law. "Herein is love, not that we loved him, but that he loved us." Hence too, when our loving Him is spoken of in 1 John 4, it is not said we ought to love Him, true as it may be, but we love Him because He first loved us.

116 Well now, the practical effect of receiving the Holy Ghost and abiding in Him is that I am called upon to walk as Christ walked: "they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit." You cannot have a man living without an object, and whatever the object may be, it characterises him: if it is money, he is a covetous man; if it is power, he is ambitious, and so on; but if I get Christ the object of my love, I follow Him, and the Holy Ghost reveals to my heart all things that relate to Him.

You cannot have the love of Christ in your heart without loving what He loves, and this not only as to the things the heart delights in, but the persons dear to Him. We shall love all saints, even if going astray, with the patient love with which Christ loves them, if filled with His Spirit, while walking with Him in the joy of communion.

See the apostle in the opening of 1 Corinthians. When he saw them at Corinth all going wrong, he begins by saying all the good things about them he can: "enriched" by him in "all utterance" and all knowledge, coming behind in no gift, "waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ," who would confirm them, to the end that they may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God was faithful, and so on. And then he begins to blame them for everything they were doing. Men falsely suppose that the full assurance of salvation, and of final salvation, weakens the bond of duty. First, it is a base principle that only dread of damnation can keep us in the path of duty. But further, a child's duties are always there because he is always a child and never can be anything else. All duties flow from the place you are in. You can speak of duties only in the relationship from which they flow. You must be a Christian, a child of God, to be under obligation to fulfil the duties incumbent on such. And, indeed, the affections belonging to their relationship also have no place till then. The consciousness of the relationship must be there. How can a child love a father if he does not know whether he is such? "We have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father."

117 Scripture does not recognise as a Christian a person who does not understand that he is a child of God; he may be on the road, but he has not arrived at his Christian standing. I want no self-confidence, but I want honesty - a divinely given recognition of the relationship in which God has set us, and of which we have the consciousness by the Spirit. In vain we pretend to such a place by merely seeing what Scripture says about it. I would rather see anxiety for holiness and God's glory in a person who had not got assurance, but who was in earnest, than confidence in one who was careless. I quite understand how many dear souls regard this as presumption; I remember when I was awfully afraid myself. But what Scripture tells me is, "we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear." Being children, we are not to be looking up to God as a judge. I am not thinking of God that way; He is one, of course, but that is not my habit of thought about Him. The very person, who is presently to sit as Judge, has hung on the cross for my sins, and put them away, before He is Judge. God would have us before Him in reverence surely, but not in terror. I come to Him as a Saviour, and I find the sins I should have had to be judged for have all been judged already; and when I come before Christ on the judgment-seat, as we shall, why, there, as the Judge, is the very One who has put them all away! How can He impute them to me? We must all appear at the judgment-seat of Christ; quite true, but remember we shall all be glorified before we go there. We shall be raised in glory if we have died, or changed into the same if yet alive, as it is written, "our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body and fashion it like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself."

118 One word more. How far, beloved friends, how far, knowing I am a child and that here, and in a path according to God's will, led by the Spirit of God - how far can I at present look to be like to Christ in this world? I look to be quite like Him in the glory. There is a great deal, and among true souls too, of looking to be conformed to the image of God's Son now. Now there is utter deadly error in that, though not intentional error. They reason, from the desire of uniformity in the renewed soul, to the possibility of it by faith. But this leaves the truth of God out of sight. If I say I have no sin, I deceive myself; but Christ had no sin. Have you no sin in you? It is not said that we ought to be like Christ down here, but that we ought to walk as He walked.

Again, when I come to know redemption in Christ - and only thus, for this is properly deliverance, having died and risen with Christ, not merely knowing that He has borne my sins - then "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." The word "free" has two senses in our language: one, as when you say "that horse is free from vice," that is, he has none; and the other, as when you say, "that slave is free," which is quite a different thing, and it is in this sense I am free from the law of sin and death. I find sin is in me, though it was all condemned on the cross of Christ, but I am free from its law, and it is by the knowledge of redemption and deliverance that I get into this liberty.

Who shall deliver me! Why do you not deliver yourself? I have been trying at it, but I cannot. I do not submit to the condemnation of sin in the flesh, so as to understand that it was put to death on the cross; I do not come to that, until I find I cannot myself get the better of it. You get all this in Romans 7. It is not the true Christian state, but the one there finds first that there is no good thing in his flesh at all. And what next? Why, that it is not himself, "it is no more I." What next? Oh, I must get the better of it. Try away, I say, try away. I cannot succeed. And now you learn that there is no power in yourself to do it. "To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not." I need another, a deliverer, and I learn the power of life in Christ, of Christ Himself; but with the knowledge that I have (as regards the old man) died with Him, and that there sin in the flesh was condemned when He was a sacrifice for sin, but that it was in death, so that I am dead to it for faith. And I do not believe as I have said, that a person has ever got out of Romans 7 who has not got into it. In my case, like thousands of others, before I got forgiveness, I had found out what I was; I learned the seventh before I learned the third. But when a full gospel is preached and forgiveness known, the knowledge of self will still be by law, but the form of it is modified. The way more often is, "I hope I am not deceiving myself; I thought I was forgiven. How is it I do so-and-so? how is it I find this power of sin still here?" The flesh is never changed. The truth is they are distinct points, and treated apart; only self-knowledge is the deeper point, and so treated last. But it is law, not for condemnation, but powerless to free, though it may kill and condemn too. (Compare 2 Corinthians 3.)

119 After man was made, the whole history is, whatever God sets up right, the first thing man did was to spoil it. Adam eats the fruit of the tree. Noah is put in authority, and the first thing he does is to get drunk. God gives a law, and they set up a golden calf. The priests are consecrated and offer strange fire the first day, and die; and Aaron is never allowed to go in his garments of glory and beauty into the most holy place. Solomon fails in the kingdom and it is divided. Nebuchadnezzar is set at the head of the government among the Gentiles, and he sets up a great idol and punishes those that serve the true God, and Gentile authority becomes that of the beasts. It put Christ to death when He came in grace, lusts against the Spirit where He is, and, if one is called to the third heaven, would puff him up about it. And, now, it is not that there is any change in the flesh; but I am not to fancy, that, because flesh is there, I must let it act. No, I must reckon it dead, and should in practice "always bear about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body."

120 The Holy Ghost gives us a blessed sense of relationship with the Father; and what, accordingly, you are called upon to do is, in the power of the Holy Ghost, so to live and walk as that nothing but Christ be seen in you.

Born Again

John 3

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The truth connected with the Holy Ghost, together with Christ and His work, is the great safeguard against the error by which Satan is working in the present day. The enemy's craft must be met by the truth of God. In this chapter we have the work of the Spirit in quickening souls, and this is brought out, in contrast both with God's previous trial of Israel, and with man's natural power in the reception of outward evidence. From chapter 2: 24, etc., we see the need of getting hold of God's truth for our own souls. The profession of Christ may be ever so sincere, but apart from life and fruit it is worth and is nothing. The people saw He was the One who should come, the Person sent from God, and they had right thoughts about His works, and yet all that went for nothing and was worthless in the sight of God. The solemn question was, What was in man? The conviction spread amongst them that He was the Messiah, because of the miracles He did, and they were ready to have Him in their own way. Nicodemus said, "We [not I] know that thou art a teacher sent from God," etc.; but the wickedness of man's heart was not all come out. Man proved what he was in the treatment he gave the Lord Jesus, notwithstanding the undeniable evidence vouchsafed in His works that He was come from God.

There are none so hostile to truth as those who know, but will not have it. The spies who had been up and seen the land were those active in speaking against it. You cannot go the way of the cross without having its trial and difficulty, as well as its infinite gain. The cross is not pleasant, of course, and it never was intended to be pleasant. Directly I see that Christ has a right and claim on my conscience, my nature rises to resist His power; I see He ought to have the first place, and that other things should give way. This I do not like. The cross must be contrary to our nature.

The Lord now meets Nicodemus with the declaration that he must be born again, or rather anew (which is a stronger word than "again," or "from above"). It is the same expression in the original as "from the very first," in Luke 1: 3. You may find lovely qualities in human nature; but nature never loves Christ, where the cross and the glory come together. The new birth is a thing totally new. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." Christianity does not alter it at all. Man is in love with creation, and neither loves God nor believes His love. The creation is ruined, spoiled - not willingly, as man is, but still it is fallen. Man's will is gone away from God. His intellect may be all very well in its way; his disposition may be amiable, but you never find one who naturally seeks after God. Nay, you generally find the most amiable person the last to turn to God. Man must be born entirely anew; he must come into heaven with a nature altogether distinct from that which he has got. Man will use his good qualities as well as his bad, just as an animal but with more intelligence. The eye must be opened. It is a new ground and way of perception, by which we can even see the kingdom of God.

122 There was neither holiness nor righteousness before the fall. The original state was something distinct from both. Adam was innocent, but not properly righteous or holy. To apply innocence to God, or to the Lord Jesus, would be absurd. God is holy; seeing what is bad, and abhorring it, which holiness, negatively at least, consists in. A righteous man judges what is contrary to justice, and hates it. An innocent man did not know things in themselves good and evil, though, of course, he knew that it was his duty to obey God. Adam's sin was in trying to be like God; our goodness is in desiring to be like Him. Ought we not to seek to be like God - to imitate Him, as Paul exhorts? We are called by glory and virtue, and are seeking to remind our souls that God's counsel is that we shall be conformed to the image of God's Son. This one thing we should do, "forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before." Adam knew nothing of this; his whole moral nature was entirely different. In sinning man got his conscience, and was ruined in getting it, because it was a bad one. Consequently he was afraid of the God he wished to be like. He lost innocence, and we never regain it, but we are renewed after the second Adam. We are, after the image of God, created in righteousness and true holiness, made partakers of the divine nature, and brought to judge of sin as God judges it, and to love holiness as He loves it.

It is after God we are created again; Eph. 4: 24. Not only have we, as men, the knowledge of good and evil, which made the man afraid of God, and hide himself, but now in being born again it is another thing. We have life in our souls in a divine way.

123 We have the holy moral nature that God has, and in this nature there is a positive delight in the righteousness of God, which does not condemn it, because it is the same. This new nature feeds upon, and delights in, what is of God, and is satisfied with the object before us, even Christ Himself. God has chosen us in Him that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love - He has us before Him in this the image of His own nature. In Christ we have all that God delights in brought out and displayed in the man. He is the perfect and blessed display of all God is, and He is the expression before God of what He has made us to God. We have the image of God in the man, and, more than this, we have what man is for God.

This quickening of the Spirit has a double character; it is death in both. We are dead, and are to reckon ourselves "dead indeed unto sin," etc. This is liberty. But there is death practically, or putting to death, and that is what we do not like, for this is the cross. We like the liberty, but not the mortifying, or putting to death, our members on earth.

The sentence of death that God has passed on flesh and sin is an unchangeable sentence, and it is a positive blessing to have done with the flesh, for it is a condemned thing. The sentence was executed upon Christ, the new man, that we might live after the power of that new Man - Christ. There is an important point as to this, which is often confounded and mistaken. We must live that we may die - not die that we may live, as is often represented. Men talk of death before they have life, but they are wrong. Death, morally, is the consequence of having life. And this is just the difference between a monk - not using the word offensively - and a Christian. As a monk I mortify myself in order that I may live, instead of first having life, as a Christian, from God, that I may die. "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter," etc. (v. 5). "Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth." God has begotten us by the word. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." "He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true." "The word giveth light and understanding to the simple," and the effect of the light's coming in by the word is to bring the judgment of everything in man, as it brings delight in that which is of God.

124 "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." There is the communication of a new nature in believing; and, when born of God, the truth sanctifies and cleanses. There is "the washing of water by the word"; but this cannot be till after we are born of the Spirit by the word. There would be no sense in saying, that which is born of water is water; but that which is born of the Spirit is of the spiritual nature of God, not of man's nature.

"The living water" made the woman at the well, to whom Jesus spake, hate herself. It detects what is in man. Hence Christ could say to His disciples, "Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken to you." In the new and holy nature, in which I am created of God in Christ, I can now take up everything that I delight in, and I can judge everything contrary to it. Thus the word has a cleansing power. Baptism may be the expression and figure of it here, as the Lord's supper embodies the truth of John 6 ("whoso eateth my flesh," etc.) - though I do not say that the Lord referred to either institution, but to the reality of which each is the sign. The substance of the thing is not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who came by water - not by water only, but by water and blood. It will not do to look at ourselves with approbation. See what is said of the king of Tyre. (Ezek. 28). We must not look at self, nor take pleasure in it. We want an object outside ourselves - even the renewed man does. The moment there is the communication of the divine nature, there must be delight in Christ Himself.

This is brought out in this double way in John 5 and 6. In chapter 5 there are dead sinners quickened, or raised. This speaks of God communicating the divine nature. I do not speak of faith now, but it is God's own power that is spoken of - God quickening. In chapter 6 we get faith still more fully insisted on: and here is the object of my faith presented. This is perfection - to be so occupied with Christ, as to be forgetful of self. While told to reckon ourselves dead, we are looked on as dead already in Christ. How is this? Christ is looked on as coming down into the place of death, that there, where I was without stirring, Christ might be and rise up out of it for my deliverance. Because of what He suffered on the cross, as manifested in the power of His resurrection, "old things have passed away, and all things have become new." God will have none of the old thing now. It is defiled and corrupted and good for nothing.

125 "All things have become new," not renewed. "In him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." He is the eternal life that was with the Father and is manifested unto us. This is not the man that fell out of paradise! How then can God and man be connected? "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." There was the inseparable barrier of man's will on one side, and the power of death on the other. Therefore he says, "I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" But "if it die (the corn of wheat), it bringeth forth much fruit." "The exceeding greatness of his power," etc. (Eph. 1: 19), is in resurrection. Then, passing over the allusion to the church, in the next chapter we read, "You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins," etc. In connection with, and the basis of, it all is Christ, who is dead and risen, with whom we are quickened together. The second Adam has not His place as Head of the family, except by death first. Why? Because redemption could not have been wrought. Nor would it have been, as now, a question of God's righteousness. These being accomplished, He is entirely and in everything fitted to be the head of the new creation. This new link is wrought by the word. The living word, by the Spirit, is the power, and resurrection-life with Christ is the standing into which we are brought.

Christ, we may observe, speaks to Nicodemus about the things that he, as a Jew, ought to have understood. (Compare Ezekiel 36.) He says, "If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" God's earthly things were not evil or fleshly things, but the promised earthly portion which the Jews were to look for. In the latter day they must be sprinkled with water, and have a new heart from the Spirit, before they can inherit. This Nicodemus should have known. Then there are the heavenly things, which are better. "The wind bloweth where it listeth," etc. There is the sovereign acting of His grace. He will take any poor sinners of the Gentiles, as well as the Jews, and bring them into the blessing He has to give. "God so loved the world." This goes beyond the Jews. It is not here that God so loved Israel.

126 For all alike, Christ was needed. For the best, the Son of man must be lifted up, and for the worst God would give His only-begotten Son. Under promises, law, or nature, death must come in, if man is to be saved. In nothing can they be taken up in their own title.

What are we brought into by that which Christ has done? He says, "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen." Here was the double revelation of God. Christ is speaking as a divine Person, and as one who has seen divine glory. "No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." He knew, and saw, as One familiar and at ease with the Father and the Holy Ghost, with the glory of the Godhead. He was Himself in the unity of the divine essence. And though we were not only men outside it all but fallen men, yet now, as born of God, what are we not brought into! We have resurrection-life in Him; we are one spirit with the Lord. It is not the poor thing of the mere renewal of good qualities; but it is Christ, the Son, Himself making us partakers of His own things.

Notes of an Address on John 3

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This chapter tells us of One who has come down from heaven, who speaks that He knows, and testifies that He has seen; who knows God fully, and who knows what is in man; and He tells us what God requires, and what God gives. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. He, the Son of God, came the Light into this world, but men loved, and still love, darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. He was born into this world in grace for you. He has not left us in anywise in the dark about it, but has brought perfect light to our hearts and consciences, which testifies what is of heaven, what is from heaven, and what is needed for any connection with heaven, and in order to be there. So that when I come to heaven, there is nothing in its moral nature that is not brought to my heart and conscience now. You will not get a more blessed thing in heaven than Christ on earth!

Nicodemus had a mere human conviction of Christ; he knew that He was a teacher come from God. When they saw His miracles, many believed on Him. How many Christians are like that now! giving a mere human assent to who He is. It is not insincerity or dishonesty, but they do not know Him. There is no want created in the heart. The Son of God is here: is that enough for you? You do not care to know what He is here for, or whether you have any part with Him! You do not trouble yourselves farther, or care to listen to one word He says; not an anxiety as to what He has said concerning you, or interest as to one thought or feeling He might have. Could you be quiet if you thought you were lost? You could not. You are lost! and there is no greater proof of the utter ruin of man than that Christ does not attract his heart, speaking and testifying of divine things. Any bit of news will occupy you - a bit of family interest - a newspaper - a thing passing in the street; and here is news from heaven, news from God, and you do not care! - nor for all the love in His coming down from heaven to tell it to you!

IS IT NOT TRUE THAT YOU MUST HAVE A NEW NATURE?

You are indifferent to all that God can do, and you tell me that it is not crime; but is it no testimony of the state of your soul? That Christ has no beauty that you should desire Him, and yet you are "hoping" to go to heaven! And what is there in heaven for you? Do you expect to be happy if there this Christ, who is the very centre of heaven's delight, has no attraction for your heart? Impossible! It is quite clear that, if I am to be happy in heaven, it is with God. What pleasure have you in God? Is there one thing in your heart now that would make you happy in heaven, one single affection in your heart that finds its pleasure and company in those who fill heaven? Oh, may it come home to your soul - the conviction I am all wrong, the tree bad, and as I am I can never be better. Here the Lord, speaking what He knows, says, Ye must be born again. This was what God required.

128 And now we come to the other side -

"THE SON OF MAN MUST BE LIFTED UP."

God gave His Son. This is the grace - this the glad tidings - that you "might not perish, but have everlasting life." He "must," according to the glory of God, but He "must," because you are a sinner perishing! Because you are a sinner, you will reject Him and prove yourself so bad, that nothing but the crucifixion of the blessed Lord could meet your case. Oh! you must be born again.

But there is another, a deeper, a divine "must"; the Son must be lifted up - terrible necessity of righteousness! God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. The Son of God spoke that He knew. Oh, how He knew it! With God there is no allowance of evil, not an unholy thought. We have all had plenty of unholy thoughts. Christ comes down from heaven, and says, "The Son of man must be lifted up!" What blessed grace in His mouth! And mark the complete subjection of His soul, the depth of the love in it, the peacefulness and quietness of Christ thus looking at the necessity of His drinking that cup of wrath, that you might not. And, farther on, when it was going to be accomplished, He set His face stedfastly to go up to Jerusalem, and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood as He approached that hour. Yet here, in the beginning of His career, He states it as the thing He had come down from heaven to do. He came to do His Father's will, and that will was our salvation.

DO YOU DOUBT THAT YOU ARE PERISHING?

Or do you mark how fully grace rises up above all your ruin? Do you discover that the sin that is pressing on your conscience, and plaguing your heart, is the very thing that Christ died for? - that He took it off you on Himself? Now you have got to the gospel, to the glad tidings - the grace - that the blessed Lord Jesus put Himself in my whole place before God - "made sin" - He who "knew no sin." Suppose I see Him on the cross, standing thus in my place, answering for me because I could not answer for myself, I see that He has not left a thing that could bar my entrance up to God. He appeared once, in the end of the world, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He has finished the work.

129 Did He put me away into outer darkness? No; that would be day-of-judgment work; but He put my sin away, and set me there before God without sin. That was His Father's will, which He came down from heaven to do. And, oh, what unspeakable comfort! there is not a sin in my heart that God does not know, because there is not a sin in my heart that Christ has not died for. He drank the cup, and God set His seal in righteousness when He said, "Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool"; and now grace reigns through righteousness - grace has risen above all our sin. What true rest to be able to say, "It was all done there between God and Christ - righteousness made good before the universe." The moment your soul gets hold of what those three hours of darkness on the cross were, you see that all was settled there between God and Christ, outside yourself; for if you had got there, you must have got into wrath.

Hence, when you believe in Christ, you come to God to find the whole question settled by Himself - Christ for you - sweet and conscious truth! You can say, "God so loved me that He sent His Son: though my sins were as scarlet, I am white as snow - I can 'go in peace.'" One who came down from heaven to tell me: "You are the vilest of the vile, but I have taken up your cause - I have redeemed you to Myself - go in peace." He who made peace by the blood of His cross, who says, "My peace I give unto you" - wonderful love! - He is able to tell, at such a cost of Himself - having drunk the cup that you had earned and filled - that He has made peace.

CAN YOUR HEARTS GO IN PEACE ON HIS WORD?

Do not let any one make you doubt the efficacy of what He has done. And the Lord give you to hear Him declare in the quietness and grace of that moment, that the "Son of man must be lifted up"; and may He tell you why, in applying it to yourself. And may you learn how blessed it is to be in light - the light of God - where light shews you white as snow - clean according to God Himself; and you will know what it is to walk in the light of His countenance. Amen.

The Well of Water

John 4

J. N. Darby.

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In John 3 we had the quickening power of the Spirit, the contrast of the old and the new creation. Here we have another thing, the dwelling of the Spirit in the believer. "The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life."

A man must be born again - born of water and of the Spirit, if he has to say to God. This is what has to be presented to the sinner: "Ye must be born again"; while at the same time we know it must be God's work. Not that it is said in a legal sense, "Ye must," etc., because we know a man cannot accomplish it of himself. But there is a moral necessity for it, because, until born again, the sinner cannot have one desire or anything in him suited to God. It is the requisite flowing from what God is, and what the sinner is. But there is no such necessity for the indwelling of the Spirit in the believer. Instead of being requirement, it is the expression of pure grace; not so much necessary to man, as it is given by God.

Therefore not only the Jews, but the Gentiles might have it. "If thou [the poor Samaritan] knewest the gift of God," etc. For the Jew even it was necessary to be "born again," and that was the instruction in chapter 3. In chapter 4 it is a pure gift of which He speaks, and He would shew that the worst of Gentiles might have it, as well as an Israelite.

The Holy Ghost that is given brings in power, as well as a new nature. The new nature has certain characteristics - love, holiness, etc. "He that is born of God sinneth not," but there is another thing - power, and without this the very desire for holiness will occasion distress of soul and sense of condemnation, and there will be neither peace, joy, liberty, nor consciousness of relationship, all of which are founded on the indwelling of the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit produces these effects in the soul in which He dwells, bringing forth in us what is like God. Thus we see the difference between the Holy Ghost quickening, or giving a new nature, and the Holy Ghost dwelling in us and giving us power.

The woman, as we know, comes to draw; the Lord requests to drink. She is surprised at His asking her for water. Before, we have seen Him talking to a Jew, a Pharisee, an honoured Rabbi; but here was a despised Samaritan. She was astonished at His having overleapt all bounds and come in perfect freedom to speak to her; but here was the gift of grace come down to her as well as the Jew. Passing over the details of her conversion which are most interesting, we will notice the lowliness of Jesus in His actings towards her. His position here is founded on His entire rejection as coming in the way of promise. He is on His way, as rejected, to Galilee, the place where God visits His remnant. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light." He left Judea, and God leads Him through this wretched apostate race - just a picture of the Lord's actings now in sovereign grace, gathering out Gentiles, before He comes to the remnant.

132 That which lays hold of a sinner is sovereign grace. He is rejected by man, and man is rejected by God. There is mutual and complete rejection. Promise is gone, because Christ, coming with the promises, was rejected. "My soul loathed them, and their soul also abhorred me." It is now a rejected humbled Christ, bestowed as the sovereign gift of God. "If thou knewest the gift," etc. God was giving freely, and He who gave was there. He who could create another heaven and earth, if He pleased, came to ask drink of her! What confidence in His grace it inspires! He does not expect her to ask of Him until He has asked of her. Our pride would say, If I accept favours of God, He will accept favours of me. Here is God Himself coming, and saying, "If thou knewest the gift of God," etc. He would be dependent for a drink of the brook by the way. Such was the position He took. When He could put Himself in such a place as to ask favour of her, all the sluices of her confidence are opened. "He must needs go through Samaria." The path led through. That was the road in which His love, in coming down here, put Him.

There is nothing so hard for our vile hearts to understand as grace; but there is nothing so simple in God's presence. If you knew the Person of Him who asks you, you would believe the perfectness of grace coming down to the wretchedness of man to bestow. It is not how you must be this or that; but here is God come down to you.

He is at perfect ease with her, though she had been up to this going on in her sins; she a Samaritan, and yet there is God conversing with her! The revelation of God in this way gives the consciousness that we can get what He has to give. The moment a soul apprehends what there is in Christ, it has the blessing. "Sir, give me this water," etc.

133 Verse 16. There is a thought added now. The sins have to be made known. There is no understanding of what He has to give until the conscience is reached, and she has the conviction of sin. If the things of God could be received by the understanding (natural), man would in a sense be a match for God. Clearly man is not in that position with God. But when the conscience is opened, it brings the sense of need. Then the sinner sees nothing but sin, and that nothing but God's grace can meet it. A man never gets spiritual understanding until God has dealt with his conscience. Until the flesh is in a measure judged, the Christian has no power to understand God.

When I know the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, I know that I have everything I can need, because everything is in Him - love, power, holiness in Him. "He that drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." A detected sinner is in a different case from being in possession of the well; and yet the detection was on the way to it. To bring this well into the heart He must convict of sin. She must consciously stand in the presence of God. Do we think of that - that we are in the presence of God? We should never sin if we did.

The woman follows the natural course of her own thoughts in talking about the water from the well (v. 11, 12). But Christ says, "The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water," etc. In using what sin gives in this world, it is soon spent; its strength is gone in the spending: the spring becomes dry. But with spiritual things it is just the reverse. The more I spend, the more I have got. "To him that hath shall more be given." And it leaves no desire for anything else - no hankering after what I have not got. "He shall never thirst" - never thirst after anything else, while there will be the increasing sense of need of the living water continually. I cannot say this practically of one whose soul is hankering after earthly things. When there is this hard crust over the soul, there is need of humbling; but the natural state of a Christian is to go on and have more given. A Christian sunk down into the flesh is thirsting. If one went down to the bottom of his soul, one might find the well; but there ought to be rather the sense of possession than of need in the soul.

134 Here is rest and power. We have not only everlasting life in Him from whom we shall never be separated; but the man has a well of water in himself. "It shall be in him a well of water," etc. This is power coming down from God - heaven is brought down into my heart. It is the power of divine life bringing me into fellowship with the Father and the Son. It is nothing short of all that is in God dwelling in me. I have got something that lays hold of that life - the gift of God. Mark, it is here the well of water in the individual. There is an eternal spring in my own soul. There is a power in the person associating him with all that is in God; the man drinks it in - receives it as a thirsty person - and then it becomes in him a well which makes him partaker of what is in God. It brings into intercourse with, and feeding in spiritual apprehension on, the things of God.

This has not reference to outward gift, but to the living power in the soul, embracing all that the Father and the Son have, and it has the character and stamp in the person of the eternal life to which it springs. These everlasting things belong to the person who enjoys them; the water "springs up to everlasting life." In Romans 8 the Spirit is brought out as life and power. As the breath of life was given to the first Adam, and he became a living soul, so we have the "Spirit of life in Christ Jesus." After life there is power also. This is the consequence of the sentence passed upon sin in its whole nature - not on sins only. Christ on the cross condemned sin in the flesh. God has dealt with it and judged it on the Person of Christ. They are distinct and connected in a moment. As soon as I am quickened, there is the inquiry, How am I to get rid of this sense of sin in the flesh? It is already condemned: not only are the sins condemned but the principle of sin is, root and branch. "They that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh; they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit." There is not only desire but power; "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." The Spirit is not only the source of the nature, but the power that puts this new nature into living connection with its object. It is not only the flesh on one side and the new nature on the other, but I have the Holy Ghost in the new nature. God has condemned sin in the flesh by the death and resurrection of Christ. There is the revelation of the Father and the Son, received by the soul in which the Holy Ghost dwells. The Holy Ghost now works in power on the new nature, because Christ has dealt with the old. This is not like the Spirit as given to Balaam, but it is shewing how the believer receives the Spirit after he is quickened. "Not in the flesh but in the Spirit," which puts me on the ground of what God is to me, and not what I am to God. As to our standing, this is our position - the Father loves me as He loves Jesus. I own no life but what the Spirit gives, and because of the Spirit dwelling thus in me as the grand link with the Father and the Son, there is not a bit of the believer belongs to sin or to the devil, but spirit, soul, and body we belong to God. "The Spirit is life because of righteousness." Another thing is, that He will "quicken these mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in us." In the burial of a Christian we commit his body, not to the earth, but to Him who redeemed it.

135 Verse 14. There is also relationship - "sons of God." If led of the Spirit, I am a son, and have the "Spirit of adoption." I am thrown into entire association with Christ; I am a child of God and have the consciousness of the Spirit of adoption. "The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit," etc. We are set there by sovereign grace. It is not what we think about it, but what we are - "the sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus." The Holy Ghost cannot lead us to say, 'I do not know whether I am saved'; 'I doubt'; 'I hope to be saved.' The Holy Ghost brings it into the heart, and gives the blessed sense of the relationship.

When the High Priest went into the presence of God, the light shone upon all the names engraven on the breastplate, etc. That was an inferior relationship, but it is true that the same delight which the Father finds in Jesus He finds in us. There is the shedding abroad in the heart of divine love by the Spirit, just as a candle sheds abroad its light in the place where it is. So, if the Holy Ghost really dwells in my heart, God's love is there, for God the Holy Ghost is there. Though it is my heart, it is God's love that is there. The Spirit sheds it abroad by being there, just as Christ, being in the heart, draws down His own love into it.

Again, if the Spirit thus dwells in us, there will be the consciousness of groaning with the creation around. If we walk through the world with Christ's love filling the heart, there is not a single thing but what will awaken sorrow - the sorrow not of irritability but of love. Christ did ever the work of love, but with what a sense of the way in which death had come in! He was always sorrowing, because He was all love.

136 The Son of man was "acquainted with grief" - not only trouble, but grief. It went to His heart. We hear Jesus groaning at the grave of Lazarus, though He knew what deliverance He could effect. If we had been going to do it, we should have gone gaily in, because going to bring comfort to the family; but Jesus had such a sense of the groaning of creation that He "groaned."

"The Spirit also maketh intercession for us" by putting us in communion with God's love. The Spirit, by dwelling in me, makes me to realise love in the midst of sorrow. Instead of selfishness, it produces prostration of spirit in the sense of what is around. The Spirit takes up the sorrow which nature sinks under, but helps my infirmities by putting me into connection with the perfect love of God shewn in Christ's humiliation. The Holy Spirit being given to us in Christ - God's having come down to us in all our necessities, we are carried back into the midst of the sorrow and the sin in the sense of that in which believers groan.

This woman at the well (John 4) was conscious of the creation she belonged to. She had no power to overcome sin; but perhaps well wearied out with it - coming in the heat of the day to draw water, not at the hour that others came, for shame. She did not know what she was coming for now; and when she had got the living water, she went back to the city to tell the Samaritans. Thus should we carry the love which has delivered us, back into the world from which we have been delivered.

"The Spirit helpeth our infirmities." Our understandings are not fully informed of what we want; but the "Spirit himself," etc. - and "He that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit." If God searches our hearts, what does He see there? A quantity of sin, to be sure; but He sees desires there. "The Spirit maketh intercession according to God," and yet from poor creatures who do not know what to ask for. The use the Holy Ghost makes of it is to take up all the groaning. Every groan I utter is the positive witness of blessing in the midst of sorrow, because of the intercession of the Spirit according to God. What a well of water! It is not crying out for self; but so realising the blessedness of God's presence in the midst of a world and a body not yet set free by His power, selfishness gone, and a means opened, while in the body, of being the vessel of the intercession of the whole creation. All our own sufferings are lost in the thought of its being the path to glory. Christ's heart was moved when He saw sorrow. He would not have us cold and indifferent to it, nor yet, on the other hand, selfishly affected by it, but full of tenderness and compassion towards those who are suffering. "He hath set us an example, that we should follow his steps."

Rivers of Living Water

John 7

<21021E> 138

In this Gospel we get not only the testimony to the Jewish people of the Messiah and the message of the kingdom, but the glorious doctrine of the Person of Christ, the rejection of which rendered it more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for them.

In the previous Gospels we have the Lord set before us, as Son of Abraham, Son of David, Son of man, the Messiah, the servant, the perfect Israelite. This Christ-rejecting generation not only broke the law but discarded the promises as well. Abraham's seed but rebels against Abraham's God, they who had the promises must now come in on a common level with the Gentile through grace. God is faithful to His word, that is true; but it is only under mercy they can be saved. We have no historical account of Christ in this Gospel - no genealogy, but we are taken back to the beginning of the book of Genesis; and get a truth deeper, higher, and far beyond that of the other Gospels, even the glory of Christ as it ever was, before He became the Incarnate Word: and this is so blessed for us, for we get eternal life in Him - in Him who has life in Himself. It is not the promises we get (though we get them too), but it is the Promiser Himself. It is this blessed One who is our life - life that existed before worlds began. He had a former glory, but this glory of His Person, where is that to be found? In His redeemed, there it will be displayed. Christ came to His own, but they received Him not, and since then they have been treated as reprobates all along. Up to Christ's rejection God tried man; He left him without law, put him under law, gave him priesthood and prophets, and in due time sends His only-begotten Son. All was without avail. Did they reverence Him? No. This is the heir, said they; we will kill him and the inheritance will be ours, bringing to light that most dreadful truth, "The carnal mind is enmity against God."

Man would not have the holiness of God, neither would he have the love of God. And now God brings in a new thing - a spring of life, and puts away sin through the death of His Son; and Christ, having died for sin, takes His seat at the right hand of God, victorious over all, and sends down the promised Spirit to enable us to walk before Him.

139 In chapter 6 we get Christ feeding the multitude who followed Him (and the disciples too).

There are three great feasts spoken of that the Jews always kept - the Passover, the Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. In this last feast the vintage was prefigured, the shewing by a figure they had been a people who had dwelt in booths, but now had rest. Christ could feed them in the wilderness, but He could not go with them to this feast; for before Christ could enter on a rest down here, the work of redemption must be accomplished, and the church must be taken. Therefore He said, "I go not up yet unto this feast, for my time is not fully come." His brethren may go, but He could not now declare His glory and enter upon His rest. But there was an eighth day, when comes rest: then He would keep the Feast of Tabernacles, then should God's holy rest be on the earth, God's church being in the glory.

We get the Spirit spoken of in three ways: first, all saved ones from the beginning to the end are born of the Spirit; secondly, the Spirit in them a well of water springing up; thirdly, rivers flowing out. "In whom, after ye believed, ye were sealed by that Holy Spirit of promise." The Holy Ghost was not yet given, we read, "because Jesus was not yet glorified." Mark, before the disciples could receive the Holy Ghost, the work of atonement must be done, and Jesus be a glorified Man, seated up there at God's right hand. Who? A Man. Why? Sin is put away. Yes; Jesus, as Son of man, is glorified; as Son of God He was ever the glorified One. God was so glorified by the work of His Son that, so to speak, He became His debtor. How did the Son of man glorify God? By suffering for my sins on the cross. God's judgment was perfectly met, and God perfectly glorified the Man Christ Jesus who endured the wrath. The exaltation of this glorified Man is the witness that my sins are fully put away. What does God say about my sins now? "Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more."

Where was the truth of God displayed that said, "In the day thou eatest thou shalt surely die," and Satan's lie fully proved which said, Thou shalt not die? On the cross Christ died. God is love. The majesty, the holiness, the love of God were magnified on the cross. The question of sin is settled. The Son of man is glorified. God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit have all been occupied about my sin. What a footing I have! Done with sins, no more conscience of them: Christ has taken them clean off. He could not bring us into God's presence with ONE sin upon us. No; though they were "as scarlet, they shall be white as wool." Christ became obedient unto death; and this settles the whole thing, and gives power to the poor sinner. With what holy freedom I can go into God's presence, when I know Christ is there, seated at God's right hand, as my forerunner! I have a perfect righteousness, a perfect love, and a perfect obedience to appear in. What comfort and what joy! You could not go into God's presence with one sin upon you: it would be folly to think of it - madness to attempt it. One sin unpardoned would unfit you for enjoying God. You must be perfectly clean. The blood of Christ does cleanse from all sin, so that the soul in the presence of God can enjoy God - we "joy in God."

140 The glorified Jesus, seated in heaven, sends down the Comforter to give us power for fellowship with Him. See the place He has taken, one with the redeemed on earth. Never until after the resurrection does He call His disciples "brethren," nor does He say, "Peace be with you," before then. He did say, "Fear not." (But He had not made peace.) "All mine are thine, and thine are mine" - all are ours in Christ. We have His righteousness; we wait for the hope. We have the earnest; we wait for the inheritance. We have the love of God shed abroad in our hearts. And when we view the holiness, the power, the love of God, how delightful is the thought, He is my Father! The love wherewith He has loved His own Son He hath bestowed upon me. No man hath seen God at any time; but we learn what the Father is by the Son. We see in Him the outflowings of the divine fulness; and we must drink at this rock. It is not enough for us to see: we must draw from Him: and there will be the conscious outflowing of what He is. What a character that truth should give us! One with Christ in heaven, "Head of his body, the church"; a living union with Him: God for us, Christ in us, the Spirit's seal on us. "If any man thirst."

We must remember we do not drink for others, and other cannot drink for us. I must FEEL my own want and I must bring my own want to Christ myself. There must be a thirsting before there can be a drinking. Have I a want in my heart that Christ cannot meet? No. Is there a spiritual want in the soul that goes to Christ without finding relief? No. "If any man thirst." Now there must be a need, and that need must be felt, known, and brought to Christ. Then, no matter what it be, He says, "Come unto me and drink." "If ye knew the gift of God ye would ask of me, and I would give you living water." Think, beloved friends, of Christ sitting at a well. Which of us would not gladly go to Him with open hearts, and let Him read out of them all their need? He is not to be put off. He knew her need, and left her not until she felt it, and He met it. If we are to be useful to poor sinners, we must be more like Christ. Why we help them so little is, that we do not come down low enough to them in grace. Think of the place Christ ever took towards them, and follow Him, being partakers of the grace, and remembering the word, "if any man thirst."

141 In the last chapter of Revelation we have another word. Now, having this water of life in us, we are in a position to say, "Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." We have not the Bridegroom, we wait for Him; but we have the Spirit, the living water. We can count on the grace and love of God, knowing it will not fail for any who cast themselves on the blood of Jesus.

"Before Abraham was, I am"

John 8: 58

<21022E> 142

The Jews were immersed, not in the truth of their system, but in the mere ignorance of acting on present appearances. This is a deep essential principle of error, which one has to watch - not seeing God and things according to His mind (which was exactly in question), but the mind of man in the things of God. Hence precisely the present state of the church. It was the grand question between Jesus and the Jews, the point in which Jesus has to be recognised, and in which faithfulness to Him rests, as in Him to His Father, in this respect. The Jews therefore said to Him, "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?" They thought the sense of this the same, because they looked not beyond the outside. But, on man's ground, the Jewish reasoning was generally correct. It was utterly wrong morally, without conscience, therefore without God and that which God alone could teach. They now brought it to the point of the mere manhood of Christ - the point of their darkness. Our Lord, as the truth, could but give the light. "Before Abraham was [was born], I am." Ye know not My existence, My being. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am." The great truth was told, the essential vital eternal truth, on which all hung, without which there could be no truth, nor coming unto man, nor bringing man back in redemption to God. For how could he be restored by that which was not? And this was true of everything save One. Should dust be a redeemer? Yet out of dust man was to be redeemed.

The great truth was declared. Lie there could be none against it. The necessity of the existence of the Saviour assumed the nothingness of all else - could be, not falsified, but only denied by violence. They might say it was blasphemy, and take up stones in their zeal for God, rejecting Him manifested. "Then took they up stones to cast at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by." The time of their iniquity was not come: His time was not come. But what circumstances! and with whom discussed! and what a truth! Do we believe it? Do we, I say, believe it - that Jesus (a man even as we are, save sin) was "I am?" All is told, if we believe Him thus dead and alive again; for therein is the redemption, and through this must He pass.

143 It is true, most simply true, the centre - wondrous, wondrous to us - of all the manifestation of God, and rightly in its glory to chosen sinners; lovely in its blessing to all sinners; deep therefore necessarily, in its condemnation of blind rejecting sinners. "Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness; God manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached to the Gentiles, believed on in the world" - and yet, more wondrous still, "received up into glory." Thus, as to essential truth, He was "I am."

Then, as to the dispensation, the thing thus revealed, or rather discussed with the Jews, is the subject of John 8. The Lord is traced as the light of the world; as Son of man lifted up; all through as the Son in the power of life, in person as Son, up to this great revelation of "I am": the real truth and fulfilled of all Jewish hopes, and the basis of all common promises, and this as, and by, the word - the essential characteristic. I know of nothing that has so astonished my mind as this revelation of "I am," or the real thought that Jesus could say, "I am"; the connection of these - to man - inconvertible possibilities, and the concatenation in which all the dealings of God are brought out as fulfilled in it, while yet He remains truly God; and yet could say therein, "the Son of man, who is in heaven."

How manifest it is, that nothing but the gift of faith could, even in a single tittle, understand or know the truth in the Person of Jesus! while yet, by the perfection of its manifestation in the flesh, every soul was put under the responsibility to receive it as the true word of God, our God, in love. The broad penetrating fact, "I am," the all-embracing word, must at once close all controversy. We must be opposers or bow before the throne of God. We must stand in awe of Jesus. Well may it be said, "Kiss the Son!" Lord Jesus! what sort of subjection is this we owe to thee? We have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now our eyes see thee, we abhor ourselves. Oh! can we see this in Jesus? Have we seen it? None can see it out of Him. It is the truth only in Him. Surely we should move mountains if we believed it: yet it is simple truth.

Dwell on it, my soul! Jesus, that thou knowest, that stranger in the world among His own is "I AM." Henceforth let us be dead to all but this. I do indeed stand incapable of utterance. I do read and talk with Jesus, I watch Jesus in His ways, a servant, and, behold, He, even He, is "I AM," with whom I am, whose way I follow, whose grace I adore. Christ is the union of these two things: the man, the rejected man, whom I look at now with most thankful sympathy, and, behold, the presence of God! How low it lays men's thoughts, experience, judgments, notions! The perfection of God was there - God rejected of men. What can meet or have a place along with this? Let this be my experience. Glory be to God Most High. Amen. Yet to me it is Jesus; in truth it is "I am." Here I rest; here I dwell; to this I return. This is all in all. I can only be silent, yet would speak what no tongue can utter, and no thought can think before it. This we shall learn, and for ever grow in - more beyond us for ever, for here is God revealed in His essential name of existence - God revealed in man, in Jesus! I know Him, am familiar with Jesus, at home with God, honouring the Father in Him, and Him as one with and in the Father, yea, delighting to do it. But I say, do we believe it?

144 I do believe it all: and yet, as it were, believe nothing. I am as nothing in the thought of it, yet alive for evermore by it, blessed be God and His name. All shall praise Him so. Yea, Lord Jesus, God Most High, so shall it be. Lord Jesus! Thou art "I am," Thou art "I AM"; yet didst Thou take little children in thine arms; yet didst Thou suffer, die, and be in the horrible pit - yea, for our sins! Thus I know the mercy-seat: I know that there is no imputing sins to me, that I am reconciled to God, and that God is the reconciling One.

The Resurrection and Life

John 11

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The Lord had been now rejected, both in His words and His works. In chapter 8 He convicts by His word. "Before Abraham was, I am." There was in that the full manifestation of who He was; but they rejected it. In chapter 9 He shews His works; but this testimony is also rejected. And then He shews how all is in grace and in chapter 10 speaks of gathering His sheep. When He said, "I and my Father are one," they took up stones again to stone Him; and then He goes again beyond Jordan. In chapter 11, in connection with the raising of Lazarus, He is spoken of as the Son of God; afterwards, in chapter 12, as Son of David and Son of man.

What is here specially brought out is Christ's exercising power - life-giving power. Not so much His holiness or His love; though they were there as perfect as ever, but not what He was specially manifesting. He has come where death was; and He was going to raise out of it, first, the soul, and then the body. "Because I live, ye shall live also." This brings out something of the character of Martha. Martha loved the Lord, and the Lord loved Martha. She received Him into her house. He made His home there, as it were. There was confidence in His kindness, and that kind of care and interest between them that, directly Lazarus was sick, they sent to tell Him, taking it for granted He would come because of the intimacy they had. "Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus." They were a believing family; and we find that, when people are believers, there are different characters. We see here what Christ delighted in - what fruit of the Spirit was acceptable to Him. He said of Mary, "she hath chosen that good part." God may make men as active as possible, like Paul or Boanerges, when He wants them; but communion is the most precious thing to Him. There is a difference between Peter and John. His heart rested with satisfaction on him who leaned on His bosom.

Christ had come into this world, when moral death reigned, to bring in blessing from Himself. But here is a death which could come in and take a man out of the reach of the blessing of healing which He Himself came to give.

Death was the harbinger of judgment. No man could recover from it; no man could cure it; no man could escape from it. And they knew that it would carry on to judgment; for it brings with it the testimony of sin. God could kill and God could make alive. Nature always shrinks from death, because there is this consciousness of its being the effect of sin. Christ comes into this place of death; and the mere relieving man's misery down here, which He did, never could touch death. Man having now rejected Him, it was needful to shew that, if man was a murderer and would even put Him to death, He had a power which could deliver out of death. Death had lost its power in His presence who was come to bring in life. During all His course He had been ready to heal the sick with a word, and they expected He would do so with Lazarus. But now He would let the evil go to its fullest extent, that we might see His title to do it all away. The Lord, though He heard that He was sick, remained in the same place. When He was coming, He said, "Lazarus sleepeth." The moment we see death coming to believers we can say, This is no judgment; "this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God." In connection with Christ, no evil can triumph; but even death can turn for the glory of God. And, mark, it was not for some vague good at a distance, but "that the Son of God may be glorified thereby." The power of life has come into the very place of judgment. We have not to wait till we get to God, but God comes in delivering power to us who were "dead in trespasses and sins."

146 Chapter 8 is the truth of God and the Son of God connected; "grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." And, besides that, life came by the Son. He could have healed Lazarus and remained safe in Jerusalem: but now He does this miracle in the most public way. And He did this that all the purposes of man might be brought out. Contrast the way in which He raised Jairus' daughter - in private.

The foundation of the faith of God's people is in resurrection - "for your sakes," v. 15. They were to believe in Him, "the resurrection and the life." "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." The law was not truth. The law put man on his responsibility; but now man was taken up as dead already: this was truth. The law put a man on doing - "do and live." It told him the rightness of what ought to be, but did not tell him what he really was. It answered the purpose for which it was sent; for it made the "offence to abound." The law did not tell man what he is, nor what God is to man - love; but when I get the truth, it sets me free. While I am under a yoke, I am made to toil, toil, toil. The yoke draws me down, and I have no power under it. "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" There is no deliverance in that; but if One comes in who says, You are a wretched sinner, dead in trespasses and sins; but I can deliver you by bringing in a righteousness of God - which sets me free in heart and conscience. I can stand in God's righteousness before a God of truth and love. "If ye continue in my words"; these words He addressed morally to all.

147 There is another thing. "The servant abideth not in the house for ever," but comes in on the condition of conducting himself well in the house, and, if not, to be turned out. "But the Son abideth ever." We are made free, and may "go in and out and find pasture" as children of the house. "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." Christ is the proof of God's love - righteousness the proof of what Christ is. I have a place as a son because of what Christ is as a Son. He came in the power of life; not dealing with man as he is, and trying to mend him; but giving life, thus treating him as dead. "Martha said, I know that he shall rise again," etc. But Christ spoke, neither of the resurrection of believers, nor of the resurrection at the judgment. He would shew her that death was nothing in His presence. "I am the resurrection and the life." She said a true thing when she said, "He shall rise again at the last day." But this did not touch Lazarus' case. If you have to be called up at the last day, you do not know but you may rise to be condemned then. Besides, his mere natural life would be subject to death again if he were raised up now, unless He who raised him were "the life" as well as "the resurrection."

Christ does not say, I am the life and the resurrection, but, "I am the resurrection and the life." Death has come in; therefore He must bring in resurrection first. He is the life-giving One who has come in and destroyed the power of death. Death shall have no more dominion. Death had dominion over the first Adam; but the last Adam gained dominion over death. And He has quickened us together with Him, and has taken us out of that state as having nothing whatever to do with it.

Constancy of Christ our Comforter

John 13

<21024E> 148

It is evident that Jesus here addresses the disciples who then were around Him; but what we see there of Jesus draws the soul to Him. That which draws the sinner, which gives Him confidence, is what the Holy Ghost reveals of Jesus.

I desire we should consider what is found in verse 1, that is, the constancy of Christ's love - a love that nothing damped nor weakened. If we think what the disciples were, and the world, and the adversaries, we shall find that Jesus had a thousand reasons putting a stop to His love. We see round Him three kinds of persons - the disciples, the indifferent, and the adversaries. The latter are more especially the children of the devil. They are those who, when they saw the Lord was going to take the kingdom and reign over those things, said, "We will not have this man to reign over us." There are some who from the bottom of their hearts have the certainty that Jesus is the Christ, and who will not have Him. The adversaries may draw away the indifferent. All that was in this world was of a nature to destroy Jesus' love, had it not been perfect and invariable: for there is nothing that wounds love more than indifference.

We naturally love sin, and we would make use of all that God has given us to satisfy our lusts. Jesus saw all that. He saw the disgusting state of this world and said, "How long shall I . . . suffer you?" When we are in the light of God, it is thus we judge sin.

Where are the parents who would not desire their children should avoid the corruption they knew themselves? It was because Jesus knew the sad state of man that grace led Him to come to take him out of it. God sees everything. In His compassion He takes cognisance of everything in order to meet our wants. But what does He meet with? Indifference of heart. The heart of the natural man sees in Jesus something contemptible. He cannot acknowledge his own state, and he will not be a debtor to God to get out of it. He prefers remaining in indifference with respect to that God who loves him; and, again, let us remember that there is nothing that discourages love more than indifference.

Jesus met with hatred also. All those who loved not the light, because their deeds were evil, hated Jesus. Pride, carnal assurance, self-will, everything in man, repelled God. There was nothing in this uncleanness, this indifference, and this hatred, that could attract the love of Jesus. That love might have been led to give up when, for instance, Jesus saw that Judas was betraying Him.

149 If a person were going to betray us, we should be too much occupied with ourselves to think of those who will not betray us. This was not the case with Jesus.

Although iniquity abounded, Jesus shewed all His love; and finally, His disciples themselves forsake Him also! Those who loved Him were so selfish and so much the slaves of the fear of man that it was impossible for Jesus to reckon upon them. Such is the heart of man that, although a man may love Jesus, yet his heart is worthless. Jesus had to love in presence of a hatred which never relented. He loved us even when we were covered with uncleanness, indifferent, full of hatred for the light and having denied it a thousand times. He who knows himself best knows best how true this is. If we were to treat a friend as we treat Jesus, friendship would not last long.

What a contrast we shall find, if we consider how different that which Jesus found on earth is from what He enjoyed in heaven! There He found the Father's love, and in the presence of that perfect love, the purity of His own could not be manifested, because it found no obstacle. But here below, remembering what He had left, He loves His own, even in their uncleanness; this itself draws out upon them His compassion. The object of grace is iniquity and evil. The indifference of His own proved to Jesus all the extent of their misery and the need they had of Him! Even the hatred of man shewed that man was lost. God came to seek man, because he was not in a state to seek God. How many things God has borne with! What indifference, what betraying, what denials! One would be ashamed to act with Satan as one acts with the Lord. Nevertheless, nothing stops Jesus: He loves His own unto the end. He acted according to that which was in His heart, and all the wickedness of man was for Him only the occasion of manifesting His love.

The Lord has done all that is necessary to re-establish the soul in relationship with God. Sinners as we are, the grace of God came to seek us. Righteousness and the law require that evil and the wicked be removed. John the Baptist required repentance; it was the beginning of grace. But pure grace (far from saying to man, Leave thy state and come to me) comes itself to man in his sin; it enters into relationship with him, that God may be much more manifested, than if there had been no sin.

150 Grace applies what is in God to the need which is produced by the ruin where we are. Jesus loves unto the end.

What consolation to know that Jesus is all that is needed for all that we are! This places us in that which is true, and leads us to confess the evil which is in us, and not to hide it. Grace alone produces sincerity; Psalm 32: 1, 2. A man who has a profession to follow wants to appear strong even when he is weak. Grace produces truthfulness - makes us acknowledge the weakness and infirmity in which we are. If we were in the place of Peter, we would do what Peter himself did, if we were not kept. Jesus loves His own "in the world," in their pilgrimage and their circumstances, in spite of their misery, of their selfishness, and of their weakness. All that Satan could do, and all that was in man, was quite of a nature to hinder Jesus' love: nevertheless, "he loved them unto the end."

Can you say, "I have a share in that love, in spite of my weakness? I have understood the grace and the manifestation in Jesus of the love of the invisible God." Have you acknowledged that it was necessary that Jesus should come into the world, in order that your soul might not go to the place where there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth?" Have we made up our mind to acknowledge ourselves to be what we are? This is disagreeable to the flesh, it is painful; like the thorn of Paul, it is something that continually tells him, Thou art weak; and that is precisely why God allows it to remain. Is the flesh sufficiently mortified in us for us to be content that Jesus should be all, and ourselves nothing, and for us to rejoice in seeing our weakness, since it is to manifest the strength of God in us?

Jesus has not forgotten any of our wants. The heart which is free from selfishness thinks only of that which love would do. Thus it is that Jesus, on the cross, does not forget His mother, but commends her to the disciple whom He loved.

Christ our Hope, and the Holy Ghost, with our Responsibility

John 14

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This chapter is an answer to the distress of the hearts of the disciples, and in it we get two things set before them: first, the glory of Christ's Person with His coming again; and, secondly, the coming of the Comforter.

The first great truth that He brings out is that they belong entirely to another place. This world is not good enough for them. He was going away from them, and this was something to trouble their hearts. Therefore He brings before them Himself, as the object of comfort, "Ye believe in God, believe also in me." By believing in God, you get comfort; so it will be by believing in Me.

The occasion was a sorrowful one surely; for to know Christ and yet not to see Him, not to have Him with them, might well trouble the heart. They had taken Him for their portion, and left everything else. They had so entirely confided in Him, so rested on Him, that His going away might well trouble them.

The great broad principle set forth in answer to this is comprehended in what He is. And it is as though He said, Do not suppose I am going away to be alone in heaven. No, it is for you I am going. "In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you." There is "room enough and to spare." This was another thing to comfort them - a place in the Father's house. The home of the Christian is there where Christ is. He was not going for Himself only, just to relieve Himself from the desolateness of the world. He was going to His home as the Firstborn among many brethren, and all the rest will have their place there too at His coming. "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself." This is the language of affection. He does not say, I will send for you. No, that would not satisfy the heart - "I will come." He would not be content without having them where He is, and without coming to fetch them. He could not leave them down here in this polluted world. "Where I am, there shall my servant be." And there will be the word for them, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter," etc. He takes their hearts out of this world altogether - not their persons yet indeed, for they were to be left without Him for a season.

152 We see the absolute intimacy that existed between them from 1 John 1, "That which was from the beginning . . . which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled," etc. They knew Him well; so that, when they were to go, they would not be going to a strange place, because they knew Him there. If my father were gone away to a distant country, my heart would go after him there, and would be more at home in that place where he is, than here, although I knew not the place, for I have never seen it. Note that the Lord never supposes for a moment the slightest doubt of their being there. There is the most perfect certainty for them, because Christ would be there Himself. The question of fitness could not come in; for does not Christ know whether you are fit? There would be difficulties in the way - in the world "tribulation"; the road may be rough, but the home is certain. He has taken our sins and blotted them out, and therefore He can speak as one who knows the full value of His redemption.

"Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know." Suppose I were going to a strange place, I should want to know the way. He says, "I am the way," etc. I am going to the Father's house, and you shall be there too. And what makes the blessedness of the Father's house? The Father being there, and brothers and sisters there, it is not the place nor the state that we think about in connection with the Father's house (though there are these as well); but the great thing to our hearts is the Person there - the object in the house - the Father. None can go to the Father "but by me." If I know the Father, I know where I am going. It is He makes it a home to me. When the prodigal returned to his father's house, there was great rejoicing - the fatted calf killed, etc.; but it was the spring of joy in the father's heart that made them all so happy there, whether servants or sons.

Jesus says to them, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." As if He had said, You have got the thing you are looking for, if you have Myself. You have not to wait to get to heaven to know Him. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." If they knew where they were going, they also knew the way - "I am the way," etc. In seeing the way in Him, I find I have known the Father, before I get home to the Father's house. He has done that work which makes me fit to be there. He has come down and brought the Father to me through the efficacy of His work. Then I have got home in one sense. How can I get farther than to the Father Himself? You have the thing you are seeking after. You have found the Father in Me, and you have found the way to it.

153 When Christ is first revealed, it makes us feel our unfitness, but He purges the conscience. The work which has purged sin away is done. The believer is justified from all things. If a man believes in Christ, he has a new nature. Can the flesh believe in Christ? "Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee," etc. The soul that believes has all the efficacy of Christ's work, blood-shedding and sprinkling. I have the happiness Christ has. What is this? All that results from unhindered fellowship with Him. Another thing is the power by which we enjoy it - another Comforter, and this given to be down here. It is here the Father reveals the Son, and this would be a Comforter that would never leave them.

Every one who believes in Christ, resting on His work, shares the blessings of the Comforter now given and abiding. A person is not a Christian unless his body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost is not known as an object (though He distributes to every one severally as He will), but He is in us - living spiritual power in us. Christ did not dwell so in us. Christ was with them three years, and then went away from them; but the Holy Ghost never goes away, and is promised to be in them "a well of water," etc. The effect of the Holy Ghost's power is to bring Christ back to us; not in person, as an object, but Christ becoming, by the power of the Holy Ghost, life in me. "To me to live is Christ," etc. Christ Himself is He whom the Holy Ghost shews to me. There is a blessed living object in Christ which I do not find in the Holy Ghost. They could not say of Him, "We have handled him," as of Christ.

"At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." They were very muddy as to this before, "In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father" - in the Godhead is this blessed One who was down here as a servant - "and ye in me, and I in you." Is this home strange to me? No; I have been eating with Him since His resurrection Not only do I know Christ as an object, but the Holy Ghost makes me know I am united to Him. There is consciousness by the Holy Ghost of this union. And does the one who knows he has it think much of himself for that? No; there can only be wonder and astonishment at such grace; and there is nothing so humbling. The law may torture the conscience, but grace humbles. They could not know it while He was here; but they would know it in that day, when they are "members of his body," as Paul speaks.

154 Then there are responsibilities which belong to us as such. "He that saith he abideth in him, ought himself so to walk, even as he walked." "He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." If God has loved us in sovereign grace and goodness when sinners, He has also gracious affections towards us when we are saints. There is the every-day government of the soul in His hands. He that loves Me shall be loved of My Father. This is not a question of whether they were to be saved, but the daily manifestation of Christ to the heart. A father might take care of his children, and love them when they are pleasant; but he cannot manifest his favour to them, if they do not please him. God will not fail to keep them according to the prayer of Jesus, "Holy Father, keep them whom thou hast given me." He will keep them, but this is the way He keeps - revealing Himself in happy intercourse according to their walking with Him in obedience.

Mark the position of believers: until we make our home in the Father's house, He makes His home in us.

Christ on high, and the Holy Ghost here below

John 16

J. N. Darby.

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The Gospel of John brings out specially that which refers to the Person of Christ in contrast to all that is Jewish. At the beginning of it we see Him presenting Himself in divine right and power to "his own," while "his own received him not"; and towards the close we see Him leaving those who had thus rejected Him, and the Comforter coming to take His place - to take of the things of Christ, and testify of Him to the world, and to be the guide and support of those whom He was leaving behind. In this chapter we see the twofold character of the work of the Holy Ghost: His way with the world, and His way towards the saints.

Verse 2. The first thing the Lord shews the disciples here is, that they are to have the same position as their Master: opposition and rejection. The opposition of the world often comes from entire blindness. "Whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service." Such is the blinding power of unbelief! It was so with Saul. He thought he "ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth," Acts 26: 9. Man walks in darkness, because he is darkness, his conscience is darkness, and in consequence of false instruction his mind is blinded too. What a man does conscientiously, he always does with earnestness, though he may be acting wrongly with a blinded conscience. A person may be very conscientious in resisting the truth. What is called conscientious acting is often nothing in the sight of God but the conduct of one who is thoroughly blinded by Satan.

Verse 3. "These things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me." God had given them every evidence of who Christ was, but, in spite of all that God could give, they rejected Him. "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness . . . ."

All ignorance is the fruit of sin; but here it is wilful blindness. They "loved darkness rather than light." Notice here the sin of rejecting light. No general acceptance of truth will do, if it does not enter the soul as of God. The way in which God was proving men now, was whether they would own His Son. He presents Jesus as an object, in order to put men's hearts to the test, and if Christ is not received, all general acknowledgment of other truth goes for nothing. There is such a thing as a man screening himself from the charge of rejecting truth by just taking a little, as much as will satisfy his conscience; but the great test to the heart is whether he receives that special testimony which is not accredited in the world. If Christ, the Son of God, is rejected, this is everything for condemnation in the sight of God.

156 By rejecting Christ, men proved they did not know the Father. If Christ had come, saying that God was not Jehovah, they would have been right in not receiving Him; but He always identifies Himself with the Father, and so men were proved the very enemies of both.

"And these things will they do unto you," etc. Very often when we have received truth from God, we must be content without being able to satisfy others that it is truth. And if others cannot understand, so neither can we explain. We must go on patiently, though we have to act in a way unintelligible to many. We must expect to be despised. The Lord set His face stedfastly to go to Jerusalem, and it was the very thing that brought out man's opposition. The path of faith can never be understood, though communications of truth may be.

Verse 5. "None of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? "We are constantly acting in unbelief in this way. The Lord often tries our hearts. The disciples were thus tried in the prospect of the Lord being taken from them. What comfort they had had in His blessed presence! And now sorrow filled their hearts (v. 6). The sorrow was legitimate, but they were filled with themselves - their own grief, instead of seeing how God was working, and what were His purposes. The real truth was, that the Son was going back to the Father. We may lose God's purpose of blessing to our own souls, by not seeing His mind in that which grieves us. The disciples were shut up in their own sorrows and thoughts, instead of inquiring where the Lord was going. But He would comfort them, in spite of this weakness of faith, and gives them the promise of the Comforter (v. 7).

What a wonderful blessing the presence of the Holy Ghost must be, when it needed that the Lord Jesus Christ should go away in order that He might come! It is well for us to ask ourselves whether we do really believe in the personal presence of the Holy Ghost down here. A soul might say, "Ah, if I had the Lord here to direct me, how well should I do and bear! "But if we know redemption-deliverance through the death and resurrection of Christ, we have Him still with us, and in the best and nearest way. For the Holy Ghost dwells in us to unfold Him to our souls, to teach us the glory of Him who has loved us and shed His blood for us, who has all power, Head over the Jews, Head of the Gentiles, Lord over everything. Nor is it only the glory of His Person, but our union we learn. "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." We have the Holy Ghost too as the guide; and the Lord would have us guided not ignorantly but in intelligence. The presence of the Holy Ghost presupposes judgment having passed upon the flesh, which naturally resists guidance, and the flesh must not be allowed place in the Christian, if he would be guided of the Spirit.

157 In chapter 14 Christ says, "The Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name," etc.; but in chapter 16 the Lord speaks of sending Him by virtue of His own personal title. Going up to glory as Son of man and as Son of God, He sends the Comforter, in virtue of His own official glory.

Then we see the work of the Holy Ghost (v. 8, etc.). The world He will convince of sin, and righteousness, and judgment. His office again is to guide the saints into all truth (v. 13-15).

"He will convince the world of sin, . . . because they believe not on me." It is not here as Messiah to the Jews that the Lord speaks of Himself, but as the Son of God to the world, as such. It was "sin" not to know the Father nor Him. The charge here is not that of having killed the prophets or broken the law; but "they believe not on me." God had sent His Son into the world, and He had been cast out. (He says this in view of its accomplishment.) The very presence of the Holy Ghost stamps the world with this sin. He could not be sent here, unless Jesus had been rejected - unless God's own Son had been cast out. He had wrought always: this is His personal mission and presence on earth.

God said, "I have yet one Son; it may be they will reverence him." It was His last trial of a world lying in the wicked one, full of all kinds of corruption. He was reconciling the world unto Himself, and saying, as it were, Receive My Son, and I will not impute your sin; but they cast Him out and slew Him, and thus proved that wilful sin was in man. There was the perfect light of God in love and grace, in the Person of His Son, coming down to earth, and men loved darkness better. This was their condemnation. It is not God coming in the terrors of the law to frighten men, but in grace to attract; and they will not have Him. There is no reason why the Son of God was rejected, but the utter wickedness of man's heart.

158 It is a moral thing, this unbelief. It is a demonstration of what the heart is by nature. The Lord cannot now with wicked hands be crucified and slain; but the moral guilt is just the same; for the natural man will not receive Christ, he does not want Him. To those who do receive Him, God says, "Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more." But of the world it is said, "The world seeth me [Christ] no more."

This rejection of Christ is the one great sin that the Holy Ghost deals with the world about. Why do people prefer vanity - everything - anything - to God's Son? Because they are perfectly opposite to God, and that is sin. It is the plant and pith and sap of that which is in my heart by nature. And if the world is convinced of sin, there is an end of righteousness. The only righteous One who ever came into it was rejected and allowed to suffer before God. On the cross God leaves the righteous One to be utterly rejected. But righteousness came in by this way; and it was proved when He, who had been obedient unto death, went back to the Father. What an answer to all that He had done was there in this acceptance! He had accomplished all that gave Him a title to be at the right hand of God; He had proved Himself fit for God's throne.

When the Holy Ghost thus convinces the world of righteousness, it is not a testimony of man's fall from God, or of man's corruption, or of man's failure under law, but man's rejection of the One who is accepted at the right hand of God. It is His righteousness and God's righteousness thus vindicated. "Ye see me no more." All was ended as regards the world. When God's Son was rejected, there was to be no more connection with the world, as the world, till the vindication of His title in judgment. "Now is the judgment of this world." Then I come to see that I, in heart, have thus rejected Christ. I saw no beauty in Him; not one affection was set upon Him. Education may have led me to own Him after a certain way, and there is mercy in that; for knowledge of scriptural truth may be used by God: just as when a fire is laid, you have only to put the light to kindle it. But we have all been either despising Him, or in active will rejecting Him.

159 The world is given up to judgment, while God is still dealing with it in blessed patient grace. We see no sign of judgment yet, though the saints may be rejected now as Christ was. But it is our place to walk as strangers and pilgrims here below. All that is of the world, and the prince of this world, is judged by the presence of the Holy Ghost.

Let me fix your attention on the perfect, divine righteousness accomplished by Christ. What the Holy Ghost tells our souls is this, that it is such a righteousness as is fit for God's own throne. There is where I rest as my title to glory. Fruits will follow, of course; but my title to heaven is in the divine righteousness of Him who is there for me.

"He will guide you into all truth." This has nothing to do with the world, as the world. But as when the Lord said, "What I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you." "All truth" is the whole truth of the glory and Person of the Lord Jesus Christ - all ours. We know but little of it, it is true; but the Holy Ghost is down here to unfold it to us. He brings down to us the things from heaven, the glories of the Father and the Son, the fellowship with the Father and the Son, not what is going to happen to Nineveh. All the counsels of God in Christ are ours, in the power of the Holy Ghost. What a wondrous field of spiritual thought in this new world to which we are introduced! It is filled by Christ for our own use. Our portion is to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It is not speaking to us of miracles, but taking the heart of the saint into all that God has to say about His Son Jesus. What a blessed place the saints are in! the Holy Ghost to reveal to them all that God delights in as regards the Lord Jesus, His Person, His work - all that the Father has given Him - all His coming glory.

We may not say, "These things are too high for me." The question is, not that we have not been far from Him, but if He is near to us. Suppose my father is the great judge of the country, I ought to be outside the arm of the law, but I am interested because it is my father's work. How that little word "my" - "our" - comes home to the heart! And all things are ours.

While the Holy Ghost shews us all the fulness of the Father's house in the glory of Jesus, our hearts are attracted by Christ Himself. When He gives the capacity to understand the glory, He says, I have given it all to you; you shall share it with Me. And, beloved friends, we shall see Him again in all His glory. The secret of our joy now is, that He gets Himself His right place in our hearts. It is the perfection of His grace that He should draw them to Himself. There must be this work in the heart, as well as the arrow in the conscience to shew us what we are; or else it will be as the morning cloud and the early dew. Remember too, we are not of this world. He has separated us to Himself, and we are to walk with Him as His people.

The Son Pleading

John 17

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It is very natural that Jesus should have deeply felt, before leaving this world, all the circumstances in which His disciples were about to find themselves. At the moment when the Son had accomplished His work, and completely glorified the Father in the midst of all the difficulties and all the malice of Satan (a moment which has not had, and which will not have, its equal, whether in time or in eternity), it was natural, I say, that He should put all before the Father.

Not only has Jesus perfectly glorified the Father, but there is no one who, like Himself, has felt all the effects, all the consequences of sin. He realised all, and has placed us in the same circumstances as Himself. He felt and expressed all the weak position of His disciples, according to all their need, and according to all the resources which He knew to be in the Father.

He said these things in the world, where He had been the Man of sorrows, and where He had suffered much. In virtue of the work He accomplished, He can enjoy all the privileges of His work; but He takes this into consideration, that His disciples are left in the world.

The natural heart does not feel the privileges of the child of God. The natural heart does not feel its wants. Pride does not see difficulties; hence it "goeth before destruction." The natural heart escapes many things which are a weight to the child of God. We see that in Jesus. He does not hide from Himself His position. "I have," He says, "a baptism to be baptised with," etc. He did not hide from Himself the state to which sin had reduced men, and the consequences of sin. Love overcame the weight which He had always on His soul, as we see in Gethsemane; yet He remained calm, because He committed all to the Father. We see Him entirely, alone, but calm, full of love, and always capable of acting in love.

At the time then that one does not feel grace, one has not the same wants. The thoughts of being brought low, manifested in this chapter, do not find any sympathy in the natural heart. Christian men are too disposed to avoid knowing this state of abasement; but therefore they do not know the immense resources which are in God. Such is the folly of our hearts!

162 In verse 10 we have the position where Jesus places His own in their privileges. In presenting to them their resources, He then speaks to the Father. It is the expression of the Son's heart. "The hour is come" - an hour more memorable than that of the creation - an hour during which evil and its effects were conquered.

The glory which He claims is not that which flows from the will of the Father, and which He possessed, as Son, before coming into the world: it is another thing. It is because He had humbled Himself, not to do His own will, but to do that of the Father, because He had been obedient unto death, and had taken upon Himself the consequences of sin, that He could be glorified in saving His church.

The abandoning of His own will shews itself in the answer which He made to two of His disciples, who asked to be placed, the one on His right hand and the other on His left, in His kingdom. That is not in My power, answered Jesus; but in my Father's. This giving up of His own will to us is of infinite value; it is thus that we can have a share in His glory; for, if He placed Himself under the power of Satan, it was because He was capable of doing it. He must needs be the Son of God to accomplish this work, and He would do it in grace: otherwise we should have no share in it. He has taken the glory as man that we might possess it; for we could not have that of the Son.

He was, in death, under the power of Satan, but He could not be held by it; and it was so in order that we might have a share in this glory. He puts Himself in the lowest place in order to be able to say, Father, glorify Me; and not, I am glorified. Mark well, that though He was humbled, it was perfection, in order that the heart of the Father should be satisfied in glorifying Him.

What power of Satan was not destroyed when the Prince of Life underwent death! Thus God has been fully glorified, and Jesus also, because as man He has fully this glory. Why did the Son need to be glorified? It was for us. He had placed Himself as low as our sins had put us. Now He glorifies the Father in His own (v. 4). We see that power has been given Him "in heaven and in earth." This power was given Him because He humbled Himself. This is very precious: for it is because He was man that it could be given Him; because it was His as Son. It was in order that He might give life to all those whom the Father gave Him, and that He might claim His right for them, and against those who do not recognise Him. He does not speak much of the latter in this chapter, because His heart was full of His disciples.

163 He is the Head of creation: "The firstborn of every creature: for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist," Col. 1: 15-17.

All that glorifies our Head ought to be precious to us. It was needful He should reconcile all things, according to what is said in the same chapter: "And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the pre-eminence. For in him all the fulness was pleased to dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven," v. 18-20.

Christ was Head of the creation, and Head of all men; they are given to Christ, and He refers all to His Father. It is God who gives. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."

Power was given Him, and He should give eternal life to as many as are given Him. This life is to know God the Father. "I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." Jesus begins to speak of the work which He accomplished on the earth. "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." "I have glorified thee on the earth." What is it, that the first Adam had done? He had owned neither the power nor the goodness of God; he had denied all that God was towards him. The last Adam, on the contrary, had felt all that which pride prevents us from feeling. He felt the forsaking of God as to His soul; and He could say, "I have glorified thee." The more evil there was done here, the more the Father was glorified. Never did irritation enter into Him; no contradiction ever prevented his having the same heart for man and for God. What is precious is, that it is man who has perfectly glorified God: He would do it, and He has accomplished it. It was in man that it was needed to be done, for it is in man that God was dishonoured; it is there that Satan reigns and governs; it is there that the image of God is marred; it is there that God has been dishonoured before the angels; but it is there also that He has been glorified in Jesus - man - not by avoiding the evil but by placing Himself in the midst of all this evil. The more evil there had been, the more the Father had been glorified.

164 As man Jesus accomplished the work that the Father gave Him - the work of grace; it has been perfectly accomplished. Hence the Father can rest in His Son, having been fully satisfied. He could say, "This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased." And hence God can pour out His heart into the heart of a sinner.

God could give outward blessings, as the sun and the rain in their season, but He could not be in communion with man. His heart can speak of Jesus - man; He could not keep from saying, "This is my beloved Son"; no more than John the Baptist, when seeing Jesus, he said, "Behold the Lamb of God."

The heart of the Father wanted to save. He committed this work to the Son, and this work was perfect. Hence Jesus could say, "And now, O Father, glorify thou me." There is nothing more to be done. What rest for the soul! There is nothing but glory to receive. All the rest is done. This word "now" shews that God had found in Jesus that which perfectly responded to His heart.

There is rest. There is perfect equality. Jesus can say, with a boldness which shews who He is, "Father, glorify thou me with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." And we, by the Holy Spirit, are admitted to these conversations between the Father and the Son. Already, by the Holy Spirit, we, in our measure, understand what a place the Lord has given us.

The holiness and righteousness of God could find nowhere to rest, like the dove out of the ark. But in Jesus He has found perfect rest. God sought morally as we seek a friend; He has found it in Christ; He cannot seek elsewhere.

From verse 6 Jesus speaks of what He has done for His disciples: "I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word." "I have manifested thy name unto them" - the name of Father. For Christ there were certain relationships, which He could not know save as man. and as man of sorrows; but He knew the Father and committed Himself to the Father. "I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me." He was placing their hearts before the Father, where He was Himself. As He knew the Father, so He makes Him known to them.

165 If any one has been very kind to me, how would I speak of him to a person to whom I wish to make him known? Whilst He was down here, He spoke of the Father in telling them all that He knew of Him. He tells them that He is His Father and their Father.

God can seek nothing in us, but He can give us all, finding all in Christ. Oh! may we realise what Christ has revealed to us, namely, that the Father is for us. Is this the habit of our souls?

We become the objects of the communications between the Father and the Son. The greater things are, the more magnificent and intimate, the more are they worthy of God, and by infinite grace we are the objects of them. I do things which I should not do if I knew the Father better; and I should also do things which I do not. It is a question not only of not doing what is forbidden; but also of being in the relationship of father and child.

The soul is elevated. The Holy Spirit makes us feel the love of the Father. He brings us into liberty by shewing us, not that we are little, but how great God is. When we are altogether pre-occupied with Him, this liberty produces a holiness which has immovable foundations. God and Christ were occupied with us, when Christ was still in the world and in our position; He has put us where He is.

That produces effects of holiness, because it always brings us nearer to the Father, who is light and holiness. When I see the fruits of the Spirit, I say, God is there, for He is God. It is not only this that God works in me, but also that I partake of His nature by the Holy Ghost which is given me.

Jesus, having manifested the Father's name to His own, comes now to speak to Him of their position in the world, while separated from Him. He introduces that by saying that the disciples had received Him not only as Messiah, but above all that they had understood this revelation of the Father, that they were no longer of this world, and that they had understood that all came from God

"They have known," says Jesus, "that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee." They saw the relationship of unity with the Father, relationship until then unknown, and which has been made manifest in the humiliation of Jesus. The Son has been manifested, not only as a Jew, but as man, and man in the lowest place: in that position He received all from the Father. The Father sends the Son, and the Son says, "They have believed that thou didst send me."

166 When the Lord speaks to His disciples, He speaks to them according to the position of grace which He made for them, and not according to the realisation which they had of it. God always speaks to us as to children who know that they are children: it is their own fault if they forget it, or if they do not know it. Jesus says, "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know," John 14: 4. Philip says, "Shew us the Father." Well, it is the same thing with regard to the action of the Holy Ghost.

Many Christians have not understood that they are one with Christ and they have to be reproached with this: for Jesus said, Ye shall know I am in you, when the Spirit shall be given unto you. He speaks not according to what is realised, but according to His love and the privileges which He has given us. He has made us partakers, not of His divinity, but of all that the Father gave Him as man. He has such confidence in His disciples, that He gives them the words which the Father gave Him. "I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me: for they are thine." I pray for those who have received thy words.

The Lord acts as apostle for the world, but as priest for His elect, for those who are manifested. Those who are not yet manifested are doubtless known of God; but they do not receive all the care which is necessary to Christians in order to be kept in this world. Those who are not manifested are not thus responsible; but as to Christians, all that makes them feel their responsibility is very precious; for they are placed here below as representatives of Christ.

Jesus says, "As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." And where is the one who, understanding that he is sent as Christ, does not also feel that he needs grace in order to represent Him? It is then most important to understand the position of the elect who are entrusted with representing Christ before the world (not however that this touches salvation) Jesus says, "I am glorified in them"; and those who are not manifested do not glorify Him. It is therefore only for those that are manifested that He prays; and it is they who become the subject of the communications between the Father and the Son.

167 That which is dear to the Father is dear to the Son; if the Son loves the Father, He must pray for us; if the Father loves the Son, He must glorify His Son in us. It is a wonderful position which the Lord has made known to us. These are the two motives which, His work being accomplished, Christ presents to the Father. If Christ had been the Messiah owned by the Jews, He could have remained in the world: but as priest, He could not remain there; and, as to us, we are exposed to all the evil without having the presence of Christ, and we need something sure to rest upon. This leads to a much deeper sounding of the heart.

There was no such need of a clean heart, when Jesus was upon the earth. His disciples could go and ask Him what the will of the Father was; but now we must have, by the Holy Ghost, the intention of Christ; and this takes place when we realise the communion of the Father. It is a position still more blessed than that which the disciples had. On the other hand, the Christian who is not in that communion may go astray. All intelligence depends upon the state of the soul. It is not with us as with a servant to whom it is said, Do this. It is the presence of the Holy Ghost which makes us know the intention of the Father: only we must walk in Him.

We cannot walk in the world with blessing if we are not in communion with the Lord, and then we are only like servants. The Christian has forgotten that, and thence it is there is so much darkness. Christ is no longer in the world; but as yet, we are in the world, and we have to manifest things which are outside the world, which are in heaven. Hence it is impossible to discern the things of God with the flesh, even for a Christian who is not faithful, for he loses all discernment, and he lowers himself to the level of all that surrounds him, if he does not seek exclusively the approbation of the Father.

Jesus says, "Holy Father, keep" them; that is, for His disciples. He is "Holy Father" for the disciples, and "righteous Father" for the world. "O righteous Father," He says, "the world hath not known thee." The world and I can no longer walk together; and the Father had to choose between the Son and the world. "Keep them," not with respect to the things of this world, but as Thy children, for glory; not to spare them suffering, but for eternity.

168 He cherishes us as a Father, who does not permit a single hair of His children to fall without His permission. Those things which appear paltry and little are of some interest to a father and mother. Now God loves us with a perfect love. He takes cognisance of all that relates to His children, and of all that concerns them in whatever degree it may be; and all that does not lead us into the glory He takes cognisance of. This is why He chastens us, for He is the "Holy Father." He keeps us from evil by the warnings of His grace, by His word, by reproof, by the joys of the family of God (a great means which the Holy Ghost employs), and by the chastisements which He allows to fall upon man outwardly, so that the inward man be kept.

The flesh always pens itself in, because it is selfish. When we are in the Spirit, there is always unity. Three things especially compose the joy of Christ. Being the object of the Father's joy, His heart enjoyed His communion, and this also belongs to us. Obedience was His food, His meat, the joy of His soul. It is the same with us. As we are the objects of the exercise of this love of the Father, there is a joy for us in the exercise of that love. He makes us partakers of that joy. If there is a conversion by our means, the joy of Christ is in us. It is the Spirit which acted in Christ. He could be a fountain of love, although His heart was "withered" through all that was in the world. Wonderful position! a position of responsibility, it is true; but the joy of Christ who is for us, not only the joy which we shall have in heaven, but which we have already in this world.

The world hates as soon as there is a manifestation of Christ. It cannot be otherwise. We must reckon upon this, that, if we hold forth the light, we shall be hated, even amongst Christians. They do not find that lovely; but the gospel will never be lovely for those who will not receive it. All that is lovely in nature is not the offence of the cross.

If I weaken my Christianity by Judaising, I shall be received; for man will consent to give to God, provided he also be a little glorified. But, if there is nothing but the cross, man hates; whereas the moment one recognises ever so little of the world, we are not hated. It is needful we should count the cost, whether with the forces which we have, we can fight, or whether Satan is stronger than we are; and this will not be the case, if we keep ourselves in communion with the Father.

169 It is true that it is not agreeable to be hated. All that leads us to be agreeable to the world, and to the customs of men takes away the offence of the cross, and renders us agreeable to the world, but puts us at a distance from Christ.

Jesus the Willing Captive

John 18: 1-10

<21028E> 170

Two points attract and fill our hearts in this passage. First, the perfect willingness with which Christ gives Himself up, the unhesitating way in which He presents Himself to the armed band come out to seek Him, fully knowing what was to befall Him. "Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, I have told you that I am he. If, therefore, ye seek me, let these go their way," proving that, while He offers Himself, there is a full and perfect deliverance for us. "Of them which thou gavest me, I have lost none." The Lord presents Himself, that none of us might even be touched with the power of the enemy. It was the same self-devotion on the cross; though here it was the power of Satan, but He had gone through it. When led into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, He bound the strong man, and introduced present blessing into the world; but we as men were unable to profit by this, because of a moral inward incapacity to receive the blessing that came. Outwardly it was received in healing diseases, etc., but men had no heart to receive Him. If He turned out the legion of devils from him that was possessed, men turned Him out. The hearts of men in such a condition were glad to get rid of Him; and this shews another and a deeper evil to be remedied - that man morally has departed from God, and that he is himself irremediable - that nothing will do but a new creation: "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation." Thus here the Lord has not only to conquer Satan, but to underlay man in his moral departure from God. "This is your hour" - "My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death "

Satan brings all this darkness and death to bear on the soul of the Lord, his object being to get between His soul and God. So, the more pressed by Satan, the nearer to God He is. Therefore it is said, "being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly"; and in consequence He receives nothing at the hand of Satan, but of His Father. "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" Before He left Gethsemane, the whole power of Satan was morally destroyed. He had gone through the hour with His Father, and now takes the cup at the hand of His Father, as an act of obedience. He is now as calm as when doing any other miracle (healing the servant's ear), as if nothing had happened. It was their hour, and the power of darkness was upon them, not on Him. "Whom seek ye?" - "I am he." "As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground"; but He presents Himself again (as He says in John 14: 31: "But that the world may know I love the Father. . . Arise, let us go hence") saying, "Whom seek ye? . . . If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way," and they were not touched, as a token of the complete deliverance of us all.

171 At the cross He cries out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He went through the hour in Gethsemane, and here drinks the terrible cup. His soul had drunk the cup of wrath, and only one thing remained. He said, "I thirst": this He said that the scripture might be fulfilled; and crying, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit, he gave up the ghost." Here we learn the perfect deliverance that has been obtained for us, and that all is perfect light and joy for us. If I look at Satan, I see his power annihilated and destroyed. If I look at wrath, He has drunk it to the dregs. He entered into all the darkness and the wrath of God; but before He went out of the world He had passed through it all, and went out in perfect quiet. The work is so perfectly done, that death is nothing." His hour being come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father," He passes out of Satan's reach, and beyond all wrath, to the Father.

No believer is any longer under the power of Satan. Thus Israel of old, though once under Pharaoh in Egypt; but when delivered he was never under the power of the Canaanite, except when he failed, as we know in the case of Ai; so we may fail too, but we are in that new creation that has passed all the power of Satan and the wrath of God. Do your souls realise the truth that Christ has "abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light," so that our souls are brought into the light as He is in the light? It was not true when He was down here; but now we are brought into the light where there is no darkness at all. May our souls know and enjoy the true and perfect deliverance that is our portion in Him!

The Exercises and End of Grace

John 20

<21029E> 172

It is remarkable the instruments God uses to display His grace towards man, and the different exercises of heart persons go through, which prepare them for the service on which they are to be sent. There is a loneliness which may even be occasioned by a man's own folly, in which he finds himself without a single thing to get comfort in, that he may prove that to be in the Lord which he would not know in any other way.

God cannot associate Himself with evil. There must be death upon nature altogether. The corn of wheat would have remained alone without death. Christ was alone as to Himself; comforters He had none. "I looked for some to take pity, but none." "They gave me gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." These are expressions of this loneliness. He was walking in undeviating devotedness with His Father all the way through; but there were none to enter into it, though, speaking of His disciples, He graciously says, "Ye are they that have continued with me in my temptations." Could He have said more if they had been faithful in sympathy all the time? Our poor hearts have to learn the way the Lord meets the soul that waits on Him.

We see, in the case of Mary Magdalene here, and in the other Mary too who broke the box of ointment on Him, there was something that made them lonely. What made Lazarus' sister Mary lonely? She had found something that took her clean out of the world. Martha was careful about the supper; but with Mary it was not the supper but Himself. His object was not to come for earthly refreshment, but to pour into His people's hearts the revelation of the Father. Martha was not wrong in preparing the supper, but in trying to get Mary away from the Lord. If she had been right, she would have been glad to do it all herself. There was not the joy and delight in her heart that there ought to have been. Mary had found one thing that isolated her heart in the most blessed way. Her affections were alive to all the evil that was coming (not as a prophetess, but her spirit was in the thing), and at the right moment she went and spent the ointment on Him. He says of her, "She hath done it for my burial."

173 In this Mary (the Magdalene) we get yet another thing. Seven devils had been cast out of her, that is to say, the expression of complete diabolical possession, indicating the extreme of wickedness. That isolates a person, who is separated from nature, as it were, by the extent of wretchedness. When the spirit is touched, she is separated from the evil. The effect of finding Christ in such circumstances is that He becomes everything to her. (There is not the same intelligence in her as in the other Mary; we do not find her, as the Magdalene, at the tomb.) She could not leave in the same way. When she lost Christ after the flesh, she had nothing. She was terribly broken to pieces by evil, and Christ was gone. There was something human connected with her affection; there was also culpable ignorance in what she did; but the Lord had compassion on her; and more, He manifested Himself first to her.

The disciples saw, and believed. They perceived He was gone, but understood not the Scriptures. Mary had no home, and when she found not the body of Christ, what had she? The disciples were not isolated in the same way; they go away to their own homes. She, in her ignorance, but withal in her love, says, "I will come and take him away." This last is very precious. It is a great thing, when Christ has such a place with us as to be everything. In one sense this is the door by which all must pass through; at death, if not before, nature must decay and vanish. What is more nothing than death? All here is gone. We may learn this spiritually, or by circumstances, or at the moment of death itself; but learn it we must. We must find everything but Christ nothing.

Christ calls her by name. When He comes and calls His sheep by name, it is all right. She had now got Him back after death. Nature had, as it were, passed through death, as Isaac. Nature had mixed itself up with her affections, but now she has got beyond that; all is given up to God. The promises made to Abraham were all surrendered up by him when Isaac was to be taken. Mary Magdalene thought she had Christ back when she had not. She thought of Him corporeally, but she must have Him in another way. It will be so with the remnant of Israel by-and-by. They will have Him corporeally then, but now He says, "Touch me not," etc. I am going to another place. I am taking your hopes or your promises in another way, and not in flesh. If He was to take it, it would be when the just shine in the kingdom of the Father. He says, "Go tell my brethren, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God." I am giving you something entirely new - not My presence yet - not power yet; but where He was going Himself He would take us.

174 He does isolate us: He does pass us through different circumstances; but whether gradually or suddenly, His object is to break down everything of nature, and this in grace to us. Here for the first time He says, "my brethren." He never called them "brethren" definitely until now. He had been heard from the horns of the unicorns; Psalm 22. During His life He had declared the Father's name. Now He declares that the love wherewith He is loved is that with which we are loved. He could not say that during His life. During His ministry He was making known the Father, walking with the Father, speaking to the Father. Now He takes them into the same relationship. Why? Because the redemption was accomplished.

Christ never addressed His Father as God - never less than as Father. During His life as given in the Gospels, all His life through, it was always, "Father." When on the cross it was, "My God, my God," until all was finished, when He said, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." In making the atonement, what was not against Him? There was one thing that could not be against any, and that was love; but there could be none as to the feeling and manifestation of it then. He was forsaken; and the more the love was known, the more terrible it was. He was dealt with according to the majesty of God, the righteousness of God, the truth of God, the holiness of God. All that God is was made good against Him. God was thus putting away sin, and Christ was glorifying God about the sin.

But now, being dead and risen, He comes up to put His disciples into the place of full blessing. The work is done, and there is no sin left. Everything that God is is now brought out in blessing, and all the sin is put out of the way. He is declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. He goes up to God, and takes us too. I am going to My God, and He is your God too. He is going into all that is blessed. I am not going to be present with you corporeally, so that you can "touch" me; but I am going to My God and your God, My Father and your Father. Such is the word to this poor desolate woman. She was a fit messenger, by her very nothingness, to witness of Christ and His work and fulness.

175 "I go," and faith goes too, entering into that within the veil. It enters into all that which God is. Where we live is within the veil. Sense may come in and hide God's presence; but the atonement has brought us into it, and into the very same relationship which Christ has as risen. We sometimes enjoy peace, we enjoy scripture, a hymn, or prayer, without realising the presence of God; and then there is not the same power, or the same exercise of heart in it. I can own the blessing, and rejoice in the blessing, without having my heart searched out; but if in these I have the sense of Him, my state is very different. It is very important, not only to have a right thought, but to have it with Him. If you search your own heart, you will find that you may sing without realising Jesus Himself. Then the heart is never probed, the evil is not detected, and the power of grace is not the same. By the atonement sin is put out, and God is brought in. God exercises our hearts about good and evil by first giving us the good. There must be the possession of perfect good, and then there is holiness, and not merely the exercise of dread and fear. Our hearts must follow Him where He is gone. We cannot "touch" Him.

May the Lord give us to live a life in which He is everything!

Peace

John 20: 19

J. N. Darby.

<21030E> 176

"Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you." It is a great thing to say with authority, "peace," and a great thing for the heart to feel the power of these words.

The Lord had said before, "My peace I give unto you"; and this too is the portion of believers now; but the disciples had not peace without: witness the doors shut on account of the Jews. They thought it had been He who should have redeemed Israel; but now they were in much confusion of heart, and great fear of those without.

They still trusted in the Saviour, in a sort, though He was not returned, and therefore they were in dismay as regarded their hopes, and they feared because of the Jews. God might sustain their hearts, but there was nothing to rest on as a present thing.

Now to this point the soul must be brought - to see no hope but in Christ, even though at the same time Christ may not be found.

The Spirit of grace, speaking to the sinner, convinces him of his lost condition; but the power of grace alone can give peace in the knowledge of sins forgiven.

It is to be remarked here that the disciples had leaned on Jesus as the Messiah; their thoughts had been that He should have redeemed Israel (that is, lead them on to comfort and blessing). There was this character of trust in Messiah, through whom, while with them, they lacked nothing, for He gave them power and blessing; but to the disciples at that time all this was gone. Jesus on whom they rested, to whom they looked for support and strength, was not there; and to them that knew Him not as risen, everything was gone. So we may hear of Jesus' name and His love, and this may please and attract the mind when the Lord is working in grace; but, at the same time, it is like the disciples resting on a living Saviour, but with no knowledge that we are lost. Jesus may have so attracted our minds, that the world may appear to us but loss, and nothing but Jesus valuable; and we may say even as the disciples, "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life"; but this is not seeing that we are lost, or knowing the power of the resurrection.

177 The convincing of sin is a time of most special distress: the world gone, Jesus lost as to sense and appearance and not found again; but it is when in this state and condition Jesus reveals Himself. And how? Saying, "Peace be unto you." And this is not simply blessing and strength to the weak; it is not supply to need that suits the lost: there must be a Saviour for the lost. A man in want may go to the world for supply, and will do so undoubtedly if he be unregenerate; but if a soul feels itself lost, nothing will satisfy him till he finds a Saviour.

And here the value of the cross comes in. The cross is not only the image of our lost condition, but all that belongs to us is there expressed, as borne by another, and here the case of a sinner is met. We may have been before looking for supplies from Jesus to meet our supposed need, but the discovery of our being lost is only met in the cross. The natural man may see it a happy thing to have his sins forgiven; but to see the power and the effect of the cross, the wrath borne, the cup drunk, to see the curse laid upon Jesus, meets the need of those who have a sense of what is due to sin. The heart that knows what it is to be lost responds to this, a new light breaks in on the soul in the perception in Jesus of what sin has done; had we to learn it in ourselves, it could only be everlasting destruction. And what is the sense of a curse passing on the head of that blessed One, if it was not for us? It does not merely draw our affections, but the knowledge that we are lost is forced upon us in the death of Jesus. What sense is there in the Son of God in the grave, if not for us? A sinless person in life and conduct, "the brightness of God's person," and perfect as man; what relation has this to us? what bearing has it on our souls?

I speak not now of grace or supply to the believer, but what meaning is there to our souls in the cross of Christ? what sense is there in the death of Christ, if you are not lost? - lost by all the evil, the sin, the vileness, the transgression that required nothing other than the blood of Christ to blot it out. If your condition is not that to which the blood alone is the answer, let it alone; but if it be, there is One on whom the judgment of God came for sin - One in whom all is accomplished for us, and there it ends. The knowledge of this by the Holy Spirit brings the complete sense of ruin, but with it the perception of being saved, for the knowledge of our being lost, when fully known in Jesus, brings with it the knowledge that we are saved; and then come those blessed words, "Peace be unto you." But the poor disciples, with the power of Satan round them and Jesus gone, is the state of those who do not fully understand the power of deliverance in the cross.

178 The Lord said of Job, "Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him?" The candle of the Lord shone upon them; but in the character of Job, it is revealed to us that none can stand in the presence of the adversary. The comforts of the Lord are first of all withdrawn from Job, and then an evil disease cleaves to him; yet in this he sinned not, nor charged God foolishly; but afterwards we see him entirely broken down in the presence of the adversary. He was a man whom God could point out as having none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man; yet could he not, with Satan as his adversary, stand before God; and this causes him to make himself more righteous than God, and to curse the day on which he was born. Yet what is the result but the opening of the lips of Job to say, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Not so Christ; He was one who stood before the adversary in the presence of the Lord. And the resurrection proved how unfailing His service was; and we learn in the sorrow and the suffering of His righteous soul, and in His death, what sin is. The Lord coming under the title of death which Satan had against us, bearing our sins. This is what the cross is. The suffering went on in the soul of Jesus when sore amazed in the garden; it went on in the soul of Jesus when He said, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" In the weight of the wrath upon Him, we learn what the cross was; and if you feel that you are lost, you will know the meaning and the value of it.

It is not a crucified Saviour now, but a risen One who speaks to us, the giver of all victory to us over all that was against us, having delivered us from suffering under it; and consequently the word "peace be unto you" is the authoritative expression of one who knew the ruin, and yet could say "Peace," because in the full knowledge that everything was done that could bring peace to the soul, for He had risen from the power of sin and death, having met the adversary to the face; and what could a risen Saviour say but "peace"? Could He speak of wrath when He had borne the sin and the curse, and was risen over it all? What could He say but this? And it is a risen Saviour who does say "Peace" to those who, though they have no peace, yet know the meaning of the cross. What the cross shewed the requirement of is finished for ever, and therefore to those that believe it is "peace," "peace."

179 The first person whom the Lord addresses after His resurrection is one out of whom He had cast seven devils; but grace had won her affections. She was drawn to Jesus, though looking indeed for the living among the dead, but still she was looking for Jesus; and the Mary He singled out to reveal Himself to was the one in whom the full energy of evil had been shewn out; and to her the blessed Lord spoke that one word which revealed at once to her, that He who had died was alive again - Mary - giving her a hope that was beyond destruction, because Jesus lived beyond the grave. Jesus, He whom her thoughts and affections were set on, was alive for evermore; and all her hopes rested in the endless life of Him who died for her. What could be darkness to her if Jesus was alive? The darkness had been gone through, for in Jesus' death she had tasted it for a time; but He was risen for evermore, and the riches of God's grace through the power of Christ, we find now first revealed to one who had been possessed with seven devils.

And if the Lord speaks "peace" to the soul, what is the meaning of it? This gives it power, that it is not a mere passing word of kindness, but peace, eternal peace, because peace is made by His having borne our sins, by virtue of what He accomplished on the cross. It is on this ground He says "peace"; and if you see that in this sense He never speaks "peace," till He is risen, you see that "being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ." "Much more then, being justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him," Rom. 5: 1, 9. Have your souls known this peace? and have you known what it is to be lost? Not merely acknowledging the need of a Saviour, or looking for supplies from Jesus, but knowing that what was due to you was borne by Jesus?

180 It presses too keenly on the heart and conscience to look at the cross unless you can say, It is peace.

The careless heart of man cannot bear to look at the cross except he be at the foot of it, acknowledging his need of it; for he has to measure himself by the wrath poured out on Jesus. But if your back is turned on the cross, there is none to give peace. The cross may cause us shame when it leads us to see what sin is; but itself, it is the power of God unto salvation. Haste then to God who beseeches you to be reconciled. And may the Lord, in the riches of His grace shew you the vileness of sin, and that Jesus has drunk the bitter cup of wrath but is now the risen Saviour; that you may enter thus life of peace through Him who, in that He died, died unto sin once, that he who lives might live unto God.

Lost or Saved

Acts 26

<21031E> 181

The peculiarity of the gospel is its activity towards man - dealing with individuals to whom it is addressed, and not merely propagating opinions. It is quite intelligible that a person may like to spread his opinions, but he will soon get tired of it. The gospel deals with man individually, and goes out actively towards man: neither Judaism nor heathenism ever did this.

The character of the gospel is as when Paul preached it, that it turned "the world upside down." Nothing was to stand before it; nothing could be allowed with it: Judaism, heathenism, etc. - it overturned all. It brought in the claims of God upon individuals. It not only brought truth about God, etc.; but it shewed those addressed to be in a certain position towards God. The gospel comes and says, "You are lost"; and it does turn the world upside down. It is a new thing for them to be told, You are all wrong. Paul did this. He stated soberly what it was - gave proofs of it, but could not convince man's mind. He treated every living soul as a sinner, a child of wrath, a child of disobedience. That must be from God, not man, and it turns the world upside down. Paul was sent out to all the world, and so were others also; 1 Cor. 15: 10. His mission was peculiar; and he brought the claims of God before men, calling everyone to repent, warning them they were all away from God, and telling them to submit to the gospel.

It is a solemn thing for a man to stand up, and say, "You are all lost." And this is what Christianity tells us is the state of all by nature; and yet it comes in grace. It is not law: the law never did that. It came to a people already redeemed. They had been brought out of Egypt, and now God said, You are to have that law, and to you only can I give it (any who come in as a Jew may have the same privileges). The law maintained the unity of the Godhead, and it gave a rule of life, or rather principles of blessedness for a creature, if he could keep it . It was given to a feeble people to maintain the truth until the "Seed" came; but it dealt with man (while convincing him that he could not keep it) on his own ground that he could keep it. The Jews to whom it was given were a specimen taken from human nature to test it, and to prove whether any good thing could come out of it. What is the good, you may say, of telling men they are lost? Why not leave it till the day of judgment? This would not be grace; it would do for law, but not grace. There was most important truth conveyed in the law - one God, etc.; but He was behind the veil. He sent out to tell man what He was, but He hid Himself in thick darkness. He never revealed Himself under the law. He gave a law telling men what they should be, but could not reveal Himself. He would not have put man to the test if He had, for "God is love," and love could not deal in law.

182 If God had revealed Himself, He would have said, "You are perfect sin; but I am perfect love, and can put away your sins." "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." The gospel tells you not only that you have done wrong, but that you are a sinner in the presence of a God who reveals Himself. It comes revealing God in such a way, that the contrast between Himself and you is brought to light - sin and light. "Light is come into the world, and men loved darkness," etc. Christ never turned away any; but He did not cover over man's sin - He brought it to light. There is truth as well as grace. He came presenting God to the conscience of man, and laid it open and bare before Him. Why should God trouble Himself about my sins, and not leave it all till the day of judgment? It is all grace that makes you conscious of what you are in His presence now. There is life-giving or quickening power from Him, which, however terrible the conviction arising from it, brings a longing for holiness when I have not got it. There is a new nature that cannot get peace for itself; it has the desire after holiness, but knows it has not got it. It is there, heavy laden, though delighting in God, and desiring Him. There is a consciousness of a burden, but no power to get from under it. There must be something else The gospel brings salvation to the person for whom it is wrought

There must be righteousness; but the new nature is not righteousness. I have to find out, not only what is in my heart, but what is in God's heart about me. Confessing my faults will not make me happy. Can I be happy, if I have offended my Father, because I feel sorry about it, without knowing what His thought about me is? The gospel brings knowledge of divine love in salvation. The gospel is the perfect full answer from God to the desires He has produced. In a word, it is salvation.

183 Paul, when the gospel came to him, was full of himself, self-righteousness, and self-complacency. He had been spending his life in doing things to make himself righteous in God's sight, and then found out that it was all in vain, and that the "carnal mind is enmity against God." Self had been the object of all. He had been spending all his activities to drive God out of the world, and hinder the gospel of His grace; if he could have done it, he would. That is the character of every one by nature; though not so energetic as Paul, they are the enemies of God. Will a wealthy man like to hear money spoken of as good for nothing? If he has none, perhaps he will be glad to hear it; but men do not like what they pride themselves in to be made nothing of. God and man are at enmity. Man is righteous in his own sight, and how will he like to hear his own righteousness called "filthy rags"? "He eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners" was the complaint against Christ. Will He go to the sinners and slight their righteousness? Will they have such a God as that? Saul was an enemy of God, when in his own sight he was righteous. He wanted his eyes opened, and that is what he got. When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me." Two things must accompany each other - the revelation of God's Son and the knowledge, by that revelation, of ourselves. Paul had all manner of truth before; but God was not revealed to him.

So you too may have plenty of truth or doctrine and not know God. If God is revealed to me, it is because I have not known Him before. Could you be conscious of being in the presence of God - every one is in His presence; but could you be conscious of it - and not know what you are? When the eye is open, we see with the truth of God. Philosophy argues about God, but what are the thoughts of man about Him? Think of a man with plenty of money being told the Lord was to come to-morrow. What would he think of his money? Would he not hide it? We live the life of fools in this world (I do not mean Christians, but in our natural state); and what is more, we know it, but we do not like to know It. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. You must take a child to get the simple expectation of good from this world: men do not expect it; they know they are pursuing what cannot satisfy them.

184 In verse 17 of this chapter we get a new starting-point. Paul was one to whom the gospel came thus, his enmity having reached its height, he was turned "from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God." Paul tasted the perfect grace of God, that left not a thought of sin between Him and Paul. "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." He saw Christ, and was taken up in the midst of his enmity and sin, and made an apostle, "to turn from darkness to light." We are not only living in darkness, but we are darkness until our eyes are opened. The sun does not give light to a blind man, and such are we till our eyes are opened. When a person sees with the eyes of God as to himself, as to light, as to God, this is repentance, not salvation yet; and a sinner needs salvation. I cannot get the sun at all, without having a little heat; but this is not peace. You must be at home with God to have confidence - you must see Him. The consciousness that we want God, and the consciousness of knowing Him, are different things. It is what God has done for man that is salvation, not what He has done in man. We can tell men they are lost, because we know it for ourselves. We can tell them they are lost, because we know we are saved. When I have got the remedy and know it will cure, I can tell of it. I know there are sins, but I have got Christ. I have got something beyond the new nature that longs for holiness. I have forgiveness - no mention of sins against the man who believes in Christ.

The gospel not only tells men they need forgiveness, but it tells them they have it - not a single spot - all the sins gone. Any Christian can say he has it, who knows and believes the gospel. But how can you say that? you ask. Does not God say so? Perhaps you are not caring for it! It is terrible if you are not - terrible that God should send His Son and you not care about it! This is worse than breaking the law, for the blood was shed to wash away that sin. Now when atonement has been made, and is rejected or treated with indifference, what can be done? For "there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin." By the gospel we announce the forgiveness of your sins, and a perfect righteousness wrought out for you. Have you got it? Do you think God has sent His Son to atone for our sins, and to work out this righteousness, and we not need it? If you need it, have you got it? Nay, do you know you want it? Have you ever been in the presence of God? Have your eyes ever been opened to see your nakedness in the presence of God? The blind man does not know his state. When God has clothed a man, he is not naked. God clothed Adam with skins. When a man has put on Christ, surely it may be said, "By grace are ye saved."

185 Christ has wrought out a righteousness in which we can be in the presence of God, and in which He can Himself sit on the throne of God. He has clothed me with divine righteousness as well as given me forgiveness, and He preaches peace. I know, when clothed, I have perfect peace. After this, there is the full and blessed result in glory. What Christ is entitled to we get. He has a title to everything, and I have a portion with Him in all that He has. The work which has earned the glory for Him as Son of man gives it to me. When He comes, we shall come with Him in the glory. There is the "inheritance "; but, what is better, we are to be with Him who is the universal Heir. He has finished the work for salvation. For whom? For me; for every believer.

Do you say, Ought not I to wait till I am in the glory, before I believe that I am cleansed from all sin? Surely not. The angels will see it then; but we, are not we to see the salvation? We do when we have faith. Those who only expect to see it when they get there will not see it at all. Ought I to wait till then to know the cross of Christ? The effect of knowing it is forgiveness. Am I to wait to know righteousness then? The only way to have it is to see Him by faith, while we cannot see Him. The gospel reveals the answer of God to my soul, that what I want I have in Christ - forgiveness, righteousness, life, peace, glory. My sins are borne away already, and my title to glory just as perfect as when I get there. "We have redemption through his blood." The consequence of knowing I have it, is that I can walk with God.

How can you walk with God if you have not peace, if you have not forgiveness, if you are not cleansed from sin? Could Adam walk with God when his conscience told him he had sinned? No. But the gospel brings salvation, as it is said, "The grace of God which bringeth," etc. Now, have you got salvation? If your eyes are open, you will want it; have you got it? God does not deceive you. He does not say you are saved, if you are not. The craving after it is not the answer to it. If He has given the craving, He will complete the work; but it is not the answer. If you say, How can I tell? you have not submitted to the righteousness of God; you are going about to establish your own righteousness by the fruits of grace you want to find in yourself, and so to get a proof of your standing before God. But will fruits of grace give you forgiveness, righteousness? They are not the blood of Christ; they are not Christ. How can they cleanse from sin? God delights in the fruits of grace, but they cannot put away sin. It is the work of Christ on the cross which alone does that God has set Him at His own right hand; and when I believe it, I see how God has loved me. May you be in yourself so broken down, that you may find One who never breaks down!

186 Grace reigns through righteousness, and will produce all manner of fruits through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Death with Christ

Romans 6

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This chapter is the application of Christ dead and risen to the believer's walk, and is the proof that grace disallows sin. Hence we have here Christian practice, and the ground of that practice. We are called to liberty, and not slavery, even in holiness. There is righteousness, but it is of that sort which bears fruit. There is evidently wonderful depth and value in it, as there must be in all that which comes from God. Nor is it merely the producing fruit down here (that is man's thought), but it is fruit that goes up to God; for whatever comes from Him goes up to Him. The meat-offering might be eaten, but all the frankincense went up to God. When Christ was down here, He offered Himself in His life as a sweet savour; Eph. 5. It comes down, and goes up to God again. This is Christian morality; and where this is wanting, it is all nothing. The value is in the motive.

Thus, there may be two men - the one doing everything for his own pleasure, the other for the sake of those around him: the one acting on a merely selfish principle, the other feeling aright as the father of the family. Therefore we have constantly to judge ourselves, that we be not judged. The Christian, in judging himself, must be grieved when he sees how many other things come in, and mix up with that which he presents to God. Self is apt to enter, and spoil the savour of the ointment - not, perhaps, in others, but to himself before God.

We have seen that chapter 4 of this epistle brings out faith in the God who had intervened in power, and raised Jesus, who was under the power of death, and set Him at His own right hand. We thus believe "on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead." He had said of Himself, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," speaking of His body.

In chapter 5 faith is applied to justification, and then the law comes in by the bye - righteous of itself, but convicting of unrighteousness those to whom it was given; for they could not keep it. Man must be innocent or saved. If a man is innocent, he does not want the law. Adam could not have known what it meant if it had been said to him, Thou shalt not lust, and, Thou shalt not steal. Whom was he to steal from? Man was addressed in the law as a sinner, and it was not given till 400 years after the promise. By one man's disobedience many were made sinners, by the Other's obedience many were made righteous.

188 This display of grace seemed to make it no matter how the believer lived, and to meet such a thought as that we have chapter 6. The perverseness of the flesh will turn the law to a purpose quite opposed to that for which God gave it, and grace to a different purpose from that for which it was bestowed. The law, that was meant to convict man of sin, they use for self-righteousness; and grace, that is intended really to make a man holy, they turn into licentiousness.

Although it is true that souls were quickened before Christ came, in virtue of His coming, we learn this truth, that man is lost, a fallen sinner, before he is the head of the fallen family: and so Christ was the Righteous Man before He became the Head of the redeemed family. Man naturally likes unholiness; and how is he to get rid of this? Nay, "how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?" The motive to, yea ground of, a Christian life is that we died with Christ; and we have life through a dead Christ, with whom we died. If we have justification, we are made partakers of His life, and there is the spring of holiness. The blood of atonement was put on the ears, hands, feet; marked by this, they had then to watch. Nothing is to be allowed in thoughts or ways that would sully the purity of that blood. How can a man live in that to which he died? It cannot be. If I once died to sin, I cannot live in sin. God forbid! There is putting your members to death; but you are not told to die, as having died already. The cross of Christ has killed sin. I can now deal with this old thing as not me; I have done with it; and I have got a new life, by which the other is overcome.

What Christ have you a part in? A dead Christ. "Buried with him in baptism," etc., raised up by this new power, "by the glory of the Father"; and I can rest upon that expression, because it can feed the heart, and meet the subtlety of the world, and the subtlety in ourselves. There is nothing connected with the glory of the Father that was not concerned in the resurrection of Christ. There was specially shewn the power of God, and the Father's love. There His own glory is concerned in it, for it is the Father's own Son, who was one with Himself, and the righteousness of God is also concerned. He shall convict the world of righteousness. "Thou wilt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." He was God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels: angels must be witnesses of this great work of the resurrection of the Son.

189 There would have been a gap in heaven if Christ had not been raised up from the dead. Now we see (I do not say realise) what this newness of life must be. Ought not I to see divine righteousness in it? Ought not I to see divine love in it? Ought not I to see the glory of His Person in it? And the affections have to do with this too, for He has gone down into the depths of the earth; and how came He there? Because I was a sinner. And do I not see that He who was there so low deserved to be raised? Who was it? The Person of the Son of God. When speaking to the woman of Samaria, He Himself said, "If thou knewest who it is that said unto thee, Give me to drink." He first speaks to her conscience, after He said, "Give me to drink"; then to her understanding, for "I perceive that thou art a prophet." Then the Person of the Lord Jesus fills her heart, for she goes and tells others about Him. And this is where we are brought. The heart follows Christ, as it were, and goes up with Him into the new life. Everything is dead below.

"This is the victory that overcometh the world, even your faith." I do not say there will be no conflict. And the heart has done with it. How very near it comes to me! "Planted together." And this is no mere intellectual perception, but, as I see that Christ was there for my sins, it is the very way in which my need is all met. "We have been planted together in the likeness of his death," etc. It comes to me here, and for my sins And was divine love the less because down here, and not up above? It is in that I learn it, because it was for my sins. Was divine power the less? It is here I learn it. His heart followed me to be made sin, and now mine must follow Him in resurrection. We have no half Christ. We are planted together in the likeness of His death, and planted together in the likeness of His resurrection.

He not only died but is personally accepted. It was "that the body of sin might be destroyed, that we henceforth should not serve sin." You were slaves (speaking after the manner of the country) - under the title of dominion by another - not knowing at night what they should do in the morning - naturally slaves to sin or slaves to the law. Not that the law was sin: see John 8: 33, where the Jews are addressed as under the law. "The servant abideth not in the house for ever, . . . but the Son abideth ever. If, therefore, the Son hath made you free, ye are free indeed." It is perfect liberty. He that has done with sin must be dead to it. You cannot charge a thing upon a man that is dead. Why did you do so-and-so? "He that is dead is freed from sin." All is gone to which it attached. Do you ask, How can that be said, when I find I am not dead? Because it is with Christ you died. Christ was put in your place; He has taken it on Him, and done with it. The very things that distress me now are the things that put Christ to death. He has done with sin; therefore mortify it. "Reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin, and alive unto God." I should not need such a word as that "reckon," if there was no need of mortifying. It is holy liberty from sin we have, and not to sin.

190 "Walk in newness of life." "Have your fruit unto holiness." But the great doctrine of grace is - saved by a mediator. "Enter not into judgment." If judgment takes its course on me, it is all over with me. Wash yourself ever so clean, the instant you see the eye of God upon you, you see yourself as one out of a filthy ditch. Job wanted a "daysman, who might lay his hands upon both." The more delicate the conscience is as to the sense of the least defilement, the more the need of the mediator is felt. You say, I find that which ought to be dead is still alive. Did Christ die for the sins you have not, or for those you have? The very things you are finding out are the very things He died for. The more jealousy of conscience, the better, only be sure to see the grace too.

We have a new thing in Him; He is raised from the dead. Judgment cannot touch it - death cannot touch it. There is not a single thing He has not taken upon Himself. And now we are planted in a new state of existence altogether; in that we live, we live in Him, just as much as we died with Him. He died, not for Himself, but He was made sin, etc., and in everything He was put to the test. He learned obedience by the things that He suffered. He went through everything - the scorn of the world, the power of Satan - even to the wrath of God. He was tempted in all points like as we, yet without sin. Satan never could find anything in Him. It was His meat to do His Father's will. But it is never said He could take delight in the suffering for sin; therefore He says, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt."

191 Now He lives beyond it all in resurrection. He had the Spirit of holiness. All His life through, this was true of Him; but He was put to the test in everything. But now we see Him in new life. He is no half Christ then. He died to sin, but lives to God; therefore we are to reckon ourselves dead to sin, and alive to God.

This is a very practical question. Not that you are to say, If you have not the realization of this, you cannot have the value of the blood. No; but you must know the value of the blood, and so have it in Christ, that you may live. The groundwork of living to Him is to have died to sin with Him. That is the position - "Reckon yourselves," not experience yourselves, etc. "Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal bodies," etc. It does not say, Be alive to God, and therefore reckon yourselves, etc. In the power of this I can be living before the world as belonging to God, as I can live before God in the sense of acceptance, because justified by Christ's blood. Live to God. How can I do otherwise than hate myself to be doing even a right thing, and not doing it to God? The worst thing possible is to be bringing corruption into the best things.

"Yield yourselves to God." Did Christ ever do anything for Himself? His was a life of love. He had not time even to eat - always living for others. He not only did things that were commanded, but because they were commanded. What a blessed thought - to have done with self! It is the best thing in the world. "Sin shall not have dominion over you," etc. Oh! but you say, It has dominion over me, and I am afraid God will not have me. What are you doing with grace? How can you come to God for anything, if you are not standing in grace? To whom can you go, if you are not in grace? Romans 5 comes before chapter 6, and if you try to reverse them, you get into chapter 7. If, because I do not love Christ as I ought (which is a higher thing than the law), I doubt whether I am His, I put myself under law - only it is making Christ the law instead of the ten commandments. It is not realising grace, for grace is favour to those who do not deserve it. It is the subtlety of the heart again to abuse grace, where we do not ignore it as we have seen.

"Ye became servants of righteousness." A person is not to be licentious because free from the law, but he has to produce "fruit unto holiness." What is holiness? Separation from what is evil. Adam unfallen was not, but innocent. God is holy, Christ is holy; so are we holy, for we hate sin, and love righteousness, though we cannot do it as God does. Holiness must have God for its object. Christ never needed an object of faith, though He walked in obedience and dependence, as the Holy One of God. We must have an object, Paul had. He saw the Lord in glory, and bore "fruit unto holiness." What fruit does sin bear? None; it brings in death and judgment. But what is meant by "fruit unto holiness?" We must like what God likes; and what is the consequence of this? We become separate from unholiness, and increasing by the knowledge of God. Not only actual fruits (that is true - a tree must be known by its fruits), but this practical bringing forth fruit is connected with the righteousness of God. "The secret of Jehovah is with them that fear him." There is constant reference to God's will. "If the eye be single, the whole body will be full of light." We have to learn God, not just slipping and getting on, but with consecration of the heart, growing up in the knowledge of God - not only servants to righteousness but "to God."

192 God's own character needs to be wrought in us. Christ thought it worth while to leave heaven, that we should be free to go up there, and made to bring forth fruit unto holiness down here.

There is a positive joy in pleasing God. "The gift of God is eternal life." It is all grace; and I would rather have eternal life as the gift of God, than ten lives of my own ever so long, because it is the proof of His love to me.

May we grow up to do His will, remembering it is founded on reckoning ourselves dead unto sin, and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord! Thus may we live out of the world, as to separation from its evil, as He is!

How are we Saved?

Romans 1-8

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I should like to go a little into the question, How are we saved? In the first eight chapters of Romans we get the gospel fully brought out. It is just the answer to the question, How can a man be just with God? This is the great question of the whole epistle. We do not get resurrection with Christ in this epistle, nor is there union. It is death with Christ, and life through Him. When you get resurrection with Christ, you are associated with Him in life; and when union is taught, you never find justification; for a new creation clearly does not want justifying. This is the teaching of Ephesians, where you get nothing about justification, but all the privileges and duties of the new creation. In Romans we get sinners, and they want justification. In Ephesians we are looked at as "dead in trespasses and sins."

There are two parts of justification - "from sins," and "of life"; the first, the clearing me of my old state; and the second, the putting me into a new place before God. These two parts, are treated of distinctly in chapters I to 8 of this epistle, dividing them into two parts, the first part ending at chapter 5: 11. In chapter 1 we see the ground that called for justification - "The wrath of God revealed against all ungodliness." It is not governmental wrath, but wrath against the sinner; and "all have sinned, and come short" - of what we ought to be? of the law? All this is simple, but the word says, "short of the glory of God." The whole dealings of Christianity are on the ground of that. You must either walk in the light, or have nothing to do with God. It is not God hidden behind a veil, and setting up a law as to what you ought to be; but you are to walk in the light, as He is in the light. So we are taught in that verse of Colossians 1, "Giving thanks to the Father, who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." A man's being born again does not make him meet, his being quickened makes him feel the need of it; there is another thing needed that fits you for glory, and that is Christ's work in grace. The first thing we get about the gospel is, that it is "concerning his Son Jesus Christ," not about ourselves first. People have lost sight of the claims of Christ. He is become the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.

194 There are two things found here (chap. 1: 2-4) in the Person of Christ. First, He is in connection with the promises. People rest on promises. But the promises are fulfilled by Him and in Him: Christ is Himself the accomplishment of the promises. "For all the promises of God in him are Yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us." This was by means of His incarnation, and sufferings, and death: "come of the seed of David according to flesh. "He fulfilled the promises; but I do not mean to deny that we have precious promises to help us on the way. But there is another thing shewn us in verse 17: "Therein," in the gospel, "is the righteousness of God revealed." Faith receives God's righteousness in contrast with the law which claimed righteousness from man. Then he goes on to lay the ground why there must be a righteousness of God, because there is none in man. "Holiness" is connected with the nature of God. The reason I am so bold about the gospel is because it is the righteousness of God.

In chapter 1 the fact is first stated that the righteousness of God is revealed; in chapter 2, the proof of this and the condition of man. In chapter 3 the apostle gives us first the privileges of the Jew; then he says, the very thing you boast of is that which condemns you: "Now we know that what things soever the law saith," etc. Then all are brought under sin. Then he turns (v. 21) to the question of righteousness. What is wanted is fitness to stand in God's presence, and not come short of His glory. It was "witnessed by the law and the prophets." The Lord our righteousness was witnessed in the prophets, but manifested now. Now it is without law. Though he speaks of righteousness, he does not go beyond faith in His blood; and then he takes up the Old Testament saints.

"Through faith in his blood." Propitiation meets God as a righteous, holy Judge. When a person has offended or wronged another, he requires a propitiation. God provides the propitiation, and sets Christ forth as such. He had forborne with the Old Testament saints. Here His righteousness in doing so is declared. God's righteousness is now not only revealed, but also imputed, to the believer. Then he takes up Abraham and David, and shews that they both concur in this testimony: justification or righteousness does not go farther than forgiveness here (chap. 4: 3-5). There is a great deal more in justification, but we are not come to that yet. The accounting righteous in this part of the epistle is the same as forgiveness. What is a propitiation for? Is it not for sin? God sitting as a Judge, and man brought before Him guilty? The death of Christ glorifies God Himself It is of immense importance to see the way God takes to put away the sins of the old man; there can be no peace without it. It is another thing to see how God makes a new man.

195 We get two distinct characters of blessedness in these chapters: the first, chapter 5: 1-11; the second, chapter 8. In chapter 5 I get higher things about God than I do in chapter 8. In chapter 5 I find what God is to the sinner; in chapter 8 it is what He is to the new man in Christ Jesus. God is more fully revealed in the absolute goodness of His character in chapter 5, because it is there His dealings with the sinner, as guilty before Him, and having come short of His glory. But the saint is in a higher place in chapter 8 - there God is for me. In the first place (chap. 5), God is known as the Justifier; in the second (chap. 8), as Abba, Father. Part one ends at chapter 5: 11; that is the way God deals with a sinner about his sins. Now we come to part two. Part one has nothing to do with experience; there I get my debts paid; this may produce very happy feelings, as we see in chapter 5. Part two has everything to do with experience. "No condemnation" - then it is not sinners. In chapter 4, "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin." A man in that sense is faultless before God. Christ has made an atonement, and if you believe in Him, no sin will be imputed to you. Quickening is not introduced in part one; man's nature is not there treated of; it has to do with sins and the remedy - Christ dying for our sins. In part two it is sin and the remedy, my dying with Christ. The whole work was settled on the cross, but it is presented in resurrection. We must have resurrection to make it complete. It must be complete to be presented. "Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and present us with you," 2 Cor. 5: 14. Sanctification comes before justification when they are spoken of together. "Ye are washed, sanctified, justified."

It is the fruit, and not the tree, that is judged in part one. The tree itself is judged in part two. In chapter 3 we get faith in the blood of Christ. In chapter 4 it is faith in the God of resurrection - "if we believe in him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead." I find the sinner in his sins, Christ dying, and the sins not imputed to him. Here is a man who has done this, that, and the other, and Christ died for him. God has raised up Christ, and I believe in Him, and am justified. It is ratified. Justification was not completed on the cross, the work by which we are justified was; but I do not get the assurance of it until I see Christ in resurrection. "If Christ is not risen, ye are yet in your sins." If my surety is not out of prison, I cannot say I am justified. Supposing me in prison for E.'s debt, my acquittance is his justification, not my paying the debt. There are the two things necessary, not only the mortgage paid, but also the deed signed. The work on the cross is that by which I am justified, He was raised again in order to our justifying. He was delivered, our offences being before His mind. He was raised, our justifying being before His mind.

196 Then chapter 5 begins, "Having been justified, we have peace." Here we get the whole past, present, and future: justified as to the past; having peace with God, and standing in the favour of God, as to the present; and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, as to the future. Peace, favour, glory, what more can you want? We may get all sorts of troubles here, but what a mercy God sees me righteous! He never withdraws His eyes from the righteous. I am a righteous man; now I can glory in tribulation, etc. I have the key to all this. I have learnt by all this process not only what I am, but what He is. I have the Holy Ghost in me, as a consequence of justification, shedding abroad the love of God in my heart. I can joy, too, in God Himself (before whom, in chapter 3, I was guilty, and my mouth stopped), not only that I know myself, but I know God too - God in His own absolute goodness. Peace is a fuller deeper thing than joy; when I know that all is settled, and that I am reconciled, then I have peace. A person may have joy, and not yet know himself reconciled. The prodigal may have had a measure of joy in leaving the far country, but he has not peace till he has met the Father, and learns what is the Father's heart toward him. This is all individual. I have got my sins, my peace, my joy, etc. You have got yours.

But when you come to chapter 5: 12, we get all in a lump. All ruined in one man. We have had a man's actions first; now we come to man's condition. Adam ruined us all. It is the state of the race, and not of the individual. I get entirely away from God, and I have a nature away from God. If this be known without any knowledge of the grace of God, it must drive a man to despair, but God never allows it to be so quite. Grace has put away your sin. Another thing God says - "You have died"; but then, if I look at my experience, it contradicts that. I say, "How can I have died when I find the nature there? I have got in a passion."

197 In chapter 5: 12 we come to the nature, and I get more troubled about sin in me than by my past sins. But here we find the remedy too; not that Christ has died for my sins, but that I died with Christ to sin. The doctrine is, "By one man's obedience," and "by one man's disobedience." Oh! then, if by the obedience of one I am made righteous, I can live on as I like? No; the apostle says, "You have died." How can I live on if I am dead? This is justification of life here. We have now the positive side of justification: "There is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." As we see, in the first eleven verses of chapter 5, the blessedness of the believer as the result of what the apostle had been bringing out in the previous part of the epistle, Christ dying for our sins, so in chapter 8 we have the blessedness which is the result of what the apostle had brought out from chapter 5: 12 to the end of chapter 7.

In part one we had what the sinner has done, put away; in part two it is a question of what he is: acceptance would be connected with part two. Righteousness imputed is not the same thing as reckoning a person righteous. If I pay E.'s debts, he is reckoned righteous; but the character of imputed righteousness is something to go on with. "Sin is not imputed when there is no law," v. 13. It is as plain as A B C. How can a man break a law when he has not got it? You cannot say to the Gentile, "You have transgressed the fifth commandment," because the law was never given to him. In Hosea 6 we read, "They, like Adam, have transgressed the covenant." Adam received a commandment, and lived so long as he obeyed it. And under Moses Israel received the law, by keeping which they should live; but from Adam to Moses there was no commandment, yet death reigned over those who had transgressed no given law. We find no forgiveness here. Sin is never forgiven. but condemned. "God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and by a sacrifice for sin, condemned sin, in the flesh," chap. 8: 3. Sin is got rid of by death. If a man dies, there is an end.

198 Chapter 5: 15. We see that the grace must have an aspect as large as the sin. The presentation of grace is to the whole world, but its application is only to those who receive the gift. Verse 18: "As by one offence towards all unto condemnation, so by one righteousness towards all unto justification of life." The one righteousness, as God's gift, is unto all, but it is only upon all them that believe; chap. 3: 22. The contrast here (v. 18) is not between the persons, but the one offence and the one righteousness. The gift of righteousness is unto all: just as the sin of Adam addresses itself to the whole race, so does the one righteousness. "Justification of life?" Here I get justification connected with life (not only from my sins), but I have got life; v. 20. "The law" comes in by the bye. The law required man to make out a righteousness. "The law entered that the offence might abound." It is not that sin might abound, but "the offence." God never made sin abound. Sin abounded over the whole race, and there grace much more abounds. The law not only made sin more manifest, but also aggravated its character. The authority of God has been brought in, and despised. A child might do wrong without knowing it; but when the father gives him a command about it, it becomes disobedience. In chapter 2: 12, what is translated sinned "without law," is the same word as in 1 John 3: 4 (sin is the "transgression of the law"), which should be, "sin is lawlessness."

What is the meaning of Hebrews 9: 26, "Christ put away sin by the sacrifice of himself?" I believe it extends to the new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. So also "the Lamb of God which beareth away the sin of the world." The work that accomplishes it is done, but the power is not yet put forth; 1 John 2: 2. "Propitiation for the whole world." That is, atonement has been made, and the blood is on the mercy-seat, so that all hindrance is removed. In Hebrews 9: 26, 28 we get the two things, to put away sin," and "sins borne"; just as we get the sin-offering and the scape-goat on the day of atonement. The blood of the sin-offering was first sprinkled on and before the mercy-seat, then the sins of Israel were confessed over the head of the scape-goat; Lev. 16. The blood on the mercy-seat now is the ground of invitation to the sinner. I say now to the sinner, Christ has died, and the blood is on the mercy-seat, and you will be received if you come. If he accepts the invitation, I can tell him more.

199 Not only has the Lord Jesus put away sin, but He has borne all your sins, and confessed them as if they were His own; and they are all gone. It is never said Christ died for the sins of the world. In Romans 6 and 7, I am dead and justified from sin. Now I can reckon myself dead. It is not I; I have had enough of "I." Now Christ is I. If I am alive through Christ, I died through Christ. "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." A young man has had debts, but his father has paid them and made him a partner in his own business. Now he speaks not of my business, my concerns, etc., but our business, our concerns. But here, in Romans, he is keeping up the individuality; so we do not get union, or such words as "risen with Christ." In Romans, Colossians, and Ephesians we see three stages of advance: in Romans, dead with Christ and alive in Christ; in Colossians, dead with Him and risen with Him; in Ephesians, dead in trespasses and sins, now quickened together, raised up together, made to sit together in Him in heavenly places. In Romans the individual is cleared from what he was as a child of Adam, and gets the privileges of a child of God.

Chapter 6: 16. Now you are perfectly free: what are you going to do with yourself? You were a slave to sin: now yield yourself to God. In chapter 7 we have the same principle applied to law. Verse 4, having died to the law by the body of Christ, now I am connected with Christ - Him who is raised from the dead. The deduction is, you cannot have both the law and Christ. Verse 6 should be, "having died in that wherein we were held." It is not the law that is dead, but I am dead. The law is the jailer, I am the prisoner. The mistake people are making is that they are killing the jailer instead of the thief. The jailer is not dead, the thief is. Now, if you look back, you will see the condition of a man under law. It is the experience of a quickened soul under law. Experience comes in here, and not in the first part of the epistle. If a man is not absolutely lawless, conscience puts him under law. He says, I ought to do this, and I ought to do that.

The regular Hyper-Calvinists put a man in Romans 7, and keep him there. They put him in the seventh before he gets to the third. In chapters 2 and 3 it is what a man has done. In chapter 7 it is what he is in himself. It is not that I have done bad things, but "I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." This must be learnt experimentally, and not merely known as a doctrine. The soul here learns three things; first, that in himself, that is, in his flesh, dwells no good thing; secondly, he sees that the flesh is not himself, for he hates It; thirdly, that it is too strong for him, and he cries out for deliverance. It is God bringing a man to the full knowledge of himself; then he says, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver?" etc., when Christ comes in, and we have the full deliverance of chapter 8.

200 "When I was in the flesh," chap. 7: 5. Many Christians would not know what that means at all. It is the state of the past. This chapter is experimental, and the truth must be learned, not merely as a theory, but experimentally. To say my sins are forgiven is not experience; but if you tell me something about myself, my experience answers to it, or it does not. We never give up the flesh till we have learned how thoroughly bad it is. I must learn to say, "It is not I," though not to say it lightly, because as a child of Adam responsible, it is I; but I have found out another I. As to the flesh, there is no question of forgiveness. I do not forgive an offending power, I want deliverance from it. In Romans, my being alive in Christ is stated as a fact, but the doctrine is not brought out as in Ephesians. The more spiritual we are, the more we shall see the infinite value of the cross. "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus," etc. (2 Cor. 4) - always keeping it before my faith - holding the cross to the flesh, because I am not in the flesh (otherwise I could not do it).

People talk of whether future sins are forgiven. All my sins were future when Christ died for them. But I ought not to talk of future sins; there is grace enough to keep me from them, and I must not excuse them. Souls have to learn what sin is. Christ, having met the consequences of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, becomes the tree of life to me; and then I learn.

Romans 5: 1-11 is what God was in love to the sinner. Chapter 8 is the condition of the believer with God. Would you not like to feel better in yourself? That is I.

God's Wisdom in Christ

1 Corinthians 1

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All the foolishness of man, even of the saint, is the occasion of bringing out the wisdom of God; all thoughts are turned into good by Him; not that this is any excuse for our foolishness. There are two things brought out here: first, all that is of man is broken to pieces; secondly, God comes in, and the righteousness of man, his carelessness, sin, everything is thoroughly broken to pieces. No flesh can glory in His presence. Then would He have men not glory at all? Not so. "Let him that glorieth glory in the Lord" And this is perfect in strength, wisdom, holiness; he will never have to be ashamed of that which is perfect, and will never pass away, when everything else does fade away. What a glorious thing for the saint! It seems wonderful for a poor sinner to be able to say he may "glory in the Lord." What a tendency there is in nature to glory in anything else! Man must glory in something; it may even be that he boasts of being the worst of sinners. He may glory in his sins, his wretchedness, anything that attaches to self. When God comes in, there will soon be an end of this, he will hide himself fast enough then, and be ashamed of everything he has gloried in before. The state of man by nature is "without God," even though he may be blessed by Him with all natural things; he would be glad to be out of God's presence if he could, but in one sense he cannot. "If I take the wings of the morning," etc. You cannot fly from His presence; yet you are miserable in it.

If a man sets up to be righteous, God will break that down, as He did in Paul. We are easily satisfied with ourselves; a very little righteousness will do. And there is another thing too: man is content with doing his own will; he knows no obedience. Will that do when God comes in? Christ came not to save the righteous but sinners; therefore, if man is to be saved, he must be treated as a sinner. Where was all the boasted righteousness of Saul of Tarsus? He must be taken up as a poor sinner. All man's self-righteousness turns out to be pride when it is traced to its root. The "elder brother" in the parable says, What, will He take in a prodigal? His pride will not let him come in to be in company with such an one. There are plenty of elder brothers now, and younger ones too. Vain man would set up to be wise: he is like a wild ass's colt. What is his wisdom? He picks up little scraps of knowledge, and calls that wisdom; it is man's wisdom, spinning thoughts to exalt himself. Man is "lighter than vanity." But "there is a path which no fowl knoweth, and the vulture's eye hath not seen it." Real wisdom lies there. All that does not give rest to the conscience is folly and fades away.

202 Carelessness, and boasting of sin and self-righteousness, are both folly and vanity. The difference between them is that the self-righteous man is more proud than his neighbour; but in the presence of God there is not a single motive that he would be glad to have never had. There is a way of deliverance open from the judgment. God speaks, "Where art thou?" You are naked in His presence; but there is a resource in Christ's love, and this is granted here, not when we get to heaven. There is heart enough in Jesus to open the heart of the vilest sinner. "Doth no man accuse thee? No man, Lord. Neither do I accuse thee," etc.; John 8.

There is love to meet the need: therefore I have no need to hide my sins; it leaves no room for guile in the heart; it offers no temptation to whitewash myself; but when Christ comes, it puts away all this.

Christ Jesus, "has been made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness (sanctification), and redemption." When we got eternal life in Christ, there was death in us; but life is come, and that life is in the Son. Christ is made unto us of God "wisdom." What kind of wisdom? Divine wisdom. How could God love such an one as I am? There is Christ's wisdom. When Christ is made wisdom for me, I can do without my own, and learn of Him as a little child. How was He wisdom? He went down into the place where death reigned, and got the victory over death. The world sinned against God, and He is come into it in mercy: that is wisdom. Wickedness is going on in the world; why does He patiently bear with it? He is saving sinners by Christ the Lord: that is wisdom.

"Righteousness" is God's own perfect righteousness. Not only can I get "wisdom," which makes me calm and quiet, but "righteousness" in which there is not a flaw; and through His grace He is made to me "sanctification" also. The rule and measure, the power and setting apart of the new life, are all in Christ. It is not like Israel, set aside by circumcision, Red Sea, etc., but in Christ. Christ is the key to the puzzle of this world. By Him I may no longer tremble in terror before God. No; but I can glory in Him, worshipping Him who is all I need. The more I weigh and ponder it, the more perfect and the more wonderful does it seem. We are not to be nibbling a little bit of the law, and to think Christ has done all the rest. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. He is a full Saviour; and hence we learn that He is "redemption" too. By this the power of evil and death are set aside. We wait for the redemption of the body. I have got "redemption" now in my Head, and the fruit of it fully I wait for. Why do we wait? It is the time of His "long-suffering." "We wait for the hope of righteousness by faith." Now, in the best and highest sense we are redeemed to Him. "We are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ." We not only have the life of Adam, but are of God in Christ - this is balm to the heart. What a different position we are in from a sinner trembling before a judge! Whence does all this come? He has taken our hearts up in grace, and will wring them, as He took Job and wrung him, to shew what was in it. What came out was in it, or it would not have come out. "Glorying in the Lord" is real humility: in it I confess I am ashamed of myself, but I acknowledge Christ.

Christ and the Spirit

1 Corinthians 2

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We get two things very distinctly here: the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world to our glory (and that in the Person of the Christ), which the princes of this world did not know, or they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; and then we are told that, as "no man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man which is in him, so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God." Therefore the world is in total ignorance of the things of God. And so we find with men as such. They may be very learned and clever; but they do not know them. Nay, it is rather their boast that man can know nothing but what he sees, together with a few conclusions which he may thence draw. And it is perfectly true too, and therefore one of the most fashionable infidelities of the day at the same time. Of all that is outside sense they are utterly ignorant; and so they must be. With all the learning and talent that is in man, if he meddles with things beyond these, he puzzles himself hopelessly. He only comes either to say, there is no God; or if there is, he does not know what that God is, just as Pilate asked, "What is truth?" He will make quantities of speculations and very clever ones, but can go no farther. Yet he has a conscience. There is a sense of being responsible to some one. There is a knowledge of the judgment of God (kept out greatly, it is true, by man's will; but God took care when man fell, that he should carry a certain knowledge of good and evil with him after eating of the forbidden fruit). So he does carry a conscience - hardened perhaps, but there it is to get hardened and perverted. You may see it in the case of the poor woman taken in adultery: all her accusers went out one by one convicted by their own consciences.

So it has always been, whether God gives man a law, or man is lawless, still there it is - a knowledge of good and evil. And so there is an instinctive sense that there is a judgment, but utter ignorance of what God is, except that He takes account of what man does. There is some feeling, too, at times, that He is good and must be good; but there is no knowledge of the Spirit of God or of His intentions. Of course, beyond this, there is Christianity in its general truths floating about us.

205 But it is wonderfully expressed here; the wisdom of God in a mystery, hidden wisdom, which none of the princes of this world knew. There cannot be a more wonderful expression than that, for Christ is the wisdom of God as well as the power of God, and Christ they crucified. The first thing we learn is, that these counsels of God were before the world. I am now speaking not of election, but of the plans and thoughts of God before the world was. There is the distinct contrast in this verse, thoughts and counsels of God ordained for our glory before the world in which we are now living with all its responsibilities. Now these counsels, which were before the` world, had been brought out consequent upon the death of Christ.

I would insist for a moment on this, that there is a world which has its own thoughts and objects; but that world crucified the Lord of glory. All that had the wisdom of this world and its power were found in opposition to Christ. The governor Pilate, the chief priests and elders of the people, Jew and Gentile, the secular power and the religious power, refused the Lord of glory. And also there is a world in which we are living which has through the cleverness and skill of man under Satan formed round man a wonderful scene so far as man's thoughts go, pleasures, sciences, and the development of the things given in creation; developing again the talents of man amid these things; wonderful combinations exhibited; great skill in turning things to man's use; beautiful music with rich harmonies: all constituting just Cain's history again. He had built his city, he had his artificers in brass and iron (and so have we now); he had harp and organ (and so have we now); pleasing himself without thinking of God, shutting God out and making the world pleasant to the natural feelings apart from Him. It was then and is now alike.

Now Christians are apt to go along with this world and all these things because they have natural powers to appreciate them. There is nothing wrong in these things of the world themselves; it is in the use man makes of them the right or the wrong consists. There is no conscience in these things, no spiritual affections in them, no moral good in them (all God's creatures, of course). Nor are the things evil. Why, in heaven we read of the harpers harping with their harps. It is the use that is made of these things that is wrong; and Christians are very apt to slip into the world's way, and not see the value of what they do, from mere natural delight in things here. It is a world that is forming pleasures for itself out of what God did create; but it does not care for God, for it rejected Him. It did not know the Lord of glory, for it is a Cain-world, with plenty of music of its own of course; and Christians take it up as something good that they can share; whereas it was nothing but Cain's world to begin with and Cain's world to go on with.

206 But mark there is another thing altogether - a reality that was before the world and which is known only by faith. It is the more solemn because human responsibility began only with this world. The first Adam was the responsible man, and he failed, and all are sinners since. This is what came in; it was not the counsel of God (in a sense a counsel known to Him of course), it was not a definite design. My responsibility is not God's counsels, and that came in after these counsels were formed. And this is the way of God's dealings and the way He always dealt - He has a thought which He will bring about; but in the meanwhile things are trusted to man, just as in the case of Adam. God had the intention of having the second Man and all His glory set up in Him. This is what God had in His mind. It was purposed in Christ before the world existed. After that God set up the first man Adam; and he - Adam--is the man of responsibility - not the man of God's counsels.

And you find the two great principles in the garden at the beginning in the two trees there - grace that gave life, and responsibility to obey or disobey. The law took up the same two, but put the responsibility first - this do and live. Again a breach followed. Man made a golden calf at once. Then when God set up the church, all went to sleep, wise as well as foolish, or said, "My Lord delayeth his coming." Then God brings out His counsel ordained before the world - that He will bring man into His own glory as well as sinless into His presence in Christ. He forms the church to reign with Christ in that glory. And nothing of this will He fail to accomplish in result; but first He puts man in responsibility, and man has to learn his total failure in himself, being powerfully convinced by the Spirit and the word of God, so as to be cast upon grace, and find glory.

Now it is the place we get into thus that I desire to touch upon. You may find it in the scheme of God, but yet a soul must go through the question of responsibility for himself. He must own failure and the way in which he has failed - that in his flesh there is no good thing at all - and then, entirely cast on grace, find Christ. Now Christ as a Saviour meets this position and need by putting Himself in charge of the glory of God which we had compromised. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, and has met responsibility completely and perfectly, both as regards our sins and the glory of God. "He bore our sins in his own body on the tree"; and again, "now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him." He has completed the work, sins are gone, and God's glory is perfectly accomplished; so that all is finished, and the foundation laid, not on the responsibility of the first man, but on the accomplishment of God's work by the second Man, and thus the whole question is ended. And Christ meets the other want also. He is the life; He is both the trees; for the ruin that came in is met by Christ on the cross, and infinitely more, by Christ becoming our life. It is all met now before the things are accomplished in glory, while, as regards the peace of the soul and the redemption of the sinner, and his meetness to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light, it is now a settled thing - perfectly settled; for he now has life not of the first Adam, but of the Second. In his mortal body it is now the life of Jesus that is to be manifested; it is Christ who is our life. This shews that the first thing is judged totally; if any man be in Christ, not only is he a new creature but all is new.

207 And you find this borne out through scripture. In Ephesians it is not a man living in sins but one dead in sins, so that he is not there meeting sinners in their condition as such, but regards them as created in Christ Jesus, God's workmanship. Consequently there we have the whole full result - ourselves set in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus brought out. In Romans we have the condition of the sinner most completely met. And so the whole thing is settled. There is a world that Satan has formed round the first man, and the question is whether a believer is to go on with it. We have to go through it with this testing us - shall the glory revealed by the Spirit of God, or the world Satan has formed round us in nature, possess our hearts? I am not talking now of sins; but it is a solemn question whether this world possesses our hearts or not. The character of things now is not gross immorality; but is the first man to be exalted, or the Second? Of course there is immorality; but you find persons boasting of a general improvement of society, and with some ground it may be, yet it is all beside the point. Externally it may be something less gross than in times that have passed, but which man is exalted in your hearts - the first, or the Second?

208 Now the thought and counsels of God, in Christ first as centre, are ordained for our glory that we may be practically drawn out from the world (in spirit altogether). He has called us in Christ and by Christ, and has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. And are our hearts there? - bodies not of course yet, but our hearts? "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God; and we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." "If so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together" - suffer truly as regards this world, though at the same time we find it too is all ours, while it does not yet appear what we shall be. Then how far are our hearts set upon that which we are going to be? It is wonderful how the scripture insists upon this with Christians. See in Colossians how it is declared we are dead and our life hid with Christ in God: we get the same share with Him. God has associated the Christian with Christ. Now as to your hearts, beloved friends, are they associated with Christ or does the world and its fashion get hold of you? It touches us all: we all have to go through it; and it is the purpose of God that you should walk by faith and not by sight. If a man saw God, the greatest sinner in the town would not go and sin in His face. Like children in a school, it is when the master's back is turned that they fall into mischief.

But mark again this - God begins by a perfect redemption: you must not have the slightest cloud upon that part of the truth. Trial of you and your responsibility have nothing to do with judgment and acceptance: on this there is no question. "There is none righteous, no, not one"; and if God enter into judgment with us, no flesh should be saved, no, not one of you: if you have anything to do with judgment, you have certainly to do with condemnation, and nothing short of it. And yet we shall appear (be manifested) at the judgment-seat of Christ - that remains quite true; but to the believer it is not judgment; John 5.

Now God, anticipating all this, brings down the full testimony that you are total sinners, and that in your flesh dwelleth no good thing. God will shew you it all, that He may bring it home to you, by your fears even, if Christ is coming; for you would not feel easy if He came. But God will bring you to this point if you are to get peace. He has done with flesh, He has condemned it; and so you can have nothing to do with looking for good in it, because He has condemned it. The body is dead because of sin. If it is life, it is alive in sin!

209 It is not a question of amiable qualities - you find them in a dog; but it is a question whether you like to do your own will; for if you do, you are in rebellion against God. But God has perfectly redeemed the believer out of all this. He has gone through the whole scene of man's responsibility, without law, and under law; lastly He sent His Son who was only rejected and then declared "now is the judgment of this world." And there is your judgment; you are of that world and belong to it, and you have been judged in its judgment on the cross. Stephen charges the Jews that they had received the law by the disposition of angels and had not kept it - "which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?" As your fathers resisted the Holy Ghost, so do ye - killed the prophets; rejected God's Son; resisted the Holy Ghost, and this of God's people on the earth!

Well, it is all judged. And if through grace we have been individually brought to a consciousness of it in our own souls, then we are cast exclusively on Christ, and the question is not whether you have failed in your responsibility, but whether God has failed in His work. This is all the question; and herein too is the truth of the gospel.

What ruined the church (that is, as a thing in man's hand, not of course God's work) was, that the sense of complete redemption was quite lost; the fact, I mean, that man does not stand before God in his condition as a child of Adam at all, but in Christ, after Christ has done God's work for him. And each one must learn this in his own consciousness for himself. Christ has borne the things God must have judged man for; and yet more: He becomes our life. Consequent on this work which He has done, we can say we have died with Him; and He is our life. The tree is ended, as well as the fruits. The body of sin is gone for faith; and therefore one can say, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." This is "I" now. I do not admit the flesh to be "I" any more. He is my life; "Christ liveth in me." This is what deliverance means - not forgiveness only but deliverance. Deliverance is that we are not in the flesh at all, not in that which has man's responsibility before God. There is therefore no question of meetness. Christ is meet for heaven; and whosoever is in Christ is also meet for heaven. You must add to the value of Christ's work before you can add to the title of your meetness for heaven.

210 Then comes another thing. The moment the Christian is seen in Christ - that not merely He has borne my sins, but I am in Christ - there is one who can be sealed with the Spirit of God. If he is born again and washed by the blood of Christ, the Holy Ghost can dwell in him. We must never confound the quickening of a soul with the presence of the Spirit which seals Christ's work. The Holy Ghost quickens my soul, and brings me under the blood of sprinkling whereby I am as white as snow: after this the Holy Ghost comes to dwell in me as thus washed clean. God sees me perfectly cleansed and the Holy Ghost is the seal of it and of me - all in virtue of the efficacy of Christ's blood.

The presence of the Holy Ghost is a consequence of redemption. When Christ had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, and "being by the right hand of God exalted and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear"; and further, "because ye are sons God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts whereby we cry, Abba Father," and then you see at once this gives me a capacity to enjoy whatever God opens up to me. But Paul says, "we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery"; but even a crucified Christ was a stumbling-block to a Jew and foolishness to a Greek. Ah! you may be a Jew or a philosopher; but are you not a sinner? This is all God knows about you. You must all meet God at the cross of Christ, or be judged.

Having brought this in, the apostle goes on to say, "we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory; which none of the princes of this world knew, or they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." Now here we find Christ in the glory - a man there; and, connected with Him, God can bring out all these counsels. Christ, who is the centre of it all, is actually a Man in heavenly glory; and, further, the Holy Ghost can come down and unfold all this. Man is in the glory of God, as Stephen shews at the very turning-point of man's depravity in resisting the Holy Ghost. Then the mystery comes out. The Holy Ghost having been sent down, associates us with it on the footing of a place in Christ (the old man is set aside - "ye are dead"). We stand in a righteousness in Christ which is God's righteousness, when man had none. Now the Holy Ghost can bring in all the heavenly glory, and this is what He is doing for the Christian. We have the life and the righteousness of God in Christ.

211 Let me ask you who profess the Lord, are you so distinct in judging all that belongs to nature that this is true to you? There is plenty to learn, I know. We have to be humbled and proved to do us good at the latter end; but why? Because we have been redeemed out of Egypt. You do not find this in connection with Israel until they were redeemed from Egypt. Have you really taken the place of being delivered from this present evil world? Has your heart taken its place where the second Adam has set you?

Oh, but you say, I do not know the things that are there. Why do you not? Have they not been revealed? People quote this passage, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him," to shew how great these things of God are - they have not entered into the heart of man. "But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit": such is the scripture - just the opposite of the common use of it. You see God means us to know them, though we may have been bad scholars at the lesson. But He has given us a title - to what? Simply to be pardoned? Is that all? Is it nothing to say, I am come to God the Judge of all; I can look down upon things that are for judgment, the reproach of Egypt being done away; I am in Christ, and see the glory of the Son of God and Son of man - the Son who earned God's love? Yes, earned it! for He says, "therefore does my Father love me, because I lay down my life." Is it nothing to see the Lamb slain? Have we not far more than pardon?

And where is to be your place? You are going to be like Himself. Did you never think of this? "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." "And we have received the Spirit, not which is of the world but which is of God, to know the things which are freely given unto us of God." It is not the redemption, though we must know that truly and get clear as to it; it is more. Again I ask, Have your souls never tasted what it is to be where there is nothing but holiness - not a jar with what God is? What a delight! And all around not a flaw, not a thing that does not answer to the glory of God as God and to the love of God as love! Nothing. Christ is the centre of it, and we, in a certain sense, so too, as in Him. Are our souls living there? Well, you will get a white stone; but you say, Am I to have God's approving delight upon me? Yes. And the new name. Ah, this will be a secret between you and Christ. Is there nothing in that? Is there nothing in His approbation so put upon us? Does it not come into your heart as that which is unspeakable joy? Again "the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof." But if I see the Lamb in the midst of the throne, Ah! I say, now I am indeed at home, that is the sight that dazzles every other, and that is the sight which is for me; the Lord God and the Lamb are the temple there. We shall sit on Christ's throne with Him - conferred glory surely but none the less real. Will this be nothing? I here will not be a thing in Christ's heart that is not satisfied towards us, and is this nothing to us? And is it nothing to us to see the Man that suffered for us glorified? Now the Spirit of God has taken these things and revealed them unto us that we may live in them.

212 And mark the order at the end of the chapter - "what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God; now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are fully given to us of God, which things also we speak not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth" - lit up in Paul's heart, like a candle in a lantern. And now he is communicating them by inspiration. He gets them by revelation and communicates them by inspiration. Oh, what a thing it is to hear vain men babbling about the Scriptures and talking of what is right and wrong in them forsooth! Here I have such things as these in the revelation given by inspiration, and men must seek to find faults here. How busy measuring spots in the sun and the bumps upon it if they can. when it has been the light of the world ever since it was created! First there was the revelation of the things, after that the communication of them by inspiration; but then "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned; but he that is spiritual judgeth all things."

213 Here I get the receiving of what is revealed and inspired - three things in all. First, revelation, and this some would deny altogether; second, communication by the Holy Ghost, and some will not deny that the word of God is in it, but that Scripture is the word of God. I say, Nay, it was the revelation from God to man but it came out from the man as pure as it came in - "we speak not in words which man's wisdom teacheth but which the Holy Ghost teacheth," and as he says again, "we have not corrupted the word of God," we have given it by inspiration as we have received it by revelation. And now I get the third step, which explains the infidelity as to all the rest - "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God": that is the truth of the riddle. He is a natural man and does not receive the things of the Spirit of God at all, it is only by power of the Spirit of God that they are received. "Who hath known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ."

There is a great deal to learn yet truly, but it has all been given to us. We know in part as to details; but still the counsel of God in Christ, who is the wisdom and power of God, has been revealed, and revealed too through the cross in which the natural man has been totally judged, while also, consequent upon the exaltation of the second Adam to the right hand of God, it has been given forth to us by the Holy Ghost. Our Lord said after His resurrection, "I go to my God and your God, to my Father and your Father"; that is, if I am going into the glory, I go as your forerunner, for I take you into such relationship. It is ordained for your glory. Beloved, do you believe that, that all these wonderful counsels of God are ordained for your glory? Do you believe?

O the wonderful goodness of God! He is shewing to us the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us through Christ Jesus. Are our hearts touched by it? or is this wretched world which rejected Christ still clinging to us as a briar might when we walk through a field? Has the power of the divine Spirit separated our hearts from it, and set our affections on things that are above, and not on the things on the earth? Weigh this. If Christ has died in love and given us that place where He is, see whether your hearts are living in what He has brought you to, or in what He has brought you out of. The friendship of the world is enmity to God. Our Lord give us to know the unspeakable love that has given us such things. Presumption! Suppose the prodigal son had said "the best robe is too good for me." Too good! What business had he in the house at all?

214 God has glorified Himself in the wonderful work of grace; and I must take my place according to what He has made it to be, and nothing loth to do it either. And yet our glory is in a certain sense poor, compared with seeing Him glorified. The Lord give us to live, in our life in the flesh, that inward life in connection with Christ which is practically dead to the world and alive to God through Christ, to find the blessedness of His love in these things born in our hearts.

Indwelling of the Holy Ghost

1 Corinthians 6

J. N. Darby.

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There is nothing, perhaps, more striking in reading either the Gospels, or the Epistles, the sayings of the Lord Jesus Himself, or what, in some respects, are more wonderful, the statements of the apostles, than the entire familiarity that appears in them, with the highest divine things. It is never, of course, nor could it be, that familiarity which, in human things, because of their imperfection, takes away reverence. But the nearer we are to God, the more we see His blessedness, while there will be the reverence that becomes His presence; at the same time there is perfect familiarity with the highest divine things. It stamps the one born of God; it stamps the divine revelation that we have. I can tell that the Father loves the Son - nothing can be simpler than the expression; but what a thing to know His divine affections in themselves! It is not merely that He loves me, as is very true; but the Father loves the Son. So with the divine counsels. He hath "made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself." It is all brought out; as it is expressed in that word, "Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things."

It is not that simply certain testimonies have come out; this was the case with the prophets; or that certain commandments have been given which are the most perfect expression of what man ought to be, as in the law; but God has revealed Himself, and that in the perfectness of His own love, that He might be known. Along with this, and especially characterising Christianity, there is not only the perfect revelation of Himself in His own nature as God, as light and love, revealing the Father, Son, and Spirit; but He has given us the Spirit. Having made us "partakers of the divine nature," that we might be capable of enjoying what He is; He has also given us the Holy Ghost, that we might know what He is. You get, first, our being set before God in perfect acceptance, "accepted in the Beloved." And then, beyond that, the truth that God has not only revealed Himself to us, that we might have confidence in coming to Him in Christ, but that He reveals Himself in us after having set us in Christ there, that the conscience should be placed in His presence.

216 At the same time we read in Ephesians of being "strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man"; it is also said in the same Epistle, "that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." So that He who is the centre of all the thoughts and counsels of God, of all His glory as revealed, the Son Himself dwells in us, and sets us thus in the centre of all this glory, that we should comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height. It is not only that there has been a revelation to us of the Father and Son and the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, but that He has so associated us with Christ as dwelling in us, and that by the power of the Holy Ghost, that He sets our souls in the centre of all these affections, and of all this knowledge and glory.

Therefore the apostle cannot exactly say what it is, but only says "what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height," and adds, "and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." He has been a man, and dwelt among us, yet He dwells in us, and His love passes knowledge. This brings us into such blessed intimacy, though ever more adoringly; for the more we know Him, the more we shall see that He is God. So even with Christ Himself. We are there in the same glory with Himself; but this only brings us into the capacity to know the infinite blessedness of His Person. We see this in the scene of the transfiguration. The moment there was the thought in the heart, "Let us make three tabernacles, one for thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias," the Father says, "This is my beloved Son: hear him." Christ stands alone. Yet we now by the grace which associates us with Him, are brought into that which is divinely blessed and perfect; such is the peculiar blessedness of Christianity.

It is not now merely sending out a law to shew what man ought to be, but it is eternal life given, in the true knowledge of the Father and Son, and this in the power of the Holy Ghost. Therefore the affections of the heart are of the Spirit, and are filled with the Spirit, and they have their play in all true Christian affection. Being brought into such a place, all our ways, the condition of our soul and our conduct of course are looked for to be conformed to that of which Christ Himself is the perfect expression. It is not merely that there is a certain rule of conduct, as in the law, but it is Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith; so that our thoughts, and feelings, and affections should flow from that source through the Holy Ghost. That is what is meant by being "filled with the Spirit." We all have the Spirit, but we are not all "filled with the Spirit." He is the one source of everything where the heart is filled with Him.

217 That which is here brought before us is not only the blessedness of the place we are put in, but the conduct of the Christian suitable to it in every respect. And it is that which suits the presence of the Holy Ghost dwelling in him. Whatever is not fit for His presence is not fit for the Christian. It will come down to the most ordinary things of life, because there is a path which is pleasing to God in this world - there is one way for a person to walk, and no other. Supposing a son has left his father's house, and has gone off to a strange country; he may not be outwardly given up to what shocks the conscience, but he cannot, as long as he is there, do right; he must go back in order to do what is right; until he does this, in all he does there is not one thing that is right. This is the way with man in the world. He has left God, and cannot do anything right, never can do anything positively right, till he gets back.

If we are in our right place, we do not want a way. Adam wanted no way in the garden of Eden; his business was to stay where he was. In the world, where wickedness is, we want a way; but there is no way really, because we have departed from God. But when the Spirit of God has come into it, He has created a path for him that believes. For the Jews in the wilderness, where the cloud went, there was a way directly. God can make a way for Himself, no matter how wicked the world. If I injure a man, it is wrong; and if he revenges himself, it is wrong; but Christ can make a way through it all. He can give me to walk with wisdom and patience in all circumstances. He can bring in motives and principles for every difficulty of this world; and that is where the Christian has to walk. "He that saith he abideth in him, ought himself also so to walk even as he walked."

The life of Jesus should be manifested in us. Our life ought to be the expression of this new thing - that is, divine life in the midst of a world that is away from God. Nothing but Christ can do that, and it is Christ in us. The power of it is by the presence of the Holy Ghost acting upon "the new man which after God is created in righteousness and in true holiness." It is not the old thing corrected at all, because the old man never can have the divine motives, but its own motives. It may be corrected in an outward thing, for people are not all thieves and robbers; but it never can have the motives that belong to the divine nature, and therefore, though it may be decent and respectable, it never can be right. It is the nature that has departed from God, and it cannot be right before Him. We read that that which we have (the new man) is "after God, created in righteousness and in true holiness." And in another part it is said that it is "renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." The measure of spiritual knowledge, as to the walk and affections, is the image of Him who created us; and where do I see this perfectly? In Christ. He is "the image of the invisible God." The power of that life was shewn in the resurrection; the character of that life was shewn in all His path on earth. He was "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." The declaration of the power of the life was in resurrection; the character of it we see in the Son of God walking in this world; and Christ is our life.

218 "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own." It is redeemed. "Ye are bought with a price." Being redeemed by God, the body, which is our servant and vessel of working, is the temple of the Holy Ghost. There I get power, and power by One dwelling in me, whose presence is that which must measure everything I do. Therefore He says, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." Such is the measure He furnishes us. He gives us intelligence, and affections, and objects, which the law could not do, but Christ does. He gives us a blessed hope too; but He dwells in us now. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost: and we are called upon so to walk, that in nothing, in word or thought or act, we should grieve the Spirit of God. It is a wonderful measure in this case. The Spirit has these thoughts and feelings, and He produces them in us.

Mark then how Christ is connected with this: "Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?" What sweetness there is in that! But it is not merely a fact; it is the principle by which I measure all conduct in His presence. How do I come there? I have it all of God. "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God?" What a feeling God must have about me - to make a poor creature like me His temple - the dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost! To think that God's mind about such poor creatures should be that He would make me a temple of the Holy Ghost! that He has given me the Holy Ghost to dwell in me! For this there is absolute cleansing; for He could not dwell in a defiled tabernacle, and thus He seals till the day of redemption. God has given me the Holy Ghost to dwell in me in virtue of having cleansed me, the seal of redemption and earnest of glory. God's mind has been, having cleansed me, to give me the perfect witness and testimony of His own infinite love. "He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him." He gives us the Holy Ghost to dwell in us, the seal of His love and of the redemption that He has accomplished. He makes our bodies the temple of the Holy Ghost; and while this is the measure and test of all that is according to God by His own presence, that presence is the expression of God's perfect love; for His love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us.

219 And here he appeals to them as to not sinning. How can you go and sin with a body that is the temple of the Holy Ghost? It is not merely breaking such a command, or the like; but the motive here is, "What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?" And you are going to commit sin with it? All exhortations are founded upon the blessed place into which He has brought us. "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God?" God Himself has given it, to put you in connection with Himself, and are you going into connection with sin and vileness? It is applied to purity of life. The body is the vessel of the presence and action of God by the Holy Ghost. We do fail; but that is the power; and we are renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him. What a place we are set in! It makes us feel our wretchedly low ways and shortcomings - and so much the better. If we are humble, we do not need to be humbled. If a man is not humble, he needs to be humbled: if he is humble, he is the recipient of grace; "for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace unto the humble." And wherever a person is really humble, he may have a great deal to learn, but at any rate he is in his right place with God. Instead of His having to contend with us, we are the objects of His blessing. If it is not so, humbling must come in. "What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God?"

220 Then comes the second motive. "And ye are not your own; for ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body." It is a motive - not simply power in the presence of God, but a positive motive from the perfect work of Christ; we are not our own. If we were, we were lost. If we are to have blessing, to be a blessing, it is in this - that we are not our own at all. Wherever I act in my own will in anything, I am wronging God of His own title through the blood of Christ. We are not our own. Christ is ours: but there is a second thing - not only that Christ is mine, but that I am His; and the heart delights to be His, and not its own, because it has learnt His love to us, who has loved us, and given Himself for us.

Therefore, in the knowledge of this eternal love, our delight is to belong to Him, and this too as to practice. "Ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body." It is not merely saying, Do right; but He puts us at once in connection with God. Think of our glorifying God! Christ could do it as a man; but can I, wretched as I am, glorify God? Yes. If I am walking in His Spirit, and having no motive but Christ, it brings in the power of God, which the world knows nothing about. We are called to glorify God in our body: it belongs to Him - it is God's; and what a relief it is when I think that this body, which was the wretched slave of sin, now belongs to God! It is His property. It has been taken out of its old condition entirely, and it does not belong to my corrupt will at all. I am not a debtor to the body, but it belongs to God. This is an immense joy, and it shews that everything has been done for one; for even this poor wretched body belongs to God, and I am to use it thus - to glorify God.

There we have the two great leading motives and springs of conduct which the apostle sets before us here as to our faith and conduct; namely, that our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which we have of God; and that we are bought with a price, and belong to God. The power, intelligence, and all, is that which we have of God; it is the Holy Ghost, of which our body is made the temple; and when I look at the body in itself, it now, through the work of Christ, belongs to God. The Holy Ghost dwells in me in power and intelligence; my body is made His temple, and I must use it according to that presence which I thus have of God. I am not my own at all - I am bought with a price - I belong to God.

221 The Lord give us in joy of heart, in unfailing, deep thankfulness of spirit, to know that, on the one side, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost; and, on the other, that these bodies are bought with a price, and that they belong to God!

Victory

1 Corinthians 15

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There are two characters of relationship into which we are brought: one is our union with Christ; and the other our relationship along with Christ to God as our Father, He being the firstborn of many brethren. "As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." This last is the result in glory, but it is founded on the great truth of "As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy, and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly." It flows from our connection with the second Man (He, Head of a spiritual race, as the first Adam was head according to the flesh).

This is a different thing from His relationship to the bride, and the headship of the body. It teaches us how the whole of the Old Testament scripture looks at our history in the first Adam, closing that history entirely, and then brings in a new One. This is not brought out until the second Man is raised from the dead. He was in Person the same before, but He was not head of a spiritual race until He was raised. "Except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone," etc. It was only then that He could take such a position with His disciples as to say, "I go to my Father and your Father." All thought of any union as man, with Christ, is wrong. He could not unite Himself with us in sin: He could shew compassion, but it was impossible there could be any connection between us in the flesh, as men in nature, and God. When Christ takes a new position, outside every position in which flesh could be taken account of, we are united to Him in spirit; but the whole history of man shews the impossibility of connection between man in nature with God. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." "And as I said to the Jews, even so say I to you, Whither I go, ye cannot follow me now." Flesh, corrupt and corrupting, cannot enter into glory.

True, flesh works in the believer; but Scripture goes deep and brings out this truth, "in me, that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing." So the apostle afterwards says, "When we were in the flesh." I do not know whether you would be able to say that - when I was in the flesh. If we can say so, our responsibility now is to walk as men in the Spirit. A Christian is not to walk as a man, but as a Christian. There are duties of husbands, wives, children; and the relationships between man and man have to be sustained of course; but before God I am not looked at as a man in the flesh at all. The flesh tries to hinder. It comes to be a hostile power to what I have from the last Adam; but if you walk merely as men, you are lost.

223 Flesh shewed its weakness. The word to Adam did not provide for sin, and supposed no lust in man. In the garden of Eden lust came in, sin came in, and the separation was complete between God and man. Adam then became head of an excluded race.

Law, given afterwards, supposed men needing life, but invoked responsibility. Man left to himself became corrupt before God. The earth was filled with violence. Then a flood came. Then came the law as a trial of man. Promise was not a trial of man, but it manifested grace without a question of man. There was no promise to Adam, the promise was to the second Adam, the Seed of the woman. God cannot promise to sin. There was no question of responsibility in promise. He gave it to man and left it. Afterwards the question of righteousness is raised.

We too often may little weigh what the terms of the law imply. Were I to say, If you do this, you will get a fortune, this implies that you have not a fortune without. You cannot say, Do this and live, if you have life. When God said to man, "Do this and live," it implied his being dead. Man did not think so, but it was the ministry of death and condemnation, because it demanded obedience, which man could not render. Law does bring out man's guilt; he cannot be subject to the law of God.

But there was another thing that proved his guilt far more thoroughly. Will they accept God's terms when He came to them in grace? Christ came, and in His life was the perfect manifestation of goodness. He came amongst men to do them good, healing the leper, etc. But could flesh find anything attractive in Him? He was an outcast among the people to whom He brought home the goodness and love of God.

When law was given, they were not subject to it; and when Christ came, they would not have Him. Therefore the Lord said, "Now is the prince of this world judged." "They have both seen and hated both me and my Father." Man, tried in every way, is proved to be bad.

224 In other circumstances, namely, that of the Christian, there is the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the same impossibility of its pleasing God. All flesh shews utter rejection of God Himself, and is proud of itself all the time. Before God executes judgment, man has entirely cast God off. The wonder of the cross is that He came - the sinless One came into the very place where flesh is. "He who knew no sin was made sin for us." He finds Himself in the fully revealed position of man before God; He puts Himself there in grace and in obedience too. There was more than that: "He bore our sins in his own body on the tree." He was "made sin," and put it away by giving up the life in which He bore it. God deals with Him about sin, and the very life ceases in which He takes it, and then He rises up. God had dealt with it, putting an end to it entirely on the cross. There was an end of the old man; and now it is said, "Reckon yourselves to be dead," etc. "He that is dead is freed from sin." Christ has taken the place of the first Adam in sin. All that I was in, Christ has stepped into and borne. He rises up, and I have an entirely new position. I am now in Christ. He has closed for ever the history of the flesh (we have it as an enemy - but its history is closed for ever before God) and commenced a place for us in Himself, the second Adam. "Father, glorify thy Son."

Christ returned to His place before God, having accomplished righteousness. He is Head of a new race, a family of His own. He has new glory as thus Head of a race. We are livingly united to Him, being in Christ. "As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly." We are not in flesh, but before God in virtue of accomplished righteousness. All God's dealings with man before were grounded on sin having come in; so law, promise, government, until Christ came. Now His dealings with us are founded on righteousness. God has His righteousness before Him in a man. The Son of man has glorified God on the earth, and God has glorified Him in heaven. It is as a man He is there, though He is much more to be sure.

Life I have in Him and righteousness. Life is in the Son, the second Man, and I can treat the flesh and all connected with it as an enemy. As to that, I am dead: flesh has no place now. I have life in Christ and dead as to flesh. I have nothing to say to it, no relationship with God in flesh; I have to pray against it, fight against it, read, and use all the means I can against it; but I am not in it. There may be confusion in the mind, but not in the relationship. God can have nothing to do with flesh. "Reckon yourselves dead," for Christ has died. It is not said, Die, to the flesh. The flesh will keep itself alive as long as it can. It will try to mend itself - try to be better. There would be no sense in telling the flesh to die. But Scripture says, Ye are dead. Flesh has been judged in Christ, and therefore I am entitled to say, I am dead and am a new man. Then walk in the Spirit, walk as Christ walked, as the second Man, not as the first. You cannot get back to innocence, the uprightness of creation. True, you are upright, if in the Spirit, but more, righteous and holy. All this is equally true about sins. As surely as the first Adam was turned out of the earthly paradise and became head of a race, so He, the second Man, is Head of a race for the heavenly paradise.

225 Faith takes absolutely what God says. Where does it take its place? Half way, or entirely, with Christ? Flesh never can take its place before God. Faith says, I have no place before God but in Christ Himself. He is righteousness on the throne of God. Any half-saviour or half-place would not do. We grow up into His likeness: but our place before God is the same at first. Christ's life upon earth is a perfect pattern for us, manifesting God in all His ways.

Our position before God is one of full favour. And we have the hope of glory before us. How it elevates the heart - not us! Grace humbles us, but elevates the heart. I have boldness before Him in the day of judgment. When we reach the heavenly tribunal, we shall be like Him, the heavenly One.

Grace alone does it. It enables us to discern between flesh and Spirit, not only between what is right and what is wrong; but we can say, That is flesh, or This is Spirit. It may look very fair, but if it is flesh, it comes to nothing. If all the world thinks a thing good, that is not Christ and I would not believe it. If a man walks with the Lord, the flesh is judged. There are the different growths of the babe, the young man, the father; but if we walk with Him, we discern what a thing is. The flesh is very subtle, but it will not last out when the Lord tries me; the wood, hay, and stubble will not stand. Gold is a rarer thing in the world than wood, hay, and stubble, but it lasts longer.

226 Can you then say, "When I was in the flesh," with the very distinct consciousness that you are not in it now? Then you are called not to walk as if you were in it. The Spirit does not make a fair show. You may walk with Christians, but you cannot walk with Christ without the power of the life in exercise - not going to look for the power, but having it. May the Lord give us to know what it is to be in the Spirit and not in the flesh! It may try the conscience, but the end will be peace and joy.

An Epistle of Christ

2 Corinthians 3

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The apostle, in the beginning of this chapter, tells us what a true Christian is. He calls him an epistle of Christ. He is a person upon whose heart God has written Christ, as Moses wrote the law on tables of stone. This the apostle opens out; but first he states what Christians are in contrast with the law. A Christian is a person on whom Christ is engraved, not on tables of stone, but on the fleshy tables of the heart. If the heart is serious, one must see that many have not this. We see many persons very amiable, and others with a trying nature. But here it is not difference of mere natural character. This is not the point. Natural amiability of character is not Christ graved on the heart. It has nothing to do with being a Christian, which is a positive real work of God. It is the Holy Ghost engraving Christ on a man's heart, putting Christ into his thoughts, his words, and his ways, just as the law was put upon stones. Now a person may get angry at this; but nevertheless Christ is the object of a Christian's life, and your own conscience must judge if it is so with you. It is not that there is not failure. A man who is seeking to make money does not always succeed; but everybody knows what his object is. Just so Christ is the object of a believer's life.

God gave the law, not to make men righteous, but to prove that there were none righteous. The law condemns every one. It was the ministration of death. But after men had broken God's law, He sent His Son. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son." "When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son." God's Son has been in the world. How comes it that He is out of it? The world would not have Him. Men spit in His face. This is what the world has done. Now I do not ask you about duties; but I ask, is Christ engraven on your heart? We cannot kill Him now; but our hearts can reject Him as much as ever the Jews did. An honest man - I do not speak of a Christian - will own that from morning to night Christ is not in his heart.

Now what was the apostle doing? When a Christian went from one place to another, it was customary to give him a letter of commendation. But, says the apostle, Do I want a letter? If one came to him to ask what he went about doing, he would say, Look at these Corinthians (for they were going on well then): they were his letter. How so? Because they were Christ's. Now I leave it with you as to whether Christ is on your heart. I do not ask if you love Him as you ought; for if you love Him at all, you will not say that; He is too precious for that. But if you are a Christian, you are sure there is not anything that you would not give for Christ. You may not be able to govern yourself, still Christ is the object of your heart.

228 Notice now another thing: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." It is not liberty to be fearing and trembling before God. "Liberty" is to be happy with Him. When the Holy Ghost begins to shew me my sins, I have anything but liberty. I begin to be afraid of my sins; I do not know whatever to do with them. False liberty is taken away, and true liberty is not given. And this will always be the case until the perfect love of God is seen. Now law will never teach me that. Suppose I command my child to love me, and threaten him if he does not; will that make him love me? Why, it will make him tremble. This is what the law does. It cannot produce the love, it can but command. What is the effect? I cannot stand in its presence. When Moses had been up on the mount, his face shone. He had been with God. And when he came down with the two tables of the law, the children of Israel were afraid to come near him. He had to put a veil on his face for the glory of his countenance. After being in the presence of God's glory, they cannot bear to look on him. The only effect of the revelation of the glory of God is to drive me away as far as ever I can get from Him against whom I have sinned. There is not a pleasure in the world that the presence of God would not blast in a moment. There is not a happiness of man, as man, that is not spoiled by the very mention of the name of God. Now think what a terrible state that is to be in.

The apostle calls this claim of God by the law the "ministration of death and condemnation"; because it claims righteousness, and does not produce the thing it claims. Whenever a person is looking to his conduct for what he ought to be, he is under the ministry of death and condemnation. That is not the way to get Christ written on the heart.

Before we turn to look at Christ as He is now, let us look at what He was, God manifest in the flesh. In what state did He find men when He came? He found them "all under sin." And what does Job say of himself, as being in this condition? "If I wash myself with snow-water, and make my hands never so clean, yet thou shalt plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me. Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both. Let him take his fear away, then would I speak; but it is not so with me."

229 Now what do I find in Christ when He came? I find "a daysman" - the very thing that Job wanted. Was there fear in Christ? Was any one afraid of Christ? If a sinner was ever so burdened, he could go to Christ and thus to God. Now here I find that though my sins hindered me from going to God, they could not hinder God from coming to me. You will never find a single case in which Christ did not receive the sinner with open arms - never. Now that is what you want. Christ did not say, Get righteousness and come up here, and I will have you. No; but He came down here to meet us here. That is an entirely new thing. Christ came in this way to win our hearts thus. And therefore they reproached Him with receiving sinners, and eating with them. It is quite true, He replied, but is not a father glad to receive his lost son? Even so is it with My Father in heaven; and therefore am I come to seek and to save that which was lost. Now this is grace.

But there is righteousness too. When the father fell on the neck of the prodigal, he was in his rags. The father could not bring him into the house in his rags; it would dishonour the house. So His blessed love goes on - and Jesus gives Himself for the sins, which unfit me for the Father's house. I see that the very Lord, against whom I have sinned, has taken my sins and put them all away at the cross.

Now where do I see the glory of God? No longer on the face of Moses - I could not look on it there. But now I see it in the face of Jesus Christ. Ah! I say, that is the One who died for my sins. He could not bring my sins into the glory, and therefore He put them away. I have got His word and His work for it, and the glory for it too; and therefore God is now ministering righteousness. Now it is "the ministration of righteousness." The sins are not passed over. He sweat great drops of blood for the sins. He has really gone through everything that holiness required on account of them, and now He is in the glory; so that every ray of the glory I look at is the proof that my sins are put away. When I see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, it is the very thing I like to look at; because the Man whom I see in the glory is the One who bore all my sins. Oh! I delight to look at Him. And this is the way I get Christ graven on my heart by the Holy Ghost. "We all, with open face, beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord." It is the ministration of righteousness, because the Holy Ghost comes and tells us that there is a righteousness accomplished "by one man's obedience." It is the ministration of the Spirit, because the Spirit is given on the foundation of the righteousness. And now the man is at liberty, because his conscience is perfectly purged. Here he will have trial and conflict, it is true; but as between himself and God he will never have anything but perfect peace.

230 This is God's way of graving Christ on the heart. First He gives a man the consciousness of being entirely condemned, shewing him that his nature is enmity against God; that the law he has broken; and that when Christ came in grace, Him he did not love. And when He has brought him to this in his conscience, then He shews him that the God against whom he sinned has come and wrought out a righteousness for him, and that this blessed Man is now in glory.

Now mark how the heart thus learns to trust God. What love! when I was in my sins, God came and put them away. My sins are the very thing that give the greatest proof of His love. He has given Christ for them. Well may I trust Him for everything else.

Let me now ask you, dear reader, if your confidence is in this God? Has your heart been brought to submit to this righteousness, for you have none of your own? Oh, it is the hardest thing for the heart to be broken down so as to be willing to have righteousness by the obedience of another! "By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous," Rom. 5: 19. But if you have seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ you will desire to "be found in him, not having your own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness, which is of God, by faith."

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231 It is good for our souls to dwell on what it is to be an epistle of Christ, though I am sure none of us can express the greatness of the calling. Any gathering of the saints is the epistle of Christ, "to be read of men." They are His letter of recommendation to the world. The world needs to ascertain what Christ is from the lives of the saints; although they might learn it, it is true, from the word. And the great importance of this place of witness is brought out by the tacit contrast with the law, "written in tables of stone." Just as the ten commandments were the declaration of the mind of God, under the dispensation of the law; so now the church is the engraving of Christ, "written, not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart," to shew forth the virtues of Him "who hath called us out of darkness into his marvellous light."

I would refer to one great thing in the life of Christ, namely, that He never, in one simple act, word, or movement of His heart, did a single thing to please Himself. "Christ pleased not himself"; and so "we ought not to please ourselves"; for "none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself." Jesus said, "that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do." This was obedience flowing out of love, and manifesting love. Nothing ever moved Him from that. The temptation to move from obedience to a commandment might come in a very subtle form, with all the ardour of affection; as when Peter said, in answer to the Lord's word about His sufferings and death, "This be far from thee, Lord." It was affectionate in Peter; but the Lord would not own it, for this would have been to turn from the Father's commandment. And what does He answer? "Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offence unto me, for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men."

Another thing I would remark. Not only was Jesus heavenly in His nature, but, as Son of man, He lived in heaven - as He said, "the Son of man which is in heaven." The whole spirit of His mind, the tone of all His feelings and thoughts, was heavenly. So if there is any motive in my heart which I could not have if I were in heaven, I am not like Christ.

Again, all the grace that was in Him was brought out to meet man's sorrow and misery, and to bear on every earthly circumstance. In this we often find our failure. Even when the motive is right, the manner is wanting in graciousness. But it was never so with Christ. He was always seeking to promote the glory of God; but never did He in manner, on any occasion, depart from the spirit of grace. We often are not close enough in our communion with God to have confidence in Him. We become impatient, and resort to means that are not of God, as Jacob did, who had not confidence enough in God to say, "He will secure the blessing." Would not God have made Isaac give the right answer? Surely He would. So we often fail by not waiting upon God, who will bring the thing to pass most surely, though we know not how. So it was in the sorrowful case of Saul. He would not wait; yet Samuel came at the end of seven days, and Saul lost the kingdom. And those who really are the children of God always sustain loss when they depart from confidence in Him. Christ was always trusting in God, and always waiting upon Him; and so He was ever ready for every sorrow and misery; ever ready to bring out the resources of God to meet every necessity. It is touching to read Matthew 5. Every beatitude is a lively portrait of Christ. Who so poor in spirit as Christ? Who mourned as Christ? Who so meek? so hungering and thirsting after righteousness? His whole life was hungering and thirsting after righteousness. "The life was the light of men."

232 But, further, Jesus was the victorious man over all opposition, even though it were death itself. There is a great difference between good desires and power. The quickened soul may say, "O wretched man that I am"; but we cannot be the full epistle of Christ, unless we exhibit power over all obstacles - even over death. Death is given us. The believer, living in the power of Christ's life, has entire power over death.

Again the Lord Jesus, amidst all His zeal, never failed in love. Strictly speaking, there is no motive in love, though there may be joy in its exercise; and this is our triumph. If I look for a motive, it is not love. Therefore love enables a man to meet all trials. Should one spit in his face, this makes no difference, for love abides; because it never draws its strength from circumstances, but rides above all circumstances. Nothing can be presented to a saint which can separate him from the love of God. The love which he enjoys triumphs over all circumstances. If we do not shew this heavenly-mindedness of the love which is of God, doing nothing from any motive but obedience, we are not a true epistle of Christ. I might be walking lowlily, but if I did not shew out Christ, I should be nothing. So Christ. He gave no answer when God gave no word. And we, in passing through the world, should stand still and wait if we cannot see how we may so walk as to please God.

233 In the latter part of the chapter, the apostle tells us how we may be acting as the epistles of Christ - ministers, not of the letter, but of the spirit. The letter refers to the requirements of God from man, which necessarily was a ministration of death. But the gospel is the manifestation of God, not from Sinai, requiring righteousness; but from His own throne revealing the accomplishment of His own righteousness, and sending a message concerning it to draw our hearts to Himself. To those who submit themselves to this righteousness, the Holy Ghost is given on the foundation of the righteousness, and He is in them a Spirit of power. So now we can use great plainness of speech, because we are speaking of grace. We can tell men that they are wicked, wretched, and helpless. We can speak all things plainly, because we are not expecting anything from them, but telling them of God's grace to just such as they are. We can speak plainly of God, for it is of the God of all grace. Israel could not look at the reflection of the glory in the face of Moses, poor though it was; but now man can look plainly - wonderful to say - at the full glory of God, because it is now in the face of Jesus. It is this very glory that tells me of the putting away of my sin. I see the glory of God, not dimly, but as of one who put Himself in my place as a sinner, and who could not be in that glory If He had not put away all my sins; for my sins are enough to dim any glory. What a glorious thing, not only to see God visiting my soul in grace, but that, so to speak, the glory has taken the place of my sins! The transition from the cross has left nothing between them! Thus we get righteousness in our Head, and the Spirit goes with the message, so that there is power, for "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

The soul that submits to the righteousness of God becomes the epistle of Christ, because he is looking at Christ in the glory. This cannot be while only looking at Him down here; but when the eye is fixed on the Lord Jesus in glory, we are changed into the same image. The heart living in the glory counts all things else but dross and dung in comparison. This is the real victory - when all of this world surrounds me, to say, I do count them but dross and dung. This is being like Christ. We soon learn the weakness of the flesh in this, but the faith that thus looks to Christ is the true victory. The apostle said, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." We sometimes say this too lightly, for we have not proved it. We may say a believer can do all things, but he could say, I can do all things through Christ, for he had proved it by deep experience and arduous conflict.

234 The Lord give us so to recognise the power there is in Christ, as that we may heartily walk in the strength of it; though it humble us in the dust.

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That which alone can make us an "epistle of Christ" is looking unto Jesus, or, as in verse 18, "with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord." The ministry of the Spirit is "taking of the things of Christ and shewing them unto us." There is power as the consequence of the Holy Ghost being here. Until Jesus was glorified, there could not be power nor anything to reveal. It is called the ministration of the Spirit. "Ye shall be endued with power," etc.

It has struck me latterly in the last verse, we never attain the glory while down here, yet are always looking at it as an object, and "changed into the same image," but we are not actually in any sense the same. Still we are daily growing up into Him who is the Head - who is in the glory. Paul says, "I press towards the mark . . . if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection," at the end rather than at the beginning of his course; yet he had attained a great deal, if you look at him as to the realisation of power. Now, that is what the individual Christian is called to, founded on the ministration of righteousness: glory and righteousness go together. It is not now merely that God forbears - this He did before; but He declares His righteousness; it is a righteousness now obtained, not a future thing. The law required righteousness from man, but that is a different thing from the administration of righteousness to man. Now He, Christ, is giving it unto us. The law was called the ministration of condemnation. The ministration of righteousness is also called the ministration of the Spirit, because the Spirit is here in virtue of accomplished righteousness in the Person of Christ, who is up there in the glory. "He that ministereth to you the Spirit." Since redemption God ministers to each saint the Holy Spirit.

235 Righteousness is shewn by God in two ways: first, in setting Christ at His own right hand; secondly, in not letting the world see Him any more, whom it rejected and cast out. The Spirit now convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment: "of sin," in rejecting Christ; "of righteousness," because Christ is gone to the Father; "of judgment," because the prince of this world is judged. If I receive the demonstration, I partake of it, and the demonstration of righteousness placed Christ on the throne at the right hand of God. "I go to my Father." In verse 7: "So that they could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance," etc. There was no veil, but the state of Israel was such that they could not bear a sight of the glory, "which glory was to be done away." So in verse 13, Moses put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel might not look to the end of that which was abolished; shewing, I believe, the moral condition of the people, for Moses had no veil when he went to God, but they could not get beyond the outward thing. The veil was over Moses' face, and all was veiled to them, so that they could not see to the end. He is here giving the meaning of the act: they could not see to the end, but stopped short in the things given. The veil is now not on the things but on their heart, which is done away in Christ; "nevertheless, when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away." In Christ everything is fully revealed in the reality and truth of it, not in mere types and shadows. They could not see to the end; it is always because of the hardness of their hearts, though the veil is at one time on the glory, and at another on their hearts. Moses put a veil over his face, but it was God's purpose being fulfilled. Now we are not as Moses, but use great plainness of speech. It is not now about the people, but about the ministration.

The Holy Ghost is come down here, because Christ is in the glory; therefore we do not leave people in dimness and darkness. We speak boldly; we tell you plainly you are "accepted in the beloved," righteous as He is righteous, and the glory is your portion. We speak thus very boldly about it; "For we are not as many who corrupt the word of God, but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ." The difference in the subject of ministration gives this greater boldness. It is not a certain working of the soul to get up to Christ; but when Christ is thus really and truly revealed to the heart, it is inwrought by the Spirit of God in the soul, and graved and written on the "fleshy tables of the heart." The soul will be exercised upon receiving this glory, not to be satisfied in knowing merely as a fact there is this righteousness, but to have it wrought in the heart. We should be not only thinking about Christ sometimes, but wholly occupied with Christ Himself. What a little compass it reduces a man into when Christ is received in the heart! Paul says to the Corinthians, "Ye are our epistle written in our hearts." He carried them about with him, though they were leaving him and preferring other teachers; but he appeals to them as a proof of his ministry, and his commendation is seen and read in them as his converts. Therefore he is proved to be an apostle. There was the public testimony to Christ, and what evil had there been permitted amongst them was corrected. So he could say, Titus brings me an account of how you received my first letter, and he writes a second, now that he is happy about them, in which he speaks of the glory of God who "comforteth them that are cast down," and of faith and obedience, etc. Still he was jealous over them with a godly jealousy, because of judaising teachers.

236 The end of that which was to be abolished was Christ. In Hebrews Christ is the starting-point of His house; if they departed from that, they were not His house at all. The law was only a shadow; the substance or body is Christ. The Lord was the body, so to speak, of the spirit; and that is what is meant, I take it, here, "Now the Lord is that spirit." The spiritual meaning of all is the Lord. They had neither the image nor the reality; but the Holy Ghost gives the meaning of those things in the power of a glorified Christ. In verse 7, if they had seen to the end, they would have seen Christ. "If the ministration of death was glorious," etc. There was glory in the establishment of the law, not in the law itself, but going with it. "For even that which was made glorious" - which was introduced with glory - "was not to remain"; but the glory in Christ is not merely introduced; it is a reality which will remain for ever. The law was the shadow, Christ was the fulness. That shews what the things He manifested were, "those which remained." It looks at first as if characteristically the things Paul ministered were to remain, but it is the glory of Christ's Person remains. It is the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, that gives a distinct character to Paul's gospel - not merely the glorious gospel, but really the gospel of the glory of Christ: the glory of God shines in His face.

237 Short of this, you cannot minister righteousness; you may set forth all the attractiveness of Christ and draw sinners, like the woman who loved the Lord, as a sinner attracted by His grace, but had not found righteousness yet, till sent away in peace. "Thy sins, which are many, are forgiven thee." The Holy Ghost tells us now of righteousness because Christ is set down on the Father's throne; He declares God's righteousness by and in "Jesus Christ the righteous." As soon as you have unqualified righteousness, you have a present heavenly character; you are not merely attracted to Christ, but suffering with Him who is in the glory.

People are told sometimes, practically, they must find out what work the Spirit has done in them, instead of having set forth the work of Christ as accomplished for them. None went beyond the preaching of the cross for many ages past, fearing to preach God's righteousness, lest it should lead to Antinomianism. But now we see it is the ground of perfect righteousness we start upon; and that is the very reason we desire to walk so as to please Christ.

In John 15 we are spoken of as being loved according as we have loved Him, not as in grace, but by the Father. The place righteousness is put in shews that the church's place is with God. The heavenly position is shewn. God receives us into His presence in Christ when Christ is received. Having the Spirit, we "wait for the hope of righteousness." What is that? Oh, it has set Christ at the right hand of God, and in Him sets you there too. "Set in heavenly places" is the church's place properly. In Romans 3: 22 it is not the righteousness of a certain class of men for God, but God's righteousness for man who had none of his own - "none righteous." It is "unto all," as much for the Gentiles as Jews, "and upon all that believe"; though presented to all, it is by imputation (made real by grace, and not by accomplishment) on them only that believe. God ministers righteousness, which we have none of our own (that is the gospel), because Christ is set down at the right hand of God. But we should have been ignorant of the fact if the Holy Ghost had not come down to tell us of it. The church's proper association is with Christ in the heavens. And when in the glory, I shall only have my body put right, for everything else I have now by the Spirit. The coming of the Lord is to take us into the place, where we are in spirit by faith already, to which we belong.

238 "I have finished the work thou gavest me to do . . . . Now come I to thee." We shall be to the praise of His glory then, as we are to the praise of His grace now. In Ephesians Christ's coming is not even spoken of, because they were seated in heavenly places; and therefore all that was spoken to them was about the inheritance; the thing set before us is the inheritance in heaven, the possession, not the glory or translation. In Colossians it is "the hope which is laid up for you in heaven." Why? Because they were not holding the Head, but holding angel-worship and all sorts of things. They had slipped down from the full possession of their place, and he is getting them back. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above." In Ephesians they were going on properly, and he could unfold to them all. In Peter it is "to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled . . . reserved in heaven for you" - "ready to be revealed." Here they are seen as begotten again, walking towards heaven, and therefore the word is "as pilgrims and strangers in the earth," in virtue of the resurrection. If the flesh be not judged, one will not stand. The coming of the Lord is the proper hope of the soul to be converted to; as in Thessalonians, "to wait for his Son from heaven."

It is of the utmost importance that we should thoroughly get hold of what the church is and its identification with the Lord Jesus. Its importance may be gathered from the very many and various ways the enemy seeks to attack that truth, and it is always liable to be let slip, for it is easily lost. To have the one truth, that I am in and associated with Christ, uppermost in my thoughts, is a most difficult thing, and the easiest lost of any, because it is a thought, of course, of the Spirit, and nature will always sink the soul down into something in which it is to satisfy God. I am to understand that the power working in my soul is "according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places." And it will not do if the soul has not taken up its position with Christ. One need not speak of hypocrisy, but sincerity will not do. I ought to crucify the world, and the heart should settle down easy and happy. This puts Satan out. I do not mean that there would be no conflict with him, but we must keep him outside. Satan always acts on the flesh; he has no power over the new man. If we are in the light, all things are made manifest. What a wondrous thing to say we are "one spirit with the Lord!" "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit"; and what persons we should be if abiding under the power of that one spirit with the Lord in heaven! What great peace we should enjoy, now that nature is duly judged! The knowledge of righteousness, without the present power of the Holy Ghost, has led many into Antinomianism. They have turned to the flesh to keep down the flesh; and it is impossible, if a man is so occupied with himself, to keep him from self-importance. A danger exists that, when some have seen the truth of the church being in heavenly places, and there has been the labour and working of the soul itself, they may get a great many ideas of the blessedness of the glory, without having got peace, because they have not got their souls on the ground of righteousness, by which alone we are enabled to crucify the flesh. If, all of a sudden, the question were seriously put, Are you safe and ready to be taken? they would be all aback; the ground of the heart is not so thoroughly ploughed up as that they know they are made the righteousness of God in Him. Job said, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I abhor myself," etc. Was that the first time Job had seen God? Yes, in that way. God will have nothing but good in His presence, and the soul finds itself nothing but evil, and says, "then I cannot have it." But it is His grace that is working. The soul, brought into the presence of God in that way, rests in His perfect grace, and has done with itself; then all the bright place into which it is brought is enjoyed; and we eat the corn of the land.

239 Moses saw the promised land from Pisgah, but did not go into it; to see it from outside is a different thing from entering it. It is easier than as Joshua who went in by conflict; Moses on the contrary did not strike a blow. You know now what it is to sit in heavenly places, and what it is to enjoy "the things that remain."* It is true, there is conflict; but you do get into possession. It is wonderfully connected with the whole armour of God, always the defensive first. The person is first thoroughly preserved spiritually, before a sword is put into his hand. Temptation would pull us down from the place God has set us in: but when it is conflict, it is fighting as in danger of being turned out. A person not spiritual cannot tell what it is to be fighting with wicked spirits in heavenly places. He would say, all his battles were on the earth, neither does he know the joy of sitting above. The difference between the Red Sea and Jordan is that the Red Sea is Christ's dying and rising again for us effectually; in Jordan, it is our death and resurrection with Him. Therefore the moment they had passed the Jordan, they were all circumcised. The first thing in the knowledge of the church's place in heaven is the destruction of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ (where it is real). We want to have things real with God and not ideas. We cannot go on without faith.

{*2 Corinthians 3: 11.}

240 The coming of Christ is such a different thing to the soul when our true position is understood. Instead of my desiring it that I may get rid of myself and what I may be doing on the earth, it will be that I may enjoy Him and be with Him in heaven. The affections may be attached to Christ; but unless righteousness is known, there cannot be the quiet waiting for Christ. I dare not look for Him until I know the righteousness of God in Christ. If I have not liberty, I may be wishing for Christ to give me liberty: but when the soul has liberty, it is the peaceful enjoyment of the soul with Him and happy affections! Nothing more easily slips from our souls, even when there is a true desire for it, than the coming of Christ. "Be not conformed to this world."

The Christian a Representative of Christ

2 Corinthians 3

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This chapter brings out the way in which the power of the truth works on our souls to bring us into the presence of the Lord. It begins with the effect of this in testimony to others; and then lets us know how the effect is produced - what a Christian, and so what the church, really is.

The Corinthians had been calling in question the apostolic authority of Paul. How does he meet this? He appeals to themselves, to their own calling of God when they were turned from idols to Him, "as the seal of his apostleship." It is as though he said, "If Christ has not spoken by me, how is it that you are Christians?"

So chapter 12: 3-5 is not at all a precept to doubt, to examine and call in question their own Christianity. The apostle is shewing the absurdity of their doubt of him. "If you want to examine me, examine yourselves: you commend my ministry, because you commend Christ."

Then he goes on to tell us what a Christian is. He is a representative of Christ, just as much as the tables of stone were the representation of the law. Only in that case the writing being with the Spirit of the living God, not with ink, Christ is engraven on the heart by the power of the Holy Ghost, and they known and read of all men. The world ought to see Christ engraven on the heart of a Christian, just as much as Israel could see the letter of the law on the tables.

It is written on the "tables of the heart," by the "Spirit of the living God." Thus merely outward conduct (though there must be that for the world to see) will not do, but Christ within, as the motive and end of all we do.

There is a certain external respect for right and wrong as the result of the Bible and professed Christianity in these countries, which we do not find among the heathen. Thus a man may be following lawful pursuits, and be all that is correct outwardly and morally, yet, if Christ is not the motive, it is all good for nothing. God did not send His Son into the world to bring in a negative Christianity. There must be that result which is worthy of the work. It must be evident through the power of the Holy Ghost. There will be failure, for we are poor feeble creatures; but the world will see where we are going by the road that we take. A man may get on slowly or stumble, but it is evident what road he is going.

242 We have to look to ourselves and see how far we are devotedly following Christ, with full purpose of heart - how far we can say, This one thing I do; but we must take care at the same time not to get into legal bondage by this standard. If I say, "Here is a rule of conduct: follow it," this cannot reach the heart, the affections. The ministration of the letter brings only failure, condemnation, and death; for it prescribes a rule which man, being a sinner, can never follow. It does not change man, but it puts him under death; it proves him "ungodly and without strength."

We may turn even Christ into that letter of condemnation; we may take His life, for instance, and make it our law. Nay, we may turn even the love of Christ into our law; we may say, "He has loved me, and done all this for me, and I ought to love him, and do so much for him, in return for this love," etc. Thus if we turn His love into a rule of life, it becomes the ministration of death; for the only thing a rule can do is to condemn. With the children of Israel Moses put a veil upon his face, for they could not bear the sight of the glory - it condemned them. Man tries either to hide his condemnation from God, or his conscience from His condemnation. He excludes himself from God - from the glory of His holiness and from His glory as seen in Jesus; and when His glory shall be revealed in the end, it will only bring out condemnation more fully.

In contrast with this ministration of death and condemnation, we see the ministration of the Spirit and of righteousness. Now have we this? It is not Christ down here. The Holy Ghost here supposes Christ to be gone: and now it is the power of the Spirit of God revealing the glory of Christ to the soul. What has the Holy Ghost to tell us of Christ? He reveals Him not only as the pattern of godliness, but as always manifesting grace. The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of vile, miserable sinners: and Christ says "him that cometh unto me I will in nowise cast out." "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick."

The whole life of Jesus was a manifestation of grace. He laid Himself aside for others. He gave Himself to all who came to Him. He "had no time so much as to eat"; in the midst of a world of wickedness He was the perfect manifestation of the goodness of God. And this was not all. He died for sin, put Himself under the whole power of God's wrath for sin - He was laid in the grave - He ascended into heaven; and sent down the Holy Ghost as a witness to His glory, and as the minister of righteousness. So it is now God ministering, not requiring.

243 If I am brought to look at Jesus, I can say, He bore my sins - I did them, but He bore them - He gave His soul an offering for my sins; He has taken the whole charge of my sin. I trace my sins up to the cross and there I have done with them. They are all gone.

Where, then, do I see the glory? Is it on Sinai; or in the face of Jesus Christ who has put away all those sins which were revealed and condemned at Sinai? He has entered into heaven, because they are put away. In Philippians 2 we see Christ in heaven, not only in virtue of the glory of His Person, but because of the work He has accomplished. "Wherefore also God hath highly exalted him," etc.

We are thus able not only to bear the sight of that glory of God, but to rejoice in it. Our souls rest in it. We do not ask to have it veiled, but that we may see every ray of it. Our hearts can satiate themselves there, because it is the testimony to the love of God, and the perfect putting away of sin.

There is also the ministration of righteousness. "Seeing then we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech." It is not a little hope here and a little despair there, but it is a message of perfect righteousness to the vilest. "By the obedience of One many were made righteous." Now, it is God putting in fruit, and not requiring righteousness.

What is the practical effect of this work of Christ received in the heart? Not to make a man careless about sin. Not to give him liberty to sin because Christ has borne the wrath due to it. The last verse shews how we are made this living epistle. Contemplating Christ we become like Him. If the Spirit takes of the things of Christ and shews them to me, I can say, "What a Christ I have!" and there is the spirit of holiness at once. I long for Christ, and look at Christ, and thus I get like Him. The very thing which brings an accomplished righteousness to my conscience makes me like Him. Then, mark, there is no veil on the heart or on the glory. The Holy Ghost dwelling in us has taken it away. And it is said of Israel, "When they shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away." When Moses went in to the Lord, he always took off the veil; but the children of Israel could not bear the sight of the glory; so he put it on when he appeared to them.

244 For believers, there is no veil anywhere. They can look at the glory because it tells of salvation, not of judgment - accomplished salvation and effectual righteousness. What perfect liberty to be in the presence of God and enjoy Christ in all His fulness! (v. 17). "The Lord is that Spirit"; that is, Christ is the mind of the Spirit in all these Old Testament things.

Then what is the consequence of this ministration of the Spirit? What follows my knowing that I am the righteousness of God in Christ? that God delights in me? I have a constraint upon my heart to serve Him and follow Him. If I think of His love, have I any fear? I do fail constantly: has God any afterthought about me, or about my sins? There is no uncertainty: nothing is between me and God but the love which has placed me there; without spot and in perfect freedom, for He has given Christ for me. It is now, not God requiring anything from me, but God giving things to me; and this, that His Son may be glorified in me: not that man may be glorified, but His Son Jesus glorified. God is making a marriage for His Son. We have to be the epistle of Christ We have this privilege - to glorify and manifest Christ. We should be delighted to be this epistle, cost what it may. Christ died for me, and I have to represent Him. Of course I may fail, often and again; but the heart at liberty before God will run in the way of His commandments; and this because the affections are set upon God and the glory of Christ. My life, my daily path, must be an answer to the love of God. I am debtor to Christ, for He loved me and gave Himself for me. What an amazing privilege to be permitted to glorify Him in any little way in our path down here!

The Two Ministries

2 Corinthians 4 and 5

J. N. Darby.

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The apostle speaks here of the ministry that he had received. A man of like passions with us, he was one who in a wonderful manner lived with God so as to carry out this ministry; he laboured more abundantly than they all. Still what he ministered we receive; only he was a vessel filled in a more than ordinary degree. But this same blessed truth, as it especially regards the testimony, is committed to us, whatever the measure, whether the greatest as an instrument or the least, and therefore the thing that he ministered is ours; so that we are vessels each one in his own little measure of that with which he was filled.

The ministry of the Spirit, contrasted with that of the Old Testament prophets, shews that the things must be possessed for ourselves before they can be ministered to others. Now this is not characteristic of the prophetic ministry; for the prophets found that it was not to themselves that they ministered. There are three steps in 1 Peter 1: 10-13 as to this. First, the Spirit of Christ which was in the prophets testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and of the glories that should follow. Next, these things are now reported unto us by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, that is, after Christ was glorified. Then we are to have girded loins and "hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto us at the revelation of Jesus Christ." We stand between the sufferings and the glories, with the Holy Ghost sent down, waiting for the revelation of Jesus Christ, in the distinct confession therefore of what the sufferings of Christ have wrought; and our loins are to be girded while here.

The apostle here shews how the testimony is carried out; it is not "thus saith Jehovah," but it is carried out in the place in which we stand as possessing the things ministered. "God who commanded," etc., hath "shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Paul had had a revelation of Christ in him, "when it pleased God to reveal his Son in me." The revelation of Christ in him was that by which he might preach Him, and it was not only to him but in him - this latter of course in a remarkable way; but in every one of us according to our measure. To Paul it was the revelation of Christ in glory; but He was revealed as Son of God, and this is the character of the testimony. It is the expression in the power of the Holy Ghost of what we have in Christ. It is the ministry of the "gospel of the glory of Christ," "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." We may see its character and where it sets us. God speaks from heaven; it is not law. His voice then shook the earth: only once more He will shake not earth only but also heaven, so that now we have the last things. It is the glory he is speaking of in contrast with Moses who put a veil over his face. His ministry was of death and condemnation, and even that reflection of glory man could not look at, because it came as a legal claim upon man, a demand or exaction from God. If it had come alone, man might have thought he could stand it; but, accompanied by the glory, it was impossible. The moment the glory of God, the light of God, shines into a man's heart, the conscience is awakened: the light once there, the man cannot stand in God's presence. Mount Sinai was the administration of it. The ministry of the law (2 Cor. 3) was but the glory of the reflection; all was condemnation, because it was God requiring from men what they ought to be. Man must either hide himself from God when he hears His voice, or hide God from himself.

246 The "glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" is not a little bit coming down with Moses, but a man glorified in heaven who was just before on the cross. Such is the great groundwork of the whole standing of this ministry. When we see the glory of God, we see it in the face of Jesus Christ who hung on the cross - it means that. Sin and death and the grave and the power of Satan are all put away together; and now He who has done it has gone far above all heavens. It is not that God is requiring from men what they ought to be, but He is giving to men from Himself. All passes exclusively between God and His Son on the cross. The only part we had in it was the sins that He bore and the hatred that He met with. That is our sin, our comfort too. There sin had reached its climax in antagonism to that blessed One, and there I see God putting away sin; the work is done, death left behind, and from the glory where He has been received comes the testimony that sin is gone, the work accomplished. Man can now be in the glory, and I get the witness of complete redemption - the glory of God. My sins and my sin are cleared away. I have a poor body of humiliation here, but the glory of God is ministered to me by the gospel of the glory.

247 I see the Person who was made sin for us, who bore Himself the wrath of God. He has passed out of it all and is in glory by the work He wrought. He, the Son of God, was there before the world was; but He is there now in virtue of the work He has accomplished, and the testimony that comes forth is this, "The Man that bore all your sins, the Man that Satan did his worst against, is in glory!" These sufferings of Christ are over, and over with God's testimony to their worth. I have His estimate, for He has set Him at His own right hand in glory; and when I get there, I see it "in the face of Jesus Christ." This gives a very distinct character to the ministry and to the position we are in. We are brought by Him to believe in God who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory. There, when I was only in the energy of sinfulness, God has wrought a work by Him so effectual that He who did it is at God's right hand, and now I can see the glory and delight in it. Instead of seeing the glory of God as in Moses, "We all, with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed." Oh, let me see that! The glory is the proof to me that sin is put away. My sinbearer is in glory. Of course I delight in that. The Holy Ghost comes down because of it, and I am sealed. The Christian stands with the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, looks back at the sufferings of Christ, resting in the efficacy of the accomplished work, and looks forward to the glory. He knows God's acceptance of the accomplishment of the work, and what it leads to, because Christ is in it as a man. It is not only that the man who bore my sins meets me as a poor sinner, but He treats every Christian as Himself. When He revealed Himself to Paul, He said, "Why persecutest thou me?" If Christ owns me as Himself, what am I waiting for? I am waiting for Him to come and take me to Himself, for I have the love of God shed abroad in my heart by the Holy Ghost, and my title to glory is the Son of God in heaven. If I die, I go to Christ, but I am waiting now for Him to come, and bring me into that which He has given me as mine, for the Holy Ghost is sent down to tell me that it is mine. He being in the glory will have me there. "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation." He has done the work that saves, He has redeemed me to God and sent down the Holy Ghost; and now I am waiting for Him to come to take me up to be like Himself and with Himself for ever.

248 In the early part of chapter 5 the apostle speaks of the power of life, that has so come down into the place of death, that he can say, I do not want to die or be unclothed - I see a power come in by which I can be changed into the glory without dying at all. Of course he did die; but it is important to see it as a present living power. So he says, "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." The power of death is broken. If I die, says the apostle, it is all gain. "Absent from the body, present with the Lord." My spirit will be with Him, and I shall be raised when the time comes. He brings in this blessed truth: the testimony being of the glory of Christ, and Christ in glory the proof that the work is perfectly accomplished, and He sitting down because it is finished; we being sons of God; and the Holy Ghost come down to dwell in us, and make us understand that our sinbearer is in the glory. The only thing we have to wait for is, that He should come and take us to Himself. We are delivered from this present evil world and we belong to Him.

It is very striking the way in which the Lord speaks to Paul in Acts 26. "I have appeared unto thee to deliver thee from the people [Jews] and from the Gentiles." That is, he was one completely connected with Christ as his life and hope; and, seeing the One that was in glory, he was neither Jew nor Gentile. He belonged to Christ in glory. So do we. Of course we have not had a vision; but what he testified we receive and the gospel has associated us so completely with Christ in glory, that we lead the life of Jesus here. Our forerunner has gone in, and He sends down the Holy Ghost to be the seal of each person in this very position. "He which stablisheth us with you in Christ and hath anointed us is God." The establishing was in Christ, and the anointing was with the Holy Ghost, giving Him as the seal upon our persons and the earnest in our hearts. "To them that look for him will he appear the second time without sin unto salvation"; that is, He will have nothing more to do with sin, because He came once to put it away - the first time. That work is finished. Those who believe not on Him will die in their sins. "To those who look for him" will He appear with nothing to say to sin: it is a resurrection unto life. "I will come again to receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also."

249 If I go up before the judgment-seat of Christ, in what state do I go? Why, Christ has come and fetched me! If I think a great deal of any one who is coming to me, I go and meet him at the train myself. This is the way I go up before the judgment-seat of Christ: Christ has had such delight in me that He has fetched me! Another thing is: in what condition do we appear there? "Sown in corruption, raised in glory." We shall be before the judgment-seat of Christ glorified already! Nothing can be simpler. "Who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body?" Did you ever think of this? It is a very great blessing. There we shall have the unceasing grace that has followed us and cared for us all the way through, and at last brings us there glorified like Christ. Of course in looking back I see it in measure, but then I shall know even as I am known. Do you simply read the fulness of redemption in that way? Now that my sinbearer is at the right hand of God in glory, what need I fear when I come before Him? I shall bear His image. Blessed thought of God! Therefore we wait for Christ. He is Himself our hope, and we have life in Him.

When a Christian dies, he is "absent from the body, present with the Lord," his spirit goes to Christ: but he is not looking for that, he looks to be conformed to the image of His Son in glory. The whole condition is met there. Christ then sees of the fruit of the travail of His soul, because He has made us perfectly happy and satisfied. He was entirely alone upon the cross for us; it was God dealing with sin. Now His sufferings are over and we are looking at the glory of God. I see Him there - I am here upon the earth. He is sitting on His Father's throne, and we are waiting "not that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life." He has done the work that makes us individually fit to be together with Him in His glory. That is what makes the coming of the Lord so precious. "Every one that hath this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure." Thus the position of the Christian is distinct - we are standing between the sufferings and the coming of Christ. Soon we shall see Him and be like Him. The hope of the coming of Christ was the first thing lost in the ruin of the church, leading to the practical state of Christendom at present. "If that wicked servant [he is a servant still] say in his heart, My Lord delayeth his coming." What made him eat and drink with the drunken was his heart's saying, "my Lord delayeth." He did not say He would not come back when the end of the world comes, and He sits upon the great white throne, and earth and heaven flee away - which is not His coming!

250 How is it that saints do not see the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ? People wonder that godly men do not see it, though the wise just as much as the foolish virgins went asleep. What then changed the state of things? "At midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him." There is a positive revelation that the thing that wakes them up is the testimony that the Lord is coming. The separation took place then. "Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps." The wise virgins had oil still in their vessels, but they had given up expecting the Bridegroom, and gone to sleep in some comfortable place. Once in the comforts of the world they slept more or less, and the Lord wakes them up with "Go ye out." Do you think that, if the Lord were to come to-night, you would have bright well-trimmed lamps?

Just one word as to the full effect of the evil of these last days. I must warn you that we are in "perilous times," though they are blessed times for all that. I say it because it is of such moment, now that we are in 2 Timothy times. He speaks of the state of things and says, Where am I to look? It is the Scriptures that direct the Christian, and knowing too of whom they are learnt. "Continue in the things that thou hast learnt and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them." Then he adds, "And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith that is in Jesus Christ." If I go and learn of Paul, then it is all right; but if you say, The church teaches, then how am I to know? for you all know how the Scriptures are called in question now, and this is Christendom.

The word of God is a two-edged sword; it has no handle: all is blade. It is the word that judges people, and they cannot judge it. "It is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." A man comes to me and tell me about various readings and the like: I reply, How do you like "a man that tells you all things that ever you did?" The word of God does not talk about all sorts of fine bits of learning, but it deals with a man's conscience. That is the way that the word of God is known. Nathan comes and tells David a beautiful story of a little lamb. "Oh! he deserves to die." You are the very man! Just look at the Samaritan woman. The Lord had been talking to her about wells of water, and never said one word about the rest, till at last comes "Go call thy husband." What is to be done with such a person as she was? "I have no husband." She tells the truth to hide the truth. The instant the conscience is reached, there is intelligence of the word of God.

25l One of the very first things that struck me fifty years ago was that, if the truth is made subject to materialism, this is not having to say to God. When I get into the presence of God, my conscience is there. Faith's roots are in the conscience. The place where the word of God gets is never in the intellect, always in the conscience; and this must be and ought to be, because it is God's word. If I question, it is at once starting a lie in order to know whether God's word is true. When God comes with the point of His sword, He reaches the conscience, and I know very well that the sword has a point. When the Lord, the second Man, goes to meet the whole power of evil, when Satan comes and tempts Him, what is the Lord's sufficient argument? He comes to bind the strong man; what is His weapon? He quotes a text out of the Old Testament, a book that men think so little of now. "It is written." That was sufficient wisdom for the Lord and sufficient answer for the devil. He had not a word to say. The Lord Jesus coming as a man, everything depended on His getting the victory.

When I look at 1 Corinthians 2 I read, "Now we have received not the spirit that is of the world, but the Spirit that is of God; that we may know the things that are freely given to us of God." I find "the natural man understandeth not the things of the Spirit of God." "What man knoweth the things of a man but the spirit of a man that is in him? "No one knows what is in my heart if I do not tell it. "Even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God." There are three things. The Spirit unfolds and reveals the things; by words given of the Holy Ghost we communicate them; and by the Holy Ghost too they are received. The word consequently is the resource in the time when people know not what to say about the church.

252 People speak of "apostolic succession." There is no "succession" in the truth. It is such a comfort that what I have is straight from God. The truth is the expression of what is in the blessed heart of God. I have the truth in Christ. Such is the very character of those who walk correctly. You see the blessed testimony of it in Revelation 3: "Because thou hast kept my word and hast not denied my name" An open door He set before them: none could shut it. "Thou hast a little strength." There was not a great deal to say, but what characterised them was what God delighted in, "thou hast kept my word." The name of Christ was valued in the soul, and the word of Christ had its authority for the conscience and was treasured in the heart. He kept the heart in grace. He tells them, "Behold, I come quickly." He is waiting till His enemies are made His footstool, and meanwhile He is sitting down at the right hand of the throne of God. He is set down with His Father on His throne. What about His friends? They are waiting for Him to come and receive them unto Himself. The power of evil He will set aside, He will come out of heaven.

Christ does not take the inheritance alone; all things are to be gathered together in one, and He Head over all. In Philippians 2, when speaking of subjection, we hear, "of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth"; but when of reconciliation, "of things in earth and things in heaven" only; Col. 1: 20. But there is a bride - we are like Eve, who was the spouse, the helpmeet, for Adam in the creation he was lord of: she was associated with him who was lord. "Christ is given to be head over all things." It is not only that Christ is Lord of all things, but there is a holy bride made ready, the Lamb's wife.

What I desire is that your souls may see that the accomplished work of Christ has set Him in the glory. Then the Holy Ghost having come gives us the consciousness of this, and puts us into association with the glory that is coming. It shews us that our place is where Christ is then there is the patience of Christ." "Thou hast kept the word of my patience." He says, I am expecting that day. If I wait for the glory, I know that He is waiting for it too. Then, when we do go before the judgment-seat of Christ, we go there glorified.

253 We are passing through this world, and we have this treasure in earthen vessels. I turn now to the practical effect of it. How are we to walk according to the power of the grace He has put us into? We are poor feeble ones, yet Christ's members, and through this revelation we know we are to walk in this world according to the power and grace of Christ. We have seen what the ministry we have received is. There is no veil at all; there was a veil before, "The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest"; but now we have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus." Christianity is the unveiled glory of God. It is the wonderful and blessed truth that there is no veil; the glory of God is unveiled, but it is in the face of Jesus Christ. "Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not." By manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. The veil may be on a man's heart, but there is no veil on the glory. That was the case with the Jew - the Jew might spit on Christ's face. We are all lost in our natural state; but if this remains hid, there is nothing to go back to, nothing remains but fiery indignation.

Then you come to the men who have received the truth. "God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts." It is the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. The full glory is revealed; that glory thus given shone in our hearts by the power of the Spirit of God, and I come to the person who exhibits it. "In the face of Jesus Christ." "The grace of God that bringeth salvation to all men hath appeared." I have the fulness of the gospel - the gospel of the glory of Christ, for this is the full force of the word. The only thing to wait for is the coming of the Lord to make it good to us.

Now we come to the walk meanwhile. Grace has brought me salvation, and I am looking to the glory to put me into the full result. I know Christ is there in the glory of God. I know the righteousness of God and where that righteousness brings me. But "we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." "Troubled on every side [that is the vessel], yet not distressed [God is there]; perplexed, but not in despair [God is there]; persecuted [that is the vessel], but not forsaken [God is there]; cast down [that is the poor vessel], but not destroyed." What God has done is to take all this perfect salvation, this glory of His Son, this treasure, and put it all in a poor earthen vessel that feels all the difficulties and trials of the way, but has the grace of Christ.

254 So the more of the glory Paul had, a great deal the more he had of trial; he despaired of his life. "I had the sentence of death in myself." Why so? "That we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead." He was there in despair of his life, so what is bringing death to a dead man? He held himself really to be dead to the world, he had the treasure in an earthen vessel. God was with him in the vessel's weakness. There I find the Christian's path. The salvation is complete, our sinbearer is in the glory. Paul had this treasure in an earthen vessel; he held himself to be dead to sin and everything, though he was not insensible to the trial, yet God was in it; and there he learns that the treasure is not here but there, and that there is no possessed power, but a possessed treasure in a dependent man. The treasure is never touched, and I learn continual dependence. If it is even an apostle, the vessel of the treasure must be a dependent man; and that is how we must walk. When you come to giving out the light of testimony or anything else, the treasure must be there or you have nothing; and the vessel must be nothing, or else you get treasure in the flesh. If I am alive as to the flesh and let it act, it spoils the treasure; if the lantern is not clean, the light will not shine out. I have Christ revealed in my soul; but if flesh comes in, it spoils the testimony.

Every Christian gets the sentence of death on the old man. "Reckon yourselves dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." The old man was crucified with Christ, but all the treasure of the glory of God is in this vessel. If I am not to spoil it, I must hold myself a dead man. If I reckon myself dead, and a man comes and asks me to amuse myself, why, I say, I am dead! I have lit the light in the lantern. if the lantern is perfectly clear, it will shine out. I must have my body and my flesh kept down. I have a glorified Christ; I have the Christ revealed in my soul. The flesh is in me; but it is my privilege for my own sake as for His to give it no place. I say I am not a debtor to the flesh to live after the flesh; I reckon myself dead. Before God a Christian stands only a new man, "crucified together with him"; Christ lives in me. Suppose temptation or persecution comes, I quietly reckon myself dead: if I do not, I am frightened at all sorts of things. I am not afraid of my own reputation. "I have the sentence of death in myself that I should not trust in myself, but in God that raiseth the dead." He takes up "Christ in me": he says, "always bearing about in the body," etc.: he was associated with Christ. Christ has really died for us on the cross; so Paul takes up death in Christ practically and says, "always bearing about in my body," etc. He realised his place. That is, I reduce it to practice, and learn that flesh is flesh and must not stir; and if I am full of Christ, it will not. The flesh is not one atom changed, but I am not following it.

255 The first thing Noah does after God had blessed him is to get drunk. Aaron's sons at the beginning offer strange fire! Christ - man crucifies! If Paul is taken up to the third heaven, the flesh will be puffed up about it. If it be under the power of the cross in death, that will do - "Always bearing about." If a Christian is full of Christ, he is not distracted by the things that the devil puts before him. Suppose a mother heard that her child was run over at the other end of the town, do you think she would look at the fine things in the shops as she went along? No, she would not know that the things were there, she is full of her child. "This one thing I do."

Many of you have sorrows, trials, difficulties. "We which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifest in our mortal body." I see you are in earnest, you are carrying about in your body the dying of the Lord Jesus, you must realise it. Paul was in earnest and the Lord comes in and helps him and brings him within an ace of death that he may realise it. That is His way with us if we are in earnest too. If there is any tendency In the flesh to spring up, put the red hot iron on it. "Death worketh in us." Christ's death so wrought in Paul that nothing but life wrought from him in the Corinthians: that is testimony. That is, there should be such truth of death in us that nothing but the life of Christ should be seen from us. I see a man entirely superior to circumstances. This death I have been brought close to was nothing to me. He can say, "God which raiseth the dead." "When we were evil entreated at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak the gospel of God with much contention." It is complete superiority to circumstances. There were the stones flying around Stephen and killing him; yet "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Jesus said, "Father, forgive them." Stephen is the copy of Christ; in the midst of death he is completely superior to circumstances.

256 Now, mark, this is directed to you. "All things are for your sakes." Do you believe that? Everything. You are so beloved of God: Paul for your sakes, Peter for your sakes, Christ for your sakes, the object of God's delight, the Son, the gift, the glory, all for your sakes. God gave His Son to death - "All to the glory of God by us." Oh, if we only saw it, we should get out of the little narrow path of minding our own things. It would not be subjection to circumstances, the instant that was seen. "Though perplexed, not in despair"; we should be made to feel our powerlessness, what the powerlessness of poor wretched flesh is as a man. "All things are for your sakes . . . for which cause we faint not; for though," etc. You have this treasure; if God puts you through the circumstance which puts down the entire man, He makes everything work together for good. And remember "He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous," no, never for an instant. It is only the outward man perishing.

Beloved friends, this is the place He has given us in the circle of His thoughts. Well, if my outward man perish, it is only that the inward man may be renewed day by day. Look at Israel going through the wilderness; why their clothes did not wax old upon them, nor their foot swell those forty years. The Lord was thinking of the very nap of their coats. They were exceedingly evil and naughty; they would not go up. They feared the people of the land and heard that the cities were very great and walled up to heaven. It is all unbelief. What does it matter about a city being walled ever so high, if the walls fall down when we blow a ram's horn! But the children of Israel would not go up, so God says, If you will not go up, you must stay in the wilderness, and He turns back with them! There is His faithfulness to be leaned upon. "He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous." The inward man is renewed day by day.

We get difficulties: still God's eye is upon us; but I never could spend one instant fearing them, if my heart would only recollect, when I know not how to meet them, that the power of God has been in exercise to lead me through the trial and everything, and His eye is upon me. If we only could remember it! "Our light affliction which is but for a moment," etc. I may have to be afraid of my life: no matter, it only touches my outward life. Everything that kept the flesh down, in a certain sense, he has reward for: verse 17 is the effect. The glory had been put into an earthen vessel, and the vessel has been dealt with in death, and now it is a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. If testimony, it is through this process. "Our light affliction worketh for us . . . the things seen are temporal." The mind is all fixed on that which is eternal. He is breaking down the vessel, and soon he will have the glory, and then there will be no vessel seen at all. Now there is the Christian!

257 But as referring back to the old ministry, there are three things it cannot do. It does not give life; it does not give strength: and what is more, it does not give an object. No object is presented by law to my soul. I may believe in God - all right. But I have Christ - well, I have life; but I am a poor weak creature in myself - well, I have strength (by the Holy Ghost); and what is more, I have an object in Christ. It is a totally altered state and condition. Christ is always thinking of me. He is a living Person; and I have grace sufficient for me - a strength needed, and He will help me in my circumstances on the way to death; and more, I am going to be with Him and like Him for ever in glory. This is Christian standing. Then Paul is brought into the experience of what the poor earthen vessel is. He is learning to reckon it dead every day by having an earthen vessel; if it meddles, it mars the testimony. The power is not in the vessel at all, and, if it acted, it brought something that broke down the flesh. I have the blessed word of God revealed in simple purity and kept in the heart of him that receives it. "Always bearing about in the body": that is where growth is, the sense that all the glory revealed to us is His.

We have heard some of our brethren speak of having knowledge. I must get to know the thing. It is not insincerity; but flesh and blood cannot understand it. "Flesh and blood have not revealed it to thee, but my Father which is in heaven"; still, "blessed art thou." But in the same chapter the Lord has to say to Peter, "Get thee behind me, Satan." There is no question that it was real. God had revealed it to him: "upon this rock I will build my church." If He was going to build His church, He must die, and therefore He began to shew unto His disciples how that He must go unto Jerusalem and be killed and raised again the third day. "This be far from thee," Peter said. Though there be a blessed revelation of God, it does not follow that the flesh is practically broken down in the measure of the truth we hold; but it is not insincerity. If I have the glory there, it is what suits it here. The flesh does not like the cross, and if the flesh is not broken down to the measure of the revelation, it must be treated as Satan. There is the practical Christian, placed between the sufferings and the glories; the presence of the Holy Ghost in him reveals the glory of God. Instead of being a terror to me, He reveals all that glory and Christ in it - my delight. Satan's power over me, sin and death, are all gone; and what I wait for now is that I may be with Him forever. Meanwhile He has said, "I am glorified in them."

258 Now let me ask you, can you say that you so see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ that salvation is settled for you? That you are set down in the very glory which to Moses could not but be a terror, but is now the proof of salvation? Is that what the glory of the Man who is in glory has done for you? Can you say, with your heart filled with the Holy Ghost, Well, I have done with the world, I am waiting for God's Son from heaven - the Man who has got the victory, to come and take me to Himself? I am like a person here in a poor place, I have sent on all my furniture and everything before me, I am only waiting to be taken into the place prepared: nothing detains me here. Have you been bearing about in your body the dying of the Lord Jesus? Have you seen what this wretched flesh is that you are to be practically delivered from? And it is infinite goodness to put this treasure in an earthen vessel which, if it stirs, spoils the whole thing. If I look at my place and standing before God in Christ, I say, I am not a child of Adam at all, I am a child of God. Beloved friends, are your souls really believing what Christ has done, and that He is in the glory because of it, and that you are saved by the finished work His Father gave Him to do?

There is no uncertainty about Christ at all. "Wherefore also God hath highly exalted him." Do you see that, when you stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, you stand there glorified? Has not Paul been with Christ these eighteen hundred years? Do you think God is going to take him out to judge him? There I stand with Christ, my sinbearer: the blessed One who put away my sin and accomplished righteousness is in the glory. I have a full and only hope that this blessed Jesus at a time known to God will come again and receive me to Himself, "that where I am, there ye may be also." Then I shall be like Him and with Him where He is. And by faith we know this now: the word of God has told it us. And what I have by the word of God and by the power of the Holy Ghost in me is certain.

259 The Lord give you, if you have not known it, to receive it now, that you may have the stony places broken down, and that the word of God may find an entrance and give you light that you may understand the wisdom of God and see Him who died upon the cross! He has finished everything and is coming again to satisfy His own love; then "he shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied" in seeing us in the same glory as Himself. May He give us now to bear about the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal bodies!

Death to the Believer

2 Corinthians 5

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Redemption sets us at rest and in peace in the presence of God. The whole character of Christian life flows from being brought back to God, and thus we are called to walk with God. To believe that we are brought back into the presence of God is not presumption; it is faith. It is presumption to think that we can be saved in any other way.

The character of our life is that of constant dependence on divine power. If we are "troubled on every side" without being distressed, it must be because the power of God is working. If "perplexed" without being in despair, it is because the power of God is there. But then I must hold myself entirely as a dead man as regards nature, and in the possession of a new life in Christ. "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body," 2 Cor. 4: 10. With Paul the flesh was not allowed to interrupt the power of this divine life, so that it flowed on in an unhindered way. This is a blessed state, and we should know it in our measure. Whenever the life is in activity it always rests on its object; while the character of the life is that of perfect obedience and simple dependence. The obedience of Christ is very different from our thoughts of obedience, which often imply a will opposed to God, and moreover it involves in us much that is to be abstained from, as well as many claims to be yielded to. With Christ the Father's will was the motive, the only motive for whatever He did or suffered. Hence the motive I have in acting, as far as I am a new creature, is the doing of God's will.

It is an important fact that sacred scripture never tells me to die to sin, for this I never could do. But the scripture tells me that I am dead, having died with Christ, and this is Christian liberty. I begin with being dead with Christ. For I cannot die to sin, when sin is the character of my whole life apart from Christ. But how then have I this death? I have another life; I am alive in Christ. I am to mortify the flesh most surely, but then it is only in the power of this life which I have in Christ that I am able to do that; and God's dealings with us will help us therein. But when I look at self, this is not faith: I cannot indeed see what the life is which I have got, it is all so marred. But when by faith I look at Christ, faith's object, I see it all - love, joy, patience, obedience. And we are partakers of this life, as Christ said, "Because I live ye shall live also." And again, "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." I thus get confidence with Him, and then His perfectness, which shines as light, shews me all my inconsistencies; and the more I see of them in the light of Christ's perfectness, the better.

261 In the power of this life I find myself practically dead, and I see my house in heaven, as it is expressed in verse 2. This makes me groan. But why do I groan? Because I have seen and tasted the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, but in person I am not there yet. The groaning is not from disappointment, but from earnest desire, "Earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven" (v. 2). As yet we are not in the positive possession of this glory, but longing to possess it; for faith rests on the ground of our position in that deliverance which has been wrought for us. Hence there is no Christian, however weak, but has a title to long for the glory to which he has been predestinated. It is true of every believer, that "He that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit."

But we must not think that the earnest of the Spirit is the earnest of God's love. It is the earnest of the inheritance, the earnest of glory; as in Ephesians it is said, "In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of his glory."

What God has done to save, He has done perfectly. He has loved us also perfectly, and because of this "we have boldness in the day of judgment." Not only have we boldness before the throne of grace, but "boldness in the day of judgment."

Christ also, into whose presence we go, if we depart, and before whose tribunal we are to appear, gave Himself for us, as the apostle says, "Who loved me, and gave himself for me." He gave not His life only, nor merely His word, but all; His affections, His heart, all that constituted Himself. We have not a thought of blessedness in Him, but He has given it to us. For though we are the subjects of redemption, He who has wrought redemption has an eternal interest and stake in it; as it is said, "He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied."

262 There is no kind of hesitation or fear about himself or about believers when Paul says, "We must all appear," or, as it might be read, "We must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ." Faith realises this manifestation before God as a present thing, and this is most healthful to the soul. It is that which gives activity to conscience, which is a most necessary thing in our daily walk with God and before men. Paul's conscience was always at work. He exercised himself day and night to have a conscience void of offence towards God and towards men. His was a purged conscience, still it was an active and an exercised one; and it was manifest before God.

It may be that there is no outward or allowed evil, but there is something in every heart which we cannot help knowing that we are sparing, something that is not Christ in us. But we must be manifested before the tribunal of Christ. All is indeed grace, but the present working of grace is to exercise the conscience. The effect of grace is now to bring into the light and to make manifest. Having salvation in Christ, and being seen in Him, and righteous too in Him, and consequently having peace of conscience and rest of heart, I can afford to judge myself: to judge myself in the light which makes all things manifest. The Lord grant us deliverance from every reserve in our poor hearts! For there is power of life in Christ to enable us to triumph over sin and death, and to live not unto ourselves, but unto Him who loved us, and died for us, and is now seated at the right hand of God. We are already risen in Him and are to be manifested with Him in the glory. Shall I then allow any wretched object or idle vanity to occupy me instead of Christ? It may be perhaps some folly, or some piece of self-importance, or some evil disposition, or even the cares of this life! All this grieves the Holy Spirit of God, and the consequence is, that the eye is dimmed and the power is gone. Of the good Shepherd it is said, "He restoreth my soul": and therefore our hearts should not be satisfied to go on at a distance from the Lord, or in a state that will not bear to be manifested by the light. When life acts, it acts upon its object; and just as far as I am occupied with an object outside of myself, I get rid of self. This is true even naturally.

The life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God; and hence I do not measure sin by breaking commandments merely, though that of course is sin, but rather by the presence of the Holy Ghost in me; as it is said, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." If I grieve the Spirit I lose my discernment, and sin dims my power of sight, and deadens my spiritual senses; so that the Spirit of God is obliged to bring me to the miserable work of being occupied with my sin (as Peter was) instead of being occupied with all that is precious and joyous in Christ. It is very grievous that, instead of doing the work which it is His delight to do - even revealing Christ - He is obliged to reveal our sins to us, till we weep like Peter over our self-confidence and departure from the Lord. All is manifest unto Christ.

263 For a moment look back on all your ways from your youth upwards (but you cannot bear to do this if you have not settled peace), look at them all, and look at them all in the light of God's word and Spirit. Look at your sins before conversion and after conversion: how many there are! By this review, again and again, as humbled and led of the Spirit, I get a special increase of blessing. I retrace the foolishness and sinfulness of my doings and the patience and long-suffering of my God. I see Him guarding me here, teaching me there, lifting me up when I was ready to fall, and comforting me when I only expected punishment; and hence I adore and praise Him the more! But if it be thus in looking back now, how much more will it be in the moment when set in the glory! I shall then know Him and see Him, and trace all His ways in the fulness of that light which now, in the measure of it I possess, manifests Him and myself in contrast. For surely it is just in the measure in which I can judge my ways in His presence, that the effect is adoration and praise.

It should always be remembered, that Christ is not our life without being our righteousness; and that neither is He our righteousness without being our life. If this be surely grasped, it will enable the soul to look at the judgment-seat of Christ with perfect calmness; and only, as has been stated, to use the thought of our being manifested there to give present activity to conscience if thinking of oneself, or if thinking of others to persuade them, if haply they may be brought now in grace, into the light in which all will be manifested ere long for judgment. "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." And then the apostle immediately adds as regards himself, "But we are made manifest unto God" This is a present thing. It is the light in which he is already manifested, and in which he seeks to walk. The knowledge and power of the life we have will bring us peace in the place of terror, for Christ is the object of this life. "For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ." This fulness of glory, the glory of God Himself, we have as the treasure in our own souls, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. Paul goes on to resurrection, and comes back again to the object of his faith, and then sees himself in the glory. I look to attain to this resurrection (Phil. 3), and would have my conversation in heaven. In result we get a double truth the power, the expectation working in us, and the blessed fact that He will Himself receive us into the glory. The doctrine of all this is found in the last verse of the chapter. "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

264 Confidence is founded on His being made our righteousness, who was made sin for us! But there is another thing which is exceedingly sweet to me, a profound consolation, a wonderful depth of joy, namely, to look on Christ, and to say, He is my life. Death has no power over the life of Christ. Divine power, working in life, swallows up death, and brings entire deliverance from what sin has wrought. The same divine power which wrought in Christ, in raising Him from the dead, is now working in us and will raise us up by Jesus. And then how plainly do we see, that God does not take counsel of man! He takes His own thoughts and executes His counsels in the riches of His grace. The prodigal's own thought was to be made "a hired servant." But the father received him according to his thoughts, robed and fed him according to his thoughts.

So the Lord has set us in His place as man. As He said when on earth, "Not as the world giveth, give I unto you." The world gives something out of itself; but Christ brings us into Himself - into His joys, into His peace, into His glory. If Christ comes, mortality will be swallowed up of life; if He does not come, I shall give up mortality. We shall all appear before the judgment-seat, but before that we shall be up in the glory; received there by Christ, as He says in John 14: "And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." Can I then be afraid of the tribunal? No. The more we learn of God's ways, the more we shall delight in God's ways. It is an amazing and solemn thought, that we are made manifest unto God! But faith realises this position, namely, our position in the presence of God. "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord," what then? Is he afraid? No! But the knowledge gives activity to love. "We persuade men." Paul stood in the presence of God, and manifest to God; and if we thus stand in the presence of God, we shall find out how little the heart knows of "bearing about in the body, the dying of the Lord Jesus." We do not find it out, unless we are thus in the light.

265 The right effect of the judgment-seat is, not what shall be disclosed by it in future, for that is Christ, and I have solid peace because it is Christ in whose presence I shall appear, but the present power to be before it, making it the test of conscience now, and the standard by which we try our thoughts and ways. May we each know it, and walk in it!

The Power of Life in Christ Risen

2 Corinthians 5

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The hope of the believer is not death. It is "not to be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life." He need not be unclothed, that is, of himself. The purpose of God is nothing less than that we should be conformed to the image of Christ; Rom. 8. Our proper hope is to see Him as He is, and be like Him. It is the power of divine life conforming us to Christ the Head that we hope for; and this is what He has wrought us for. Being in utter ruin, we can now only look to what are God's thoughts and purposes about us, and therefore hope comes in as a very necessary help; but hope is not all our joy now, and when we get to heaven, there will be no hope left. Our proper joy is not hope at all, though now, seeing there is nothing satisfying here, one of our greatest joys is hope. What He has brought us into now is not subject of hope at all. We do not hope for the divine nature or the love of God. The divine joy of the believer is having these, while rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.

We have a hope in death, but death is not our hope. There is that in it which is more than hope - the possession of life; and that death does not touch but set free. There are some things we should be at home in. We should be at home in God's love; and at the judgment-seat of Christ, being like Him, we may be at home. True, we are at home, too, in conflict here, temptation, etc.; the promise is "to him that overcometh." But, in spite of conflict, our hearts should be at home where God has put us

When death comes in, it breaks every possible thought of nature; it is a terrible thing in this way: every thought of man gone - not a single thing to trust in - everything in nature broken down.

Another point is, it is the power of Satan which none can control. God has the power of life, but if He had called in question Satan's power in death, He would have annulled His own sentence. Death must come in, breaking every tie of nature, and bringing in every terror connected with Satan. The sentence must be executed by God Himself, and therefore it is the judgment of God. There is judgment after it. "It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment." What can this judgment be? If I die and God brings me into judgment, I must be condemned for the sin that brought me there. "Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." (I am not now speaking of deliverance.) In every sense death is a terrible thing. Besides the natural dread that even an animal has, there is a terror in it, because all ties are broken by it; everything, however loving, is gone, when death takes it. The power of Satan ushering into judgment, it can bring nothing but condemnation for sin. It is also what God has put as a stamp on man, and no skill of man can avert it. It comes with bitter mockery amidst all the progress of which man boasts. In all this we see what death is in itself, as the wages of sin. But there is another way to look at it. The way God has taken it up and entirely delivered us (those who believe); and now, if there is a bright spot in a man's (a Christian's) life, it is at his death. It brings in a bright gleam of the future, entirely by Christ. "If one died for all, then were all dead," etc.; "that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death . . . and deliver them who through fear of death," etc. This blessed truth is simple in itself, familiar to us, that the Son of God, of whom it is said that it was not possible He should be holden of death, did come down into it, has gone under it, and is risen. The second Adam came into the very place of the first Adam.

267 Then we were under sin, judgment, wrath, condemnation, and He has been under it all - He was made sin. Had God not measured the sin? Yes. Did He not know the consequences of it? Yes; and He "spared not his own Son, etc. Did Christ not know all that was involved in it? Yes; and He came in the full love of His heart to accomplish the purpose of God - to drink the cup; but such was His agony at the thought of what the cup was, that He sweat great drops of blood. It was the thought of sin, death, and judgment that made Him shrink from the cup, but He went through it with God. The power of death was gone, in a sense, when those who came to meet Him saw Him, "They went back and fell on their faces." He had nothing to do but to go away then, but He did not: He offered Himself up. His disciples might go away, because He stood in the gap. Thus He takes the cup as judgment, suffering the penalty of sin. It is not now Satan (as in the agony in the garden) but God. When on the cross He cries, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He drank the cup thoroughly on the cross, then He died. His body went down to the grave. Was it the power of Satan when He said, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit?" No. He gave up His spirit, waiting for the resurrection. He went down under death, took up the whole thing - sin, Satan's power, wrath, etc. He was made sin for us. "He died unto sin once."

268 We have thus seen what death was for Christ. Now see what it is for us. In nature it is everlasting wrath: but there is not a bit of the wrath, not a bit of the sin, remaining for the believer. Is God going to judge the sin He has put away? No; there is not a trace of it remaining. "He has put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" - "condemned sin in the flesh." The strength of it all is in this - that He was "made sin," because He had no sin of His own. He suffered for it once, the just for the unjust; 1 Pet. 3: 4. "Condemned sin in the flesh." God has done it once for all, and now He lives, and there is no more about the sin. "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin," having nothing more to say to it, and apart from the question of sin altogether, to take us into glory.

Looked at as the nature, He had no sin, but I had sin, and that is put away; sin is entirely put away, abolished for ever. He has come up from under the consequences of death, after sin is put away. The life He took up is in the "power of an endless life." I have new life in Him, life born of the Spirit, and "the life that I live, I live by the faith of the Son of God," etc. Then what about the old man practically? As I have this new life, the old man is reckoned dead. I am dead. What is dead? The old man; I am "baptised into his death." The "corn of wheat" must die. Death ended all connected with it, for dying is unto that by which I was held. The law has killed me. The effect of the law, if we see its value, is that it has killed me, and I have life in Christ. Scripture does not speak of our dying to sin, or of our dying to ourselves; but we "are dead," and are to "reckon ourselves dead." "Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as thou alive in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?" The old man is an antagonist in its will; but I am dead to it. I have done with that which hindered my going to God. Has not a man done with that to which he has died? Literally, when death comes, I shall have done with what is mortal. Mortality is to be "swallowed up of life." The old nature is a thorn I shall be glad to get rid of; it is mortal, corrupt, and now by sin under the power of Satan. But then it will be gone, this corruption and mortality. The mortal body having died, I shall have nothing more to do with death or the old nature.

269 What of the new nature? Is this done with? No; it is getting home, where the affections will have full play. In death we have done with the old nature, the first Adam, and get a great deal more of the Second. This is "far better." I shall have got rid of mortality when I die. "Therefore we are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord." Who is this person? The new man. I am absent from the body, present with the Lord. Leaving this wretched poor mortal, to be with Christ, is positive gain. It will be better still to be glorified in the body with Him, complete in all with Christ; but now it is "gain" to die.

What was Christ's own thought about dying? What He said to the thief shews: "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise"; and to His disciples He said, "If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I go to my Father." In Christ there was the perfect consciousness of gain. Was Stephen less happy in his measure when he died? Hear him saying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." The fact of death is leaving the old man entirely behind, and going to be with Christ. There is positive gain in having done, in measure, by faith now, or in fact by-and-by, with the mortal.

Then there is the dying daily. But there is not a single thing in which death can come, but it is positive gain, and for the life of the spirit. The sorrow which comes in by the breaking of natural ties is for blessing, reducing the flesh, etc. If there is will in the sorrow, it is bad; but trial is to be felt. Peter did not like the thought of the cross; his flesh was not broken down to the point of the revelation he had from God. Then there must be a process gone through to break it down, either with God in secret or through discipline.

In Christ

2 Corinthians 12

J. N. Darby.

<21043E> 270

There are some chapters in Scripture which contain so full and blessed a statement of some great truth of God that they acquire and retain a peculiar hold on the believer's mind. And though all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and has the same authority, yet this exceptional effect of peculiar passages cannot be blamed, because it is always found to be produced by some chapter which contains a special revelation of God and His ways, or the love of Christ towards us.

The chapter of which I would now speak can scarcely be said to have this character. But it contains so complete and remarkable a display of the extent and wondrous heights and deplorable depths to which saints may go; of the mighty principles for good or for evil which are at work in those natures, in which they have part in the highest associations on the one hand, and in the lowest degradation on the other; and of the way in which grace acts to give predominance to good in us - it presents such a view of the whole working of divine grace to give the perfect result in good and in blessing of the spiritual conflict now going on in us, through the knowledge of good and evil which we acquired in the fall, that I think it may be fruitful to the reader if I unfold it a little practically.

The way in which in this one chapter we find the highest state to which a Christian can be elevated, an exceptional one, no doubt, as an experience, and the lowest condition to which he can fall, and all the practical principles on which the divine work is carried on between these two extremes, is very striking. In the beginning of the chapter we find a saint in the third heaven, in paradise, where flesh could have no part in apprehension or in communication. He knew not whether he was in the body or out of the body. There was no consciousness of human existence in flesh: so he could not tell, nor could he utter, what he had heard when he returned to the consciousness of flesh again. Such is the saint at the beginning of the chapter. At the end we find one, perhaps, many fallen into fornication, uncleanness, and lasciviousness, and unrepentant yet of their sins. What a contrast of the highest heavenly elevation and the lowest carnal degradation! And the Christian is capable of both. What a lesson for every saint, as a warning, though he may reach neither extreme; and how suited to give the consciousness of what natures are at work and of the elements which are in conflict in him in his spiritual life down here! Another part of this chapter will shew us where power alone is to be found to carry him along his path upon the earth in a way consistently with the heavenly good to which he is called.

271 Paul uses a remarkable expression as to himself when speaking of his elevation to the third heaven: "I know a man in Christ." A few preliminary thoughts as to the law will facilitate our understanding this expression. The law gave to man a perfect and divine rule for his conduct upon the earth. But it never took him up into heaven. Heavenly beings indeed, such as the angels, act upon the abstract perfection of this divine rule as it is stated by the Lord Himself: they love God with all their heart and their neighbour as themselves. This is creature perfection. But it is their nature in which God has maintained them.

To prescribe feelings and conduct by law is another thing. The contents of the law are perfect. It tells us what the right state of a creature is, and it forbids the wrong that flesh is inclined to. But why prescribe this? No doubt obedience is a part of perfection in a creature. Mere doing right would not suffice for a being subject to God to walk righteously, because God has absolute authority over him. Thus God can, and (we know) does, prescribe certain particular acts of service to angels; and they obey. But when a state of soul is prescribed, why is that? Because it is needed. It becomes necessary because of the state of the person to whom the command is addressed. He is otherwise inclined, in danger from other dispositions of doing otherwise. To command a person to do a thing supposes that he is not doing nor about to do it if without a command.

If we add to this that nine of the ten commandments forbid positive sins and evil dispositions, because men are disposed to them, or there were no need to prohibit them, we shall find that the very nature and existence of a law which prescribes the good on God's authority supposes the evil in man's nature which is opposed to it. This is a deplorable truth, take either aspect of the case. You cannot command love, that is, produce it by commanding it, and you cannot put out lusts by forbidding them to a nature which has them as nature. Yet this is what the law does, and must do if God give one. It proves that what is forbidden is sin, and that it is in man to be forbidden; but it never takes sin away. It prescribes good in the creature but does not produce it. It shews what is right on earth in the creature, but how far is it from taking man into heavenly places! It can have no pretension to this.

272 Man has now by the fall the knowledge of good and evil. The law acts on this amazing faculty, of which God could say, "the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil." But how? Man is under the evil, and law requires good in him which is not, and shews him all the evil which is in him. It presses the evil on him and its consequences in judgment, and as to the good it requires in him, it only gives the consciousness that it is not there. Further, it shews no good to him as an object before his soul. I repeat, to make the distinction clear, it requires good in him, loving God and his neighbour for example. But it presents no good to him. There is no revealed object to produce good nor be man's good in him in living power. It works therefore wrath. Where no law is, there is no transgression.

Now grace works quite otherwise; it does not require good where it is not, though it may produce good. It does not condemn the wicked, but forgives and puts away their sin; it presents to us an object, God Himself, but God come near to us in love. It does more, it communicates what is good. It is not a law. It does not require good where it is not, but produces it. It does not condemn the wicked, but it forgives and puts away their wickedness. It does not lead us to carry on the conflict between good and evil by pressing the evil on us, and making us feel it a burden not to be got rid of, and ourselves slaves to it, which the law does, making us feel "this body of death" as that under whose power we are, sold to sin, and, supposing we are born again, making us only feel more truly and deeply that even this does not make us meet its requirements so that we should be righteous by it, however much "to will is present with us," but the contrary. In a word, grace does not, in the knowledge of good and evil with which it deals, lead us to carry on the conflict by the sense of the power and dreadfulness of evil to which we are subject and its consequences, but by the possession of perfect and divine good through which we judge the evil as raised above it, by the possession of an object perfectly good and which is our delight as well as our life, by the possession of Christ - being in Him and He in us.

273 "I know," says the apostle, "a man in Christ." But this we must a little explain and open out. It is often very vague in many a Christian's heart. In paradise, without law, under the law, and through the presenting of Christ to him, man was responsible for his own conduct as a living man, for things done in the body. He was viewed as a child of Adam or "in the flesh." He stood, that is, before God in that nature in which he had been created, responsible for his conduct in it, for what he was in the flesh. The result was, that in respect of every one of these conditions he had failed: failing in paradise, lawless when without law, a transgressor when under law, and last and worst of all, the closing ground of judgment, when Christ came, proved to be without a cloak for sin, the hater of Him and His Father.

Man was lost. In a state of probation for four thousand years, the tree had been proved bad, and the more the care, the worse the fruit. All flesh was judged. The tree was to bear no fruit for ever. Not only had he been proved to be a sinner in every way, but he had rejected the remedy presented in grace, for Christ came into an already sinful world, and He was despised and rejected of men. It was not all, that man, fallen and guilty, was driven out of paradise; but Christ come in grace was, as far as man's will was concerned, driven out of the world which was plunged in the misery to which sin had led, and which He had visited in goodness. Man's history was morally closed. "Now," says the Lord, when Greeks came up, "is the judgment of this world." Hence it is we have, "He appeared once in the end of the world."

But now comes God's work for the sinner. He who knew no sin is made sin for us. He drinks graciously and willingly the cup given Him to drink. He lays down the life in which He bore the sin, He gives it up; and all is gone with it. The very life our sin was borne in on the cross was given up, His blood shed. He suffered for the sins of every believer, by the sacrifice of Himself, He has perfected them for ever. He that is dead is freed from sin. But Christ died; He then is freed from sin. But whose? Ours, who believe in Him. It is all gone, gone with the life to which it was attached, in which He bore it. The death of Christ has closed for faith the existence of the old man, the flesh, the first Adam-life in which we stood as responsible before God, and whose place Christ took for us in grace. What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His only Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. In that He died, He died unto sin once; in that He liveth, He liveth unto God.

274 Faith anticipates the judgment, as regards the old man, the flesh, with all its ways. Upon the ground of its responsibility we are wholly lost. We may learn it experimentally by passing under the law, becoming hopeless of pleasing God, as being in the flesh, or we may learn it by finding our opposition and indifference to Christ. But the whole thing is done away with for the believer on the cross. He is crucified with Christ, nevertheless lives, yet not he but Christ lives in him. If the cross has proved that in flesh there is nothing but sin and hatred against God, it has put away the sin it has proved. All that is gone. The life is gone. If a guilty man die in prison, what can the law do more against him? The life in which he had sinned, and to which his guilt attached itself, is gone. With us too it is gone; for Christ has died, willingly no doubt, but by the judicial dealing of God with the sin which He bore for us. If we are alive, we are alive now on a new footing before God, alive in Christ. The old things are passed away: there is a new creation. We are created again in Christ Jesus.

Our place, our standing before God, is no longer in flesh. It is in Christ. Christ, as man, has taken quite a new place to which neither Adam innocent, nor Adam sinner, had anything to say. The best robe formed no part of the prodigal's first inheritance at all; it was in the father's possession, quite a new thing. Christ has taken this place consequent on putting away our sins, on having glorified God as to them, and finishing the work. He has taken it in righteousness, and man in Him has got a new place in righteousness with God. When quickened, he is quickened with the life in which Christ lives, the second Adam, and submitting to God's righteousness, knowing that he is totally lost in the first and old man, and having bowed to this solemn truth, as shewn and learned in the cross, he is sealed with the Holy Ghost, livingly united to the Lord, one spirit. He is a man in Christ; not in the flesh or in the first Adam. All that is closed for him in the cross, where Christ made Himself responsible for him in respect of it and died unto sin once; and he is alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. He belongs to a new creation, having the life of the head of it as his life. Where he learnt the utter total condemnation of what he was, he learnt its total and eternal putting away.

275 The cross of Christ is for the believer that impassable Red Sea, that Jordan through which he has now gone, and which is his deliverance from Egypt for ever, and, now he has realised it, his entrance into Canaan in Christ. If Jordan and the power of death overflowed all its banks, for him the ark of the covenant passed in. It is just his way into Canaan. That which, if he had himself assayed to go through, as the Egyptians, would have been his destruction, has been a wall on the right hand and the left, and only destroyed all that was against him. He was a man in the flesh, he is a man in Christ. Amazing and total change, from the whole condition and standing of the first Adam responsible for his own sins, into that of Christ, who, having borne the whole consequence of that responsibility in his place, has given him, in the power of that, to us, new life, in which He rose from the dead, a place in and with Himself, as He now is as man before God.

It is to this position of the "man in Christ" the apostle refers, only that he was given in a very extraordinary manner to enjoy the full fruit and glory of it during the period of his existence here below. His language as to this truth is remarkably plain, and therefore powerful. "When we were in the flesh," he says. Thus it is we speak, when we refer to a clearly bygone state of things in which we are no longer. "When we were in the flesh," he says; that is, we are no longer in that position at all. "But," he says, "ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be the Spirit of God dwell in you." We are now alive in Christ. "If ye be dead," says he elsewhere, "to the rudiments of the world, why as though living [that is, alive] in the world are ye subject to ordinances?" "For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory."

The reader will forgive me, if I have dwelt so long upon the first expression of our chapter. I have done so because of its vast importance. It is the very heart of all Paul's doctrine, the true and only way of full divine liberty and the power of holiness; and because many Christians have not seized the force of this truth nor of the expressions of the apostle, they use Christ's death as a remedy for the old man, instead of learning that they have by it passed out of the old man as to their place before God, and into the new in the power of that life which is in Christ. Ask many a true-hearted saint what is the meaning of, "When we were in the flesh," and he could give no clear answer; he has no definite idea of what it can mean. Ask him what it is to be in Christ: all is equally vague. A man born of God may be in the flesh, as to the condition and standing of his own soul, though he be not so in God's sight; nay, this is the very case supposed in Romans 7, because he looks at himself as standing before God on the ground of his own responsibility, on which ground he never can, in virtue of being born again, meet the requirements of God, attain to His righteousness. Perhaps finding this out, he has recourse to the blood of Christ to quiet his uneasy conscience, and repeated recurrence to it as a Jew would to a sacrifice, a superstitious man to absolution. But he has no idea that he has been cleansed and perfected once for all, and that he is taken clean out of that standing to be placed in Christ before God. But if in Christ, the title and privilege of Christ is our title and privilege. Of the full and wondrous fruit of this, Paul for God's wise and blessed purposes was made to enjoy in an extraordinary and special manner. In that, flesh and mortal nature has no part, nor ever can, though we as alive in Christ have, while in that nature, whatever be the degree of our realisation of it. Paul was allowed to know it, so that, while enjoying it in the highest degree in the new man, in his life in Christ - "the life hid with Christ in God - the "not I but Christ liveth in him," he had no consciousness of that other mortal part which yet burdens by its very nature (as well as by sin if its will works) the new and heavenly man in us. He could not tell if he was in or out of the body; he knew on re-entering his ordinary state of conscious existence that he had this body; but he could not tell if he was in or out of it when in the third heaven; he was unconscious of it altogether.

276 The reader will remark too how carefully the apostle distinguishes between the man in Christ and himself as he had the practical experience of himself down here, having indeed the life of Christ and the Spirit which united him to the Head, but having also the flesh in him though he was not in the flesh. Of this Paul, of what he was practically conscious down here, would not glory; but he had been given to be in the enjoyment of his place as a man in Christ with entire abstraction, as to his consciousness of it, of anything else - of such an one he would glory. And so can we, though we may never have been in the third heaven to realise fully the glory and privileges of the position we are brought into, yet we are men in Christ, and we have known enough - the feeblest saint who knows his place in Christ has known enough - of that blessing to rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. He glories in the position of the man in Christ, which is his most surely and fully in Christ; and he may realise it too, so that at the moment he may not sensibly feel the working of sin in him, though he well knows it is there. We may be filled with the Spirit, so that the Spirit is the only source of actual thought in us.

277 Indeed this is our proper Christian state, not always with the same activity, it is true, of the Spirit giving the sensible apprehension of the glory and the things of Christ so as to elevate the soul to that which is above; but so that there is no consciousness of anything inconsistent with it in the mind.* There may be indeed even then when there is no conscious evil, the effect of obscure apprehension, an apprehension obscure perhaps even in a way which implies fault, negligence, want of singleness of eye, spiritual laziness, swerving from the path in which a single eye would lead us (though there uneasiness naturally follows in the soul because the Spirit does dwell in us and is grieved): still there may be no present disturbing element in the conscience.** The being, as men speak, in the third heaven is not always our place and portion. It is a mistake to think it would puff us up. A creature is never puffed up in the presence of God and with Him before the mind. It is when the eye is off Him, when we have been in the third heaven but are no longer there, that the danger begins. We are in danger of being puffed up about having been there when we have lost the present sense of the excellency of what is there and in which we lose the sense of self. This is what we find in Paul's case. The man in Christ has Christ for his title and is entitled thus to all that Christ enjoys, to joys and glories which mortal apprehensions cannot receive and language formed by mortal thoughts and ways cannot express, that are not meet to be communicated in this scene of human capacities. They belong to another sphere of things

{*This is the state described in the Epistle to the Philippians - the true Christian state.}

{**The fact, it is important to remark, of sin being in the flesh does not make the conscience bad. When it becomes the source of thought or action, then the conscience is bad, and communion by the Holy Ghost is interrupted. But our chapter leads us farther into this.}

278 But wonderful as that is into which we are brought, the question of good and evil, the knowledge of which we have by the fall and cannot get rid of (nor is it desirable or meant we should), must be thoroughly and experimentally gone through by us. It has been as to acceptance. In respect of this it is finally and for ever settled before God by the death and resurrection of Christ. But we have to learn to judge the evil and to delight in the good. The law, as we have seen, makes us learn the evil as looking to be judged for it. In grace we are first put into the position of perfect blessing in Christ, and then we judge what is contrary to it. This is the difference of bondage and liberty. Still we have to judge it and grow in our apprehension of good. In the instruction of our chapter this, as in all God's ways with the apostle, who was to be both quickly and fully taught in order constantly and deeply to teach others, was done in the strongest and fullest contrast of the extremes. The third heaven, if it did not set aside the flesh in fact for ever, must shew what a hopeless unchangeable thing it is. And so it did. Paul had entered into the third heaven with no consciousness of the hindrance of the body, still less with any working in the flesh in any way. But he must return into the practical state of existence in which he had to serve Christ with the consciousness of what he was as Paul. And here the only working of the flesh, the only way it took cognizance of Paul's having been in the third heaven, would have been, if it had been allowed to do so, to have puffed him up at having such wondrous revelations. It was unchanged in evil. Paul must learn this practically, even by a visit to the third heaven, instead of this amazing privilege taking away or changing it. It was not allowed to act, but he must learn truly to judge it in himself.

Note this difference. It is not necessary when we are in Christ that flesh should act in order that we should learn to judge it in ourselves. Alas! it is often in that way we do learn it, but it is not necessary that it should act even in thought. By God's ways, and through communion with Him, we can learn to judge evil in the root in us without its bearing fruit. If we do not learn to judge it in communion with God, where there may be very real exercise about it (and a very great conflict of will against God if it has acquired any head), we learn it in its fruits through the giving way to the temptation of Satan. When it is not judged, we learn, no doubt, the evil - not yet indeed the root; but Christ is dishonoured? the Spirit grieved, and, but for the coming in of grace, sin will in such case have acquired deceiving power in our hearts.

279 In what has preceded we have found three important points brought before us in this chapter. Firstly, the man in Christ; secondly, the gross evil of the flesh if our members be not mortified; thirdly, that this same flesh is not at all corrected in its tendencies even by a man's being in the third heaven nor by anything else. Paul needed a messenger of Satan to buffet him, lest he should be puffed up. There is another collateral point indeed, which I would here briefly notice: the difference between our abstract position as men in Christ (and we are entitled to consider ourselves as such; it is our true position as Christians according to grace), and our actual condition with the consciousness of the existence of the flesh and all our bodily circumstances and infirmities down here. Into this actual condition we have now to follow Paul in our chapter and to learn where power is to be found to walk rightly in it. The flesh exists unchangeable in its nature, a pure hindrance.

First, we may remark that no extent of knowledge, even where given of God, is in itself spiritual power in our souls. We cannot doubt that such revelations as Paul received in the third heaven strengthened his own faith, made him understand that it was well worth sacrificing for it a miserable life, such as this world's is, and gave him a consciousness of what he was contending for, a sense of the divine things he had to do with, which must have exercised an immense influence upon his career in this world. But it was not immediate power in conflict in the mixed state in which he found himself when he had to speak of "myself Paul." He had, and so have we, to walk by faith and not by sight. The wickedest man would not sin while his mind had the glory of God Himself before his eyes; but that would no way prove the state of his heart and affections when it was removed. Like Balaam, he would turn to his vomit again. So in point of fact the Christian, however strengthened and refreshed by times on the road by what is almost like sight to him and by communications of divine love to his soul, has to walk by faith and not always in these sensible apprehensions of divine results in glory. Not that he is to walk in the flesh or lose communion, but he is not always under the power of especial communications of the glory conferred on him and of divine love to his soul. Paul knows a man fourteen years ago - not every day in that state. He could rejoice in the Lord always. Some Christians are apt to confound these two things - special joy and abiding communion, and to suppose, because the first is not always the case the discontinuance of the latter is to be taken for granted and acquiesced in. This is a great mistake. Special visitations of joy may be afforded; but constant fellowship with God and with the Lord Jesus is the only right state, the only one recognised in Scripture. We are to rejoice in the Lord alway.

280 This the flesh would seek to hinder, and Satan by the flesh. Here we find first the privilege of having a title to hold ourselves dead. We are not debtors to the flesh. It has no kind of title over us. We are not in the flesh. We may reckon ourselves dead and alive unto God, and sin shall not have dominion over us. It is all-important to hold this fast. The flesh is unchanged, but there is no necessity of walking in it; not more as to our thoughts than as to our outward conduct. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and of death; sin in the flesh is condemned by the death of Christ; the power it had over us when under law (if not lawless) it has no longer. When we were in the flesh the motions of sin which were by the law wrought in us all manner of concupiscence. But we are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwells in us. We are delivered from the law, having died in that in which we were held. Our whole condition is changed. What the law could not do just because it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, has condemned sin in the flesh. But if the flesh be not changed, how is this realised in practice? It is this which is taught us here. It is first the giving conscious nothingness and weakness in the flesh. This is not power, but it is the practical way to it. We are entitled, as to our standing before God, to reckon ourselves dead unto sin and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord, and in practice to hold ourselves, as in this condition, not debtors to the flesh to live after the flesh; and sin shall not have dominion over us, for we are not under law but under grace.

281 But our chapter goes farther than this; it shews us power so to walk. The flesh is then practically put down. The measure, as stated by the apostle, is this, "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body." His object was not to gain this life. Alive in Christ we have it; but he held every movement, thought, and will of the flesh under the judgment of the cross, and so the life of Jesus was left free. Such is our path. Admitted into the very presence of God into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, we judge in its roots in communion with Him according to His infinite grace everything that is not of Christ in us, and the grace we meet and are made partakers of in this communion carries us along our road in lowliness and grace. Our fleshly tendencies are thus only the occasion of receiving the grace which keeps us safe from their power. I may be humbler than ordinary men if I have dealt with God about my pride, and so of every danger. The present power of Christ keeps the evil out of our thoughts. We have brought God into our life in this respect. It is not merely the absence, comparatively speaking, of a particular character of evil. The flesh - evil - is judged according to God, and I am lowly in spirit and walk softly and safely. But where there are real dangers, God helps us in this. Not only do I bear about the dying, but we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake. God works: some messenger of Satan is sent; not sin, far from it (God cannot send that); but some humbling process which prevents sin and pride working, unpleasant to the human heart, but needed for it. All self-activity of the flesh is sin; the body is dead because of sin if Christ be in me; that is, if alive, it is only sin; and if Christ is my life, "the Spirit is life." My body is not counted as alive, or to be so in its will. What is of me in will and nature - me as a conscious living man, a child of Adam in this world - is annulled, or is a hindrance; it has no connection with God. A man in flesh cannot please God. "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."

282 We find in Philippians this confidence in the flesh (not lusts of corruption) judged by the apostle. All that made Paul of undue importance to himself or to others, and so reflectively to himself, was rejected. It would have been confidence in self. Our part is to be in the presence of God, that all which is of self may be judged. But God, as I have said, helps us. Here God had, by the abundance of the revelations given to Paul, given an occasion which the flesh could use. In His mercy He meets the danger for Paul, which he might not, surely would not, have rightly met; for God does not afflict willingly. He lets loose this messenger of Satan at him, but to do His own work as with Job. And Paul has some infirmity which tends to make him despicable in preaching. "My temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not," says he to the Galatians; a natural counterpoise to the abundance of revelations. What can the flesh do with this then? Well, it would be spared what seemed a hindrance. To whom? Why, to Paul. Just right. Paul had to be kept down - terrible truth for us. Must we be made weak and inefficient in order to be blessed and used? Yes, if, wretched worms as we are, we are in danger of leaning as man on the flesh's efficiency and strength.

The works that are done upon the earth, God does them Himself, and above all spiritual work. He gives the increase. If He puts the poor vessel in a certain sense in danger, and in many a case where it puts itself, He meets the danger by striking at its root in self. He makes nothing of self, renders the incapacity of nature to anything not only apparent, but apparent to ourselves; and this is what we want. That self should feel self nothing or a hindrance, is a most divine work, though it be a shame to a man who has been in the third heaven, to think himself something in respect of it; but flesh is incorrigible. But as to the instrumentality used, it is a mean and miserable process, such as becomes making nothing of flesh. If death is our deliverance from all sin, we must taste it for our deliverance practically. The bitter water of Marah must be tasted when the salt waters of the Red Sea have delivered us from Egypt for ever and ever. Put the wood of the tree, the cross of Christ, into our cross, and all will be sweet. "Crucified" is terrible work - crucified with Christ, joy and deliverance; reproach is cruel, the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.

283 But there are cases where the will and natural reluctance of the flesh to suffer are in question; there are also those which are characterised by the danger of positive evil working, as pride or vanity in the case of Paul. As to all, death must be tasted. The nothingness and incompetency of all flesh must be felt where it would be disposed to think itself competent. It must find its pretensions arrested and set aside when it has such, or would be disposed to have them; it must find itself consciously weak where it might hope to be strong or capable of something. As to what sell would lean on, it must find itself a hindering flesh where it would pretend to be a helping one. It is really nothing in the work and path of God; but when it would be positively something, it must be made to feel itself a positive hindrance. This is not the end, but it is the way. We must be humbled when we are not humble, or even in danger of not being so. This work may come in preventively. But the flesh must be nothing if we are to have blessing; and in order that the new man, which is content that God should be all and knows its power is in Christ only, may be free and happy, and God, as it desires, may be glorified. The power of Satan and the power of death concur in ministering to our usefulness in Christ, because Satan wields this power to kill practically the flesh, and we have another life which lives in Christ and lives for Him.

This question is first settled as regards righteousness, as we have seen. We are dead and risen again; but it has to be practically settled as regards life and power of walk also. So that we may say, whatever our little measure may be, "to me to live is Christ." But the fact that the flesh is thus practically mortified is not in itself power: we must be positively dependent on another, glad to be so, if our heart is in Christ's service and that we find His help only can make us to serve Him. To have Him is joy in every way. This is what follows: "I will glory in my infirmities"; not sin, but what broke down the flesh in its will and hindered sin, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Here is positive power capable of everything, of rendering us capable of everything in the path of obedience, giving no power at all out of it, but of fulfilling in power all the energy of love in obedience. For the Christian path is not mere legal obedience which submits to a will which arrests and stops our will, but an obedience which serves with delight in love and in which love is positively and energetically active in doing good. This path is regulated by the Lord's will and fulfilled by the Lord's power, but that power can have no adventitious aid. It must be the strength in us of a dependent nature. In this is the right condition of the creature, obedience and conscious dependence, and both delighted in, on one who has title and alone has title to all the praise, who loves us and on whose love we lean.

284 In the path of service, the energy of Christ's love impels us, Christ's power sustains and enables us. Flesh, only a hindrance to that, must be put down, and practically annulled, that Christ may work freely in us according to the blessing of that love. We then say the love of Christ constrains us. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, the only true abiding state of the Christian, be he babe or father in Christ; only the thing he may have to do may be different and his temptations too. God in all cases is faithful not to suffer him to be tempted above that he is able. When a man is in Christ then, redeemed, quickened, and united to the Head, accepted in the Beloved, the work of God in order to power is to break down and bring the flesh to conscious nothingness wherever it is needed; not by mending, using, ameliorating, but, if needed by its will to be something, breaking it down, yea, making it for man's capabilities of acting a sensible hindrance. This is all that God makes of man as to his flesh and competency; but there is a deep lesson of blessing in it besides being the path of power in service. We are emptied of self; and Christ (that is, purity, and love, and blessing - God known to us in grace) becomes everything to us, the more unhindered joy of the soul made practically like Him.

But we become now sensibly dependent, and Christ our power, I do not say sensibly power; for, though there may be a consciousness of His strength, the service and work is done indeed, but done without any conscious strength. It may be done with joy in communion with Christ, and thus with joy in the service itself. It may be done with fear and trembling, and hence with no joy though with confidence. That depends much upon how far we have to meet the sensible power of the enemy, always in weakness as to self, always in confidence as to Christ, though it is His work, and He the doer of it though He may use us as instruments. And this operation is not merely an effect in us, though there be one; it is the positive power of Christ, a real acting and working of His power, for which the sensible putting down of flesh was only preparatory, that it might be evidently not the power of flesh, and that there might be no mixture of the two in our minds. Hence the flesh is turned into positive sensible weakness. But the power of Christ rests upon us, so that it is joy to the soul because He uses us, connects Himself (so to speak) with us, deigns to make us the instruments and servants, willing and rejoicing servants of this power. It is His power, but it rests on us. This is not the man in Christ, but Christ with the man - His power resting on him emptied of self.

285 The path of strength then is the being made sensible of our own weakness, so that divine strength, which will never be a supplement to flesh's strength, may come in. Thus there is entire dependence, and the positive coming in of Christ's power to work by us. If Paul's bodily presence was weak, and his speech contemptible, and there was something which tended to make him despised, by whose power was it that such wondrous blessing for the whole world flowed forth on all sides from Jerusalem round about unto Illyricum?

One or two remarks more, and I will close my imperfect suggestions on this chapter. First remark that the humbling process with Paul was no depriving of the abundance of the revelations, or weakening the consciousness that he was a man in Christ. This would have been positive loss. These were fully maintained and gloried in. The use the flesh would make of them when consciously down here in the body, in the world, was met by an accessory humbling process carried on in the flesh itself.

Next remark that it is not merely power which is gained by this process. The discernment of good and evil, in its more subtle characters, is greatly increased; the judgment and knowledge of flesh greatly strengthened and deepened. Hence the liberty of the new man with God, confidence in Him, the sense of the careful and gracious interest He takes in us, and intercourse founded on this confidence, are greatly increased. Further remark, that dealing with self, our own spiritual condition, is the secret of power, not the quantity of divine revelations we have to communicate, valuable as that may be in its place. For power Paul was dealt with in his own soul, its own dangers and state, and then Christ's power rested on him.

286 Lastly note, that our glorying in our position in Christ is all right. "Of such an one I will glory; yet of myself I will not glory but in mine infirmities." When I think of my place in Christ, of the "man in Christ," of such an one we ought to glory. This is no presumption. It cannot be otherwise, whenever we know ourselves in Christ. Do you think I can do anything but glory in being in Christ, and like Christ in glory? Of such an one I will. Let no pretended humility deprive us of this. It is legalism. Of myself, of that of which I have the living consciousness as a man down here, I cannot glory, unless it be in those sufferings for Christ and infirmities, of whatever kind they may be, connected with them, which are used to put the flesh down, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

I would add to these one collateral observation. The Lord can unite discipline with positive suffering for Christ, though the two things are quite distinct. When Paul was subjected to contempt in his preaching it was for Christ's sake he suffered, yet the form of it was, we have seen, a discipline to prevent his being puffed up. This may be seen doctrinally in Hebrews 12: 2-11. In verses 2-4 we suffer with Christ, striving against sin, even to martyrdom and death. In verses 5-11 the same process is the discipline of the Lord, that we may be partakers of His holiness. How wise and most gracious of the Lord's ways to turn our needed discipline into the privilege of suffering for Christ's sake, so that we can glory in our infirmities! There is chastening which has not this character, being for positive evil. In this doubtless we have to thank God, but it is another thing.

In fine, before God we have the "man in Christ" - blessed position - which is perfection where we want it; and as to our place before men, besides Christ in us as life, the power of Christ, where we practically want it, in weakness and imperfection down here, resting on the man for walk and service before men. The first is the basis of all our walk, but it does not suffice for power. This is had in daily dependence in which we walk, as humbled in ourselves, that Christ may be glorified, and the flesh practically annulled.

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We need to be taught of God, what this "man in Christ" means. When we speak of a man in the flesh or a man in the Spirit, we mean his state or position; what characterises him before God. A man in Christ does not mean what he is in himself. It is the condition of every child of God "in Christ." This chapter, in what follows, shews us much of what flesh is; but in this state - "in Christ," flesh had nothing to do with it. The body had nothing to do with it. Paul could not understand it of himself. He says, "I knew a man in Christ, whether in the body I cannot tell," etc.; that is, it is not what he was as a man down here. It is the position of a believer contrasted with that of an unbeliever. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." This characterises him, and the value and import of it are unfolded in that passage. And again, "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin." It is quite evident it has nothing to do with anything he has out of Christ. Whatever he was before, he was in flesh; now he is in Christ, and all is measured by Christ: he has got his place in the second Adam, and not in the first. It will shew itself in its practical ways, but this refers to his standing.

287 I desire to shew, first, the force and bearing of this - a man being "in Christ." So long as Christ was in the world, nobody could speak of "a man in Christ." "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." God's grace was working from Adam downwards; but that is another thing. In order to know what it is to be in Christ, we must know what this Christ is. Why should God have peace and blessing for a man in Christ? Because there was none for him anywhere else. There would be judgment for his sin, but no life or righteousness, or power; not one thing that he needs before God could he have without being in Christ. There is plenty of wickedness and pride, creature work of our own, but nothing that can go up to God. We may clothe ourselves in our own eyes, but Adam was naked before God, even when he clothed himself. There may be bright qualities, intellect, etc., but WHO is clothed in them? MAN. He prides himself in them. But there may be good qualities in any animal. There is a difference between some and others; some are vicious, others the reverse. The intellect of man and his wonderful faculties are not the question, but what do they turn to? Pride, title to be something, man clothing himself in his pride! Is this the way to heaven? God says, "there is none righteous, no not one." Does the man think so, who hopes to go to heaven that way? No! he has nothing else but filthy rags. When the voice of God is not there, the fig-leaves may do very well. They may do for man; but when God comes in, they will not do before Him. God clothed Adam, but then death had come in. When man clothes himself, it only brings out his shame. When God clothes him, he is fit for God; he has "put on Christ."

288 There is no desire in the natural man to be with God; man has no desire to go to God. Conscience drives a man away from God, and his heart keeps him away. Any honest unconverted man would own he has no pleasure in Christ. It is thoroughly brought out that the carnal mind is enmity against God. The man out of Christ is either a gross outward sinner, like the publican, or the respectable and hard-hearted man who has no sympathy with the reception of a sinner. See what the Christ is, in whom we are. Christ comes; God occupies Himself with these sinners, but see how they treat Him! Knowing all the sin, all the hatred of their hearts, the breaking of the law, and a thousand other sins, He came for this reason - He came to seek sinners. The grace of God, who is love, has risen above all that man is. If man feels what he is before God, he gets into despair. You do not trust everyone who comes to you, because you are sinners. God knows all about you. Christ came because you are wicked. If this suits you, that is the God you have in Christ. If it does not suit you, there is judgment for you.

But in Christ God is above all the sin of man, and because it is what it is, He sends Christ to die. What man means by God's goodness is indifference to sin. God never in grace alters His holiness. Before a man could be in Christ, the whole work was needed to be done. He made Him to be "sin for us." The first thing is Christ made sin, and then grace reigns through righteousness. Christ was entirely alone to drink that bitter cup, and then God could not only save the sinner but glorify Himself about the sin. God would glorify Christ in Himself. When Christ was made sin, God was perfectly glorified. There was perfect righteousness against the sin, perfect love in bearing it. He is gone up to the throne of God as a man. Now there is a Christ to be in; righteousness is accomplished; the whole thing is done; and the Holy Ghost is sent down to bear witness that God has accepted this man and His work. Righteousness is glorified in the presence of God.

289 As a Christian, I am a man, not in the flesh but in Christ. The whole work is done that fits Him to sit on the right hand of God. He has glorified God, and God has glorified Him in Himself. But before I can have a man in Christ, I must have a Christ to be in there, on the throne of God. Directly I take knowledge of what Christ has done for me, as applied by the Spirit, I am a man in Christ. It is not given to every one to have spiritual manifestations, as Paul had. Paul saw more of what it was to be there by what he saw here.

Now we see what the flesh is in connection with this. In the beginning of the chapter, we see what the height was to which a man could be taken. The thief might go into paradise the same as Paul; but it was a wonderful thing for a man down here to have these revelations. But in the end of the chapter we see what the flesh is capable of. Nature cannot go into heaven. If God is pleased to take Paul up there, there is no consciousness of being in the body at all. "A man in Christ" - "of such an one will I glory." There is the glorying of a Christian. How many an one would say, "You must not glory; but Paul says, "I will glory in it." There is a man dead! No, he is not dead; he is alive in Christ - as a man out of himself in Christ. He will glory in this; and you could not help glorying, if you really believed it. It is not thankfulness not to glory in it. You may not apprehend all about it; but if you believe it, you will glory in it. If Paul had gone up to a fourth heaven, there would have been all the more need for the thorn, or he would have gloried in that. The danger was not when he had the apprehension of the presence of God, but it was when out of His presence, when he got thinking of it. The revelation was not a source of strength; he needed something else. Whenever he preached, he had something to make him humble, something to keep the flesh down (the thorn, not sin), something to make nothing of him - breaking down the pride of man. He was humbled, because in danger of not being humble. There was strength for him. If he preached in a despicable manner, but souls were converted (as they were), how was that? If that is the way of getting blessing, it was not Paul's power, but Christ's power. Then let me have the thorn, he says. Thus we have the danger of the flesh dealt with in humbling him in the presence of man - breaking down the very thing that would puff itself up, and Satan that would puff up is obliged to be an instrument to break it down.

290 Now I have the power of Christ in the man, not only a "man in Christ." While in this world, I want something to carry me through, and to protect me from being cheated - something for the conflict I am in. That is power in the Christian, as well as being in the Christ. There was something there to keep the nature down that would have gloried; and, besides that, it was the occasion of bringing in Christ. There is always something to glory in in Christ. Do not believe that the saint is not entitled to enjoy all the advantages he has in Christ. All the hindrance, all the wretchedness, made him glory more in Christ. He says, "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong."

At the end of the chapter we see what the flesh left to itself even in a Christian is. Flesh in its fairest forms, its capacities, etc., is all a hindrance. He may only glory in the old man, in its being dead - " reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." We may rejoice in finding the flesh good for nothing. What man is in flesh, and flesh is in a man, is all bad. God says, I will visit you by my word and Spirit, and then bring you to where I am. The sins are gone. But the sin is not gone, you say. But "sin in the flesh" has been condemned. Christ has died for it, and I am clear, justified from it. I have got out of this condition thus condemned. If you have got into the third heaven, you may know that all the flesh could do would be to make you proud of it. A man in the flesh cannot please God, and the flesh in a man cannot please God. If you were in the fourth heaven, it would be just the same. Sinful flesh has been condemned. Then I can say, I am dead and I am in Christ, the Man at the right hand of God. Whether an apostle or the simplest saint that ever was, I need the power of Christ in the man.

The Lord give us to judge flesh, and all the scene around that ministers to it.

We are apt to make a mistake in speaking of our weakness and unprofitableness, forgetting that it is when we have done our duty, we are unprofitable servants. When we speak of it, we mean our failure; and so, when we speak of our weakness of spirituality or conduct we mean failure. But when Paul speaks of weakness, it is that which makes room for power ("when I am weak then am I strong"); and the result fully produced is with the consciousness of there being no strength in us. This is a very different thing from our failure. Our failure ought to lead us to humble ourselves before God for that which led to the failure. If we have not done what we ought, why have not we? We cannot glory in not having done it. There is a strength that the babe in Christ may have and needs - power guided by wisdom, and this does not fail. When we have not been emptied of self and are full of self-confidence, we must be broken down. Pretension to strength is always in the way for failure. The first step towards failure is forgetting our entire and absolute dependence. As Christians we know we have no strength, but we forget we have none.

291 This chapter brings out in a remarkable way the dealings of God in giving strength. There is a wonderful scene going on in the heart of man. God does not let us always see it - it would not be good for us: we could not bear it. Sometimes the veil is drawn aside, and, as in the case of Job, the heart is exposed to itself; God and Satan there. It is a serious thing when God thus lifts the veil and shews what is going on for good and evil in a poor little heart like ours! "God hath set the world in their hearts"; and if it ends there, it is all vanity and vexation of spirit.

Another question, as a moral question, is the will of man. When will is not at work and sorrow comes in, it is the happiest portion. The first who begins that question is God. It is a question of Satan's power, man's will, and God's goodness in the midst of all that. You have the conscience of evil in your hearts, and the evil is too much for you. You do not know what to do with it. The conscience of good and evil has come in by the fall. Adam had the conscience of good and evil with sin and by sin; he had it by disobedience. Conscience therefore cannot guide a man right. The converted man has the light of God to bear upon it. This shews man what he is. The soul has to own its badness and say, God is right. I go with Him morally in condemning myself. God shews man to be vile as to nature, rebellious as to will, and hateful to God as to his affections; and it is a blessing when He shews it to us. But it is not deliverance; this is another thing. The glory of God's ways is that He puts us down completely as to ourselves, by the fact that our salvation is wrought out by Another, when I had done nothing but sin. I find God has condemned sin in the flesh. Where? In Christ. I see my sin all measured and dealt with on the cross.

292 As the beginning of the chapter shewed us what a man in Christ gets - revelations, etc. (if we do not have them now, we shall by-and-by); so afterwards we see what flesh in a man is, what it may come to - debates, envyings, wraths, etc. These are the extremes of both - revelations in the third heaven, and flesh in its worst character. Most Christians are in neither one nor the other state practically.

Paul says, "I know a man in Christ . . . . Of such an one will I glory." This is what all Christians should have got hold of. If you are not a man in Christ before God, you are lost; it is presumption to think of being anything else. Can I know that I am going to be like Christ in glory and not glory in it? We must glory. Paul was not glorying in the revelations when he was in them - he had no time then to glory; but he gloried in what was his portion - Christ his life, righteousness, and glory. Paul speaks of those revelations as fourteen years ago. It is not intended that we should be always living in the wonderful enjoyments connected with the glory of Christ; if we were, it would be sight, not faith. There was no danger of being puffed up when in the third heaven, it was when he came down to Paul again that there was the danger, not while in the presence of God.

By and in Christ I learn now another thing - that it is not God's thought at all to alter my flesh, my old nature; the tree is bad. The flesh can be puffed up in Paul by the consciousness of having been in the third heaven.

There is no good in me. I am a sinner - more than being under the curse of a broken law. Where I am, where my flesh is, I should pervert even the third heaven (v. 7). God turns that by which Satan would have tempted one into a rod to keep down his pride. We are not told what the thorn was, but it was something that made Paul despicable in preaching (alluded to in Galatians) to meet the pride that would come from the revelation. Numbers were converted, not by Paul's eloquence, but by the Lord's power. Their faith was not to stand in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God. There was Christ for the man upon earth. You must be brought down to nothing, having no strength in yourselves. The flesh was not allowed to act in Paul, a thorn for it was sent to buffet him lest he should be exalted. Such is the normal condition of a soul - power given not to sin. If the heart is exercised in dependence, we judge the root of the evil, and it does not come out. My business is to learn the evil in my character by judging it and not by its coming out. If I have a proud character and am humbled before God about my pride, I go out, and am more humble than a very humble man by nature. There is not a bad conscience by the flesh being in me, but I have if I allow it to act: the thorn is sent to prevent it.

293 Before we come to power, the question of righteousness has been settled by Christ being at the right hand of God; it is a settled thing. It is practically learned when I am saved; then I have a title to the third heaven; and strength is made perfect in weakness. The Lord never gives us intrinsic strength, He makes us feel our dependence. I am made to feel my weakness when I see how my flesh would even pervert the blessings that are mine in Christ. Therefore will I rather glory in infirmities (not sin, but infirmities - for example, distresses, persecutions, etc.). The Spirit kept him from that which would have given him a bad conscience.

Blessed through Faith

Galatians 3

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In speaking of redemption there are always two questions to be considered: firstly, the great truth of the work of Christ on the cross; and secondly, the application of His work to us. The last is principally that in which Christians go astray. It is the manner of availing ourselves of the blessing that is denied. The Galatians did not deny Christ; they were Christians, but they were mixing up the law with the gospel and connecting ordinances with works, which two always come together. When the heart is not satisfied with works, then it ekes out matters by ordinances. But ordinances cannot give peace to the conscience. God will not let you mix them with Christ. The apostle here shews the real ground of peace. Promise is contrasted with law. "Received ye the Spirit by the law or by faith?" (v. 2). The promised One is come: and the work being accomplished, the Spirit is given as the consequence.

Man is so attached to his good opinion of himself, that God had, as it were, to say, Well if you will have a law, here is Mine for you. They ought to have cried, Oh! we cannot keep the law, we are sinners, ruined; instead of this they presumptuously answered, "All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do." What could such self-confidence end in but death? On the other hand, we Christians are not under law; nor are we under promise but under the effect of the accomplishment of the promise. He begins with the effect (v. 2): "Received ye the Spirit," etc. We are under the effect of redemption, namely sin put away by Christ's sacrifice, and the Holy Ghost present as power for walk, etc. Did we get it by the law or by faith?

Verse 3. "Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" Whenever the law is brought in, so is the flesh also. I never put myself in any way under the law without being condemned and lost, beyond all help; whereas God must have perfect obedience and nothing less. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." If we get off this ground, it would be God accommodating Himself to sinners and allowing sin. When we start upon the ground of man's responsibility to God, we always fail. The Galatians professed to have found redemption by Christ. Jesus Christ had been evidently set forth crucified before their eyes (v. 1). Again, had "they suffered many things in vain?" (v. 4). Was it all a mistake? When had they this power? It was in the Spirit. The law never pretended to give power. "He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to Him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham" (v. 5-9). When he turns to the ground of faith, then we find the promise, "In thee shall all nations be blessed."

295 Here are thus two great principles in contrast. If it is a promise, what I have to do is to believe it. It is another who accomplished it. God undertakes this, and He accomplishes it by Christ. It is all on God's side. This is the difference between promise and the law. "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." And so if I believe God, and it is counted to me for righteousness: "So then they that be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." It is not as many as do bad works, but "as many as are on the ground of law-works." The law is good, but we are bad; and hence all is ruin on that ground; for it is written, "Cursed is every one that continueth not," etc. I cannot keep it so as to be saved.

According to Deuteronomy 27: 1-10, they were to write, upon the stones with which they built the altar, all the words of the law on mount Ebal, where was the law; the letter was not on mount Gerizim, where half of the tribes were to bless (v. 12). But there was nothing there - the letter was only on the mount of cursing. In chapter 28 is both blessing and cursing, but these have nothing to do with Gerizim; they are the blessing and cursing of God's government, as regards their daily walk. We may come under chastisement in our daily walk. It is in vain to mix yourself up as the accomplisher of the law with God as the accomplisher of the promise. If your soul rests upon what God is in Christ and nothing else, you get the blessing. If you choose to stand on what you do yourself, how can you escape the curse?

296 Verse 13. "Christ hath redeemed us," etc. Then comes the accomplishment of the promise. Man was either, like the Gentile, lawless? or like the Jew, under the curse of the law. What is required by the bondmen of sin and Satan is redemption. The way God gives us blessing is, not by enfeebling the law, but by Christ's enduring the judgment of guilt for us. The curse that we deserved, another has borne! I do not fly to a promise for peace to my soul. Peace is the accomplished result of Christ's work (Col. 1), and, if you will, of the promise. Christ has been made a curse for me, and I am redeemed entirely from the curse of the law. The curse is utterly taken away. We ought to be astonished at such grace! - laid in the dust, as regards ourselves, but in perfect peace with God. The curse is altogether put away and gone; for Christ has borne sin and death. Then what remains? The blessing of faith as to all that results from His work. We are not merely born anew by the Spirit; but we have received the Spirit as the seal of the curse being gone - of redemption accomplished.

In verse 17 he speaks of God's way of dealing, in order to shew how sure it is. "To Abraham and his seed were the promises made." In Genesis 12: 2, 3, the promise is made to Abraham - nothing about the seed. "In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." In Genesis 22 there comes a figure of the seed in Isaac. In verses 16 and 17 it is said, "Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son [a type of Christ], I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven," etc. These are the "seeds as of many." "Thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies." In verse 18, on the other hand, nothing is said of a numerous seed. "And in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed." Here it is in one Seed, Christ. In chapter 15 is another set of promises, but the promise is to Abraham in himself. But after Isaac had been offered, we have the seed [Christ] without any conditions at all.

This promise, confirmed of God in Christ four hundred and thirty years before the law came in, the law cannot disannul or make of none effect. The law being come, God could not bring in the promise till the curse was put away. Christ was born under the law, as a living man. The promise of God is in a Christ who had to die. But He is risen, the curse being borne. Then wherefore serves the law? (v. 19). To bring out transgressions, to convict of sin, to prove man a sinner, a self-righteous good-for-nothing sinner. The effect was to bring out the sin that was already in the heart. "Transgression" is a different thing from "sin," which is really said in 1 John 3: 4 to be, not transgression of the law, but lawlessness. If I have a son who is idle and runs about the street, it certainly is a bad habit; but if he refuses or neglects to do what I bid him, this is positive transgression. It is not only lawlessness, but transgression of law.

297 Thus then the promise came first, next the law, and then the accomplishment of the promise. The law was in the hand of a mediator, till the seed should come, to whom the promise was made (v. 20). Again, a promise does not want a mediator; for it is all on one side. "Now a mediator is not a mediator of one; but God is one," who is the accomplisher of the promise. In Exodus 19 God says, "If you obey my voice . . . I will bless you." The mediator comes with this statement from God, and God says, If you do all this, I will bless you. Israel says, "All that Jehovah hath spoken, we will do." Here is a promise of our God, conditional on something being fulfilled by man. The result is a total failure; because man has been brought in, engaging to do something which he is sure not to accomplish. The moment there is the legal mediator, man is engaged in a condition and has no possibility of fulfilling it. But (v. 21) the law is not contrary to the promise. The truth is that man was in a condition in which he could not earn the promises, because he could not keep the law. God proposes law and man breaks it. God accomplishes by Christ not merely the law but redemption, so that the original promise of blessing flows out to the Gentiles by faith, who had nothing to do with the law.

After faith is come, even the believing Jews are no longer under the law. We have put on Christ. We are not before God as sinners in our sins. He only thinks of us as in Christ. He does not see it in us, because it is put away; but we see it, hate it, judge it, though we know it has been judged in Christ. He puts the saints in the place of promise in this way. They are in Christ, and therefore they are the seed of Abraham (v. 29). All the promises find their centre in Christ Himself. The moment I am in Christ, all the promises of God are mine too, and I am come into the full blessing of all the promises of God. "If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."

298 If I put myself practically under the law, my conscience gets tortured. The more spiritual I am to discern its holiness, the more miserable I become. One proof that a soul is converted is when he feels and says God ought never to give up His holiness, even if he is destroyed by it. It is nothing but pride for a sinful man to go about to establish his own righteousness. Can a bad tree bring forth good fruit? This unbelief hinders the soul from resting on the accomplishment of the promise. If the curse had not been borne, it would have been upon you; but it has been borne, and there is no curse to the believer. Such is your position, because you have put on Christ. If you attempt to mix anything of your own with Christ, you will always be unhappy; besides, it is unholy to think of it, because it is not acknowledging that in "your flesh dwelleth no good thing." We are not our own at all; we are bought with a price. Whenever a man thinks he has a right to do anything of his own will, he is robbing God. We should render to Him our bodies; it is our reasonable service.

After promise the law was added, and this was, till the Seed, Christ, came. This is very important indeed for us to be settled in. We never shall have solid settled peace till the whole man is ploughed up and searched out, and we get clearly to see that we have no strength in us. Then we are cast over on accomplished righteousness in Christ, on nothing less than God's own Son made sin for us. To know this puts me down in the dust; but it gives me unchangeable peace. And what then is the claim of Christ on us? We ought to realise that we are given up to Him, body, soul, and spirit, even as we are purchased by His blood.

Not Law but Promise

Galatians 3

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The way in which the law is placed in contrast with promise and faith in Galatians 3 is very striking. It is not merely that man is a sinner and that there is a judgment (a truth so solemnly revealed in Scripture), nor is it the operation of the law, experimentally known as spiritually bringing death into the conscience, as we find it opened out in Romans 7. The law and promise in grace are brought before us as two systems, both of God, but contrasted in their nature and opposite in their effects, and absolutely exclusive one of the other; existing at separate times, though the second could not disannul the first, and whose co-existence, as the ground of man's standing with God, is in their very nature impossible. Both are positive dealings and revealed ways of God with man, each of its own kind. Man had been turned out of paradise for sin, and he is an outcast from God and all intercourse with Him, such as he once had upon earth. This is his state; but it is no special revelation to him in that state. A judgment* awaits him too. This will hereafter shew God's righteous way with sin, and natural conscience bears the reflex of it within, in spite of all the sinner's efforts to get rid of it. It is to come, however; not a present dealing with man or a revelation by which he is placed in a special relationship with God according to the terms of that revelation. He has to answer as a fallen sinner for his conduct - terrible but righteous truth! but he is in no present revealed relationship with God. Not so where the promise or the law has come in. Then man has as a present thing to do with God according to the terms revealed by Him. These are of two kinds, as here brought forward - promise and law; only we have to add, that the Seed to whom the promise was made is now come, and has accomplished the work of redemption for the heirs according to promise.

{*It is well to remark here, that judgment is always and necessarily condemnation, whenever it is entered into so as to pronounce on the acceptance, or otherwise, of a man in consequence of his conduct. For this reason God cannot judge His own work, as He created it. It would be judging His own competency as a workman or Creator. He saw it all, and behold it was very good. Now, if man has left his first estate and got away into sin by self-will, and has thus given occasion to the existence of judgment on him, what can judgment be but condemnation? That is, there is no judgment if man be not departed from the state God put him in. If he be, judgment as such must be condemnation. What grace may do is another thing. Hence the really awakened conscience says, Enter NOT into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.}

300 The Galatians were not rejecting the promise or Christ; but they were adding the law to Christ as completing God's will. This it is that the apostle resists, and declares the incompatibility of the two. Not that the law was against the promises (for if a law had been given which could have given life, righteousness would have been by it); but that the one system was in fact opposite in its principle to the other. They were two distinct ways proposed for having life, righteousness, and the inheritance. One brings a curse and nothing else; the other a blessing after God's own heart, and nothing else. One is founded on man's responsibility, the other on God's gift, when man had failed altogether under that responsibility.

The best way I can treat the subject is to follow the contrast the chapter presents, and then unfold, as clearly as I can from Scripture, the positive doctrine on which our present state, as "delivered from the law," is founded.

First, then, as to the contrast, they did not obey the truth as to the cross if they annexed the law to Christ. The law applied to life in the flesh and its obligations. The cross declares its condemnation and end in death, and death to it. They had not received the Spirit by law but by faith. They had had the Spirit, had begun in it when they had not the law at all, and they were now looking to be made perfect through the latter, but this was by the flesh; for the law supposed flesh to be alive and applied to it. Further, he who shewed the power of the Spirit, and ministered it, did it, not by the works of the law but by the report of faith. But it was admitted by the few that the blessing was in Abraham. But he got it by faith, and was counted righteous by it without any law at all - not only without it, but on a contrary principle. They which are of faith (that is, who stand on this principle before God) are blessed with faithful, that is, believing Abraham. Now the law is not on this principle. The law is not of faith but on the principle of doing - getting the blessing by doing. But that is not faith.

And remark more than this: not only is the blessing by faith, not by law, not on this principle, and the accomplishment by oneself or another of the law, but as many as are on this principle - as many as stand on the ground of their obligation to keep the law - are under the curse. "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse." The works of the law are not bad works; they are right works, loving God and our neighbour, and not breaking the commandments which forbid sin. But they that are of the works of the law (that is, that are placed or place themselves under the obligation of the law, of doing these works) are under the curse. He does not say he who has broken the law, he who sins, he who has done evil, but he who is of the works of the law, who goes upon the principle of being under its obligation, and bound to accomplish it, is under the curse.

301 Nor is there a hint of any one's keeping it for us, so that we should not be under the curse when we are under the law. All that are of the works of the law ARE under the curse; because, according to its declaration, everyone is so that has not kept it. And no man under it has kept it, for he is in flesh; and this is not subject to it nor can be. He must get off this ground to escape its curse. But this can be only by death. The Jew was under it, and all else would have been condemned as lawless had they not come under it then; but, for every one who believed of those who were, Christ took the curse on the cross. It is not pretended that He kept it for them, so that the curse was not needed for their breaking it, because another had kept it for them, for then He had not needed to bear its curse. No: the curse of its head remained there and was borne on the cross; and thus they were redeemed from it, and then, the whole system of God under law being closed and the middle wall of partition broken down, the blessing of Abraham (which was of faith) could flow forth on the Gentiles who had faith. It could not till then. While God maintained the obligation of the law as a dispensed system among men, the Gentile must have submitted to it and become a Jew as to law if not as to race, he must have submitted to its obligation, while God maintained it. But the dispensation of law had now closed by the death of Christ, and the blessing of the promise by faith could flow forth to them who believed.

This brings forward another point in the argument: the historical part of it. A subsequent act cannot disannul, even amongst men, a solemnly confirmed covenant. Now God had given the promise to Abraham without law, and confirmed it to Christ 430 years before the law came. This therefore could not disannul the previously confirmed promise, nor alter its terms. It could not be disannulled, and it could not be added to. It must be fulfilled as it was given.

302 Now God had given the inheritance to Abraham by promise. But if of law it was not of promise. And mark, this is the truth for us. It is not of law, not on that principle. If it be, it is not of promise. But as given of God, it is of promise. The two systems are contradictory in their nature. The inheritance could not be by both; but it was first given by promise, and the law coming after could not make this of none effect.* What was then the use of the law? It was added to produce transgressions - not to produce sin, for sin was there. But law made sin transgression. It entered that the offence might abound. Sin by the commandment became exceeding sinful. But it could not interfere with the promise to the Seed. The promise was prior to and independent of it. It was added, till the Seed should come. This is a very distinct and clear statement. Putting man under law was a temporary expedient, though a most righteous one, and founded on principles of everlasting truth in itself; namely, human responsibility and a perfect rule for it. But it was a principle which with a sinner (and man was a sinner), could only bring a curse, and was meant to bring it, not as the final or abiding way of God, but to bring man's position clearly out by raising the question how righteousness was to be found or obtained. The law was given by Moses. The law was right, essentially right; but it was after the promise, and until the Seed. It was never God's way of man's obtaining righteousness. It was addressed to sinners. It convicted of sin and made it exceeding sinful. Righteousness is not by law, nor is life, nor the inheritance.

{*The following verses, which often perplex readers, when viewed in connection with this are easy to understand. God is one: the promise was to Christ the Seed. Its fulfilment depended therefore only on God. In the case of the law there was a mediator, which implied another than God, who was also to get the inheritance on the terms of his own obedience. Hence it did not rest simply on God's faithfulness to His promise, but on man's obedience.}

If indeed a law had been given which could have given life, then righteousness would have been by it. But no such law was given. Righteousness could not be and was not by it. Scripture has concluded all under sin that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. The doing that man may live, the keeping of the law, is not the way of righteousness. It was used for a time to bring man more fully under the conviction of sin. Righteousness never was, is not, and never will be, for sinful man on this principle. He was tried under it for a time, to bring sin clearly out; and then the promise resumed its indefeasible rights in the person to whom the promise was made; and righteousness and the inheritance stood on entirely other ground. Before faith came (that is, the principle of Christianity and grace), the Jews were kept under law, shut up to the faith to be revealed. After faith came, they are not under the schoolmaster - not under law at all - delivered from it - hence not held to it as an obligation; for I cannot be obliged by that which I am not under. Nor has another to fulfil therefore the obligation because I have failed to fulfil it, because we are not under it. We are sons, that is, in direct communion with the Father; if we are taking the pedagogue's orders as between us and Him, we are not.

303 Such then is the elaborately reasoned out contrast between these two ways of God: law, dealing with the responsibility of man; and promise, declaring the gift of God. The one claims, and is founded on the principle of doing on man's part, so as to make out righteousness in man, of which the law was the measure; the other is characterised by believing God, and that being the ground of counting a man righteous, not his doing, or responsibility to do, anything. With this the law in its nature could have nothing to do. It is not of faith, but of doing, whoever does it. But we are not righteous on this principle. They are both ways of God, both right, but one brings a curse, the other the blessing. In a word they are contradictory in nature and in principle. Further, they were mutually exclusive of each other. The promise could not be disannulled nor added to by any after act. The law was merely added temporarily till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made. When once the system of faith came, those previously under law were no longer so at all, nor consequently responsible to or under obligation in respect of it. It was no longer at all presented as a ground on which man had to stand with God. If we* are not under obligation to it ourselves, no one had to undertake to fulfil it in our stead, to make good our failures under it, for we are not under it. The righteousness of God is come in.

{*It may be well for the reader to remark that "we" is often used for Jews here as in other parts of scripture. They were under the curse of the law. Christ was made a curse for them (Jewish believers) that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles. The legal curse being done away, which was connected with Jews and the law, the original promise could flow freely out on Gentiles that we (Jewish and Gentile believers) might receive the Spirit.

Hence in verse 23 he says, We were kept under the law; but in verse 26, Ye are all the children of God, for the Gentiles were too. The law had run up to the cross and the curse, but could go no farther. The promise and blessing flowed forth on Jew and Gentile through faith. Hence the statement of verses 27-29. So in the beginning of Ephesians 2. If any one now puts himself under law, they put themselves under the curse; for the law is not an arbitrary enactment, but a real moral one, so that its judgment is felt to be righteous in the conscience. But then it is condemnation and death, and there is no hope at all. They are fallen from grace. Christ is become of no effect for them. So far is He from fulfilling the law for us when we break it, that, for him who is under it, Christ is become of no effect.}

304 Let us turn now to God's ways in promise. The earliest revelation of God (on the fall) was a declaration that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. It was not a promise to Adam, but a revelation of another than him, who should destroy the power which he, by his unfaithfulness, had let in to rule on the earth. On this, individual faith could rest, and we know did rest, in the Enochs and the Noahs; we may trust in Adam himself and many others of his posterity. Still the world grew desperate in wickedness, and God determined to destroy what He had created, and brought in the flood upon this world of the ungodly. The world began anew, and alas! it was soon seen, sin with it. But God would not allow that they should be unrestrained. Man built the tower to have his own way, and not be dispersed; and God confounded his language and dispersed the race, forming countries, and tongues, and languages. Mighty hunters there might be, and have been; but a divided world and antagonistic races. But the world had gone away from God and, as we know from Joshua, had begun to worship demons. And now Abraham is called. There was no law, no condition, no righteousness, no requirement of it. He is called to break with and quit the providential order which God Himself had established in the world, his country, and his kindred, and his father's house. Country was that new thing of God's establishment, which His judgment on Babel had formed - God's order in the world. Abraham was to leave it; not to act against it, but to be apart from it for God in the world. This was a most important point, and becomes so the more we examine it. It takes Abraham up on ground independent of the common responsibility of men. The world lay under it; sin was there, and a judgment to come. Grace here works. Abraham is called out from among them, and separated from them, and positive revealed blessing is deposited there, and entirely and exclusively there.

305 This was an immense fact. It is not man responsible and liable to judgment. It is not merely grace working, so that a man may have, individually, share in divine life, and divine favour, and heaven; but one called publicly out from the whole system of God, and made the head of a race (now a spiritual one), and all blessing deposited in him, and wholly in him. This was a new thing on the earth. In a general way one may look at Israel as the natural seed according to the promise, but the details of that part of the history need not detain us here. They were according to flesh, and the seed of promise was definitely to be accounted heir.

But it is this principle itself which is important. Grace calls out one to be the head of a new race, in which the blessing of God was to be "the blessing of Abraham." This had nothing to do with judging on the footing of responsibility; or any rule or measure given on which that judgment was to be founded. This may be a deeper motive for faithfulness and service than any other, but so it is. But it is one called out from a responsible world which is under judgment for its failure not to give an exact rule by which that failure can be measured, but to set sovereign blessing in him, and by subsequent revelations, in his Seed. As Adam was the head of a sinful and condemned race, Abraham was the head of a blessed race, of whom it could be said, "now are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to promise." This, by grace, will be true even of Israel in its day; they tried to have it by the works of the law and so lost it, but God will, for all that, faithful to Himself, accomplish His promises. But this for the moment I pass by.

It suffices to point out here the position of Abraham, called to be the deposit and stock of promise and blessing, "Get thee out of thy country and out of thy kindred, and out of thy father's house, to a land that I will shew thee: and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and thou shalt be a blessing. Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee, and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." Blessing characterised his calling. He is blessed and a blessing. Blessing is measured out by dispositions towards him. And he is the one source of blessing to all the families of the earth. This is a very remarkable position and a most blessed, and, in its character, a divine one, which we shall do well to consider as regards ourselves. I will suggest a word or two in a moment. But, remark here how divine a one it is in its nature. God is blessedness in Himself. It characterises Him. He is the source of it to all who have any. This was, derivatively, just Abraham's place. He was made blessed, in this sense had blessedness on the earth, distinctively and especially so; he was the source of it to all the families of the earth. If there was a curse, it was only for enmity to this. This is a most precious, and in character divine, place for a creature; a creature blessed no doubt, and quickened of God; but thence only the more precious because the more real.

306 Thus the place of blessing is definitively settled as of pure grace without law - grace abounding over the whole sinful condition of man, and flowing from and measured by the self-originated fulness of divine love, of which it was the display and revelation. This is what characterised it in Abraham - grace putting man in a divine place of blessing

But this comes more distinctly and blessedly out when we proceed to consider the way in which it was accomplished.

It was confirmed* to the Seed, that is, to Christ; and that, as we shall see, by an obedience and in a way far beyond all legal obedience which might have fulfilled the duties incumbent on the first Adam, and been contained authoritatively as duties in the law. The promise was given to Abraham in chapter 12. It is confirmed to the seed in chapter 22, after Isaac had been offered up. Abraham was called to surrender all he loved, all the promises where God had deposited them; for in Isaac his seed was to be called; an entire surrender of self - "thine only son, whom thou lovest" - and of all even that God had given him, as founded on life in this world, in the seed he had received of God according to promise. He must reckon on God alone and resurrection, and give up all in life down here. And he does. Isaac is surrendered in devotedness to God, and God trusted for promise which must be in resurrection. This was all out of the very reach and nature of law. It was not the claims of obedience to legal righteousness in man, but absolute surrender of self and righteousness and all to God. All was offered up in sacrifice. Law obeyed is life accomplishing its duties. This was the surrender of self and promises and all to God - the sacrifice of all to God. It was the well-known figure of Christ's offering up Himself (only in Him it was really accomplished) and rising from the dead. Then, not till then, the promise was confirmed to the seed. That is, the promise was confirmed to Christ on the ground of an obedience infinitely above all law, and as having passed through death (and law has power over a man only as long as he lives), and as risen from the dead, and to us in Him.

{*To Christ, not "in Christ."}

307 In the meanwhile (but 430 years after the promise, as we have seen, and hence leaving it in full vigour) the law came in, and required human obedience to the exact rule of righteousness: in a word, it declared (under pain of God's curse for failure) all that man ought, as such, to be and to do. It came in by the bye to bring out transgression, it made sin exceeding sinful, and, from the inability of man to establish righteousness for himself before God, it brought him under the curse. The authority of this righteous claim could not be disregarded, and Christ bore its curse; that, while maintaining its authority, the curse brought by it might be removed. His death, which met and satisfied its curse, took from under it all that are in Him. For they died with Him in that in which they were held, and rose in the liberty in the which He had made them free, the law having no further claim or dominion over them as risen which it held as long as they lived. But they had died and were now risen, to bring forth fruit to God, in connection with their new husband, Christ risen from the dead. Hence too sin had not dominion over them, because they were not under law but under grace.

Thus man's righteousness, which, if there had been any, would have been under law, was out of the question. The curse had been the fruit of the trial. The Scripture had concluded all under sin.

308 But the obedience of Christ, spotless and blameless under law as He had been, went infinitely farther than law, and indeed was on another principle. It was the voluntary surrender of self and life to glorify God. That self and life, which law would direct, and the love of which became the measure of love to others, was wholly given up. The curse and wrath due under law and to sin were undergone. "Therefore," could Christ say, "doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again." Of this the law knew nothing. It was absolute obedience in the total surrender and devotedness of self to God's glory and purposes and our salvation. And God was glorified in Him: God was, and hence God has glorified Him in Himself. And man is entered into the glory which the Son had with the Father before the world was, and is entered righteously. God has displayed His righteousness in setting Christ, the man who had glorified Him, at His right hand. Thus divine righteousness is established in giving Christ the glory which He deserved through His work for us. But then we must be in this place of glory, for it was for us He did it, and He must see of the travail of His soul in bringing into His own glory those whom His Father had given Him. We wait therefore for the hope of righteousness by faith, the hope that belongs to righteousness; and what that is we see in the glory into which Christ has entered, where the righteousness of God has placed Him as man.

Thus grace could reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. It was a glorifying God in the giving up Himself, and that to death, and the curse, and wrath, through the Eternal Spirit offering Himself up without spot to God, and God in righteousness setting Him in glory at His right hand. Thus man took this place in righteousness, according to the purpose of God, we being made sharers therein by grace; and now, having seen the full result in glory founded on righteousness through Christ, let us see what the blessing is.

It is the fruit of God's promise to Christ, the Seed. Whatever God's heart could do to shew His love, and that, His love to Christ, and according to the claim Christ had on it, that is the blessing. God, in whom is blessedness, was shewing how He could bless, as in Ephesians 2, that in the ages to come He might shew the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Christ was the One to be blessed. He was the Seed to whom the promise was made. He was the One who - sin being come in - had established God's glory in love, majesty, righteousness, truth, inevitable judgment, salvation, as no innocence could have given occasion to; yet at His own cost. Hence man is in glory. The blessing is the Father's love to Christ, and the glory in which He is, in virtue of that and of having glorified His Father. Such is the place into which we are brought by faith. He in Himself, in Person, the only-begotten, is the Firstborn - as re-entered into glory - of many brethren. He brings many sons to glory.

309 This blessedness we have in the present sense of divine love; the love of God shed abroad in our hearts; God dwelling in us and we in Him; the consciousness, through the Holy Ghost, that we are in Christ and Christ in us; in the consciousness that we are sons, through the Spirit of His Son sent forth into our hearts, crying, Abba Father; the looking for glory, to be like Him and with Him; the consciousness of the Father's love resting on us as on Jesus. More than the promise of the Father to Christ, shewing His love to the Son, and having our place in Him before the Father and enjoying His own love, we cannot think of. God has made Christ as Man, and us in Christ, the pattern of what His blessing in love is. As it was said of Joseph, "In thee shall Israel bless, God make thee like Ephraim and Manasseh."

And this fulness of love constituting our blessedness flows forth in love in the expression of it to brethren; and to sinners it flows out. "Thou shalt be a blessing; and in thee shall men be blessed."

How brightly does the consciousness of this shine in Paul! "Would to God that not only thou, but all who hear me this day" (there was overflowing uncalculating love) "were" - what? - "not only almost but altogether such as I am, save these bonds." There was the consciousness of such blessedness that the best thing divine love could wish was that they might be as he was. Oh what true consciousness of blessedness, what genuine love! Oh, how different in spirit, temper, tone, foundation in righteousness, divine outflowings of grace, the love of God satisfying itself in good, from "Do this and live," were it even done!

There is righteousness, but not man's, under the law, whoever has accomplished it, but God's in setting Christ at His right hand in glory, who had given up Himself and all promised, as come in the flesh, for God the Father's glory, according to the everlasting purpose of blessing and displaying Himself in blessing; of which Christ, the promised Seed, first of all was the object; then, if we are Christ's, we also are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to promise. And how the divine Person of Christ comes out to view in this! For God, in a certain sense, was debtor to Him for the maintenance of His glory - yea, for the only full bringing it out in redemption. So that, as we have seen, He righteously enters into it as man. But to whom can God be debtor in any sense? Who can make a "therefore" for God to act upon or love? But Christ in the divine counsels has.

I conclude, then, that life, righteousness, and the inheritance do not come under law, nor by the law: I cannot have righteousness by it, nor be under it at all, if I have it by Christ according to promise. Nor have I righteousness by any one's fulfilling it for me, for then it would be under and by the law; but if righteousness come by the law, then CHRIST IS DEAD IN VAIN.

Sovereign Grace in Christ

Ephesians 1

J. N. Darby.

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There are two ways in which we may look at our relationship to God, and rightly: firstly, our coming to Him; and secondly, sovereign grace in the dealings of God towards us.

Of Abel, it is said, by the Holy Spirit, God had respect unto his gifts; he came with his needed offering. We are looked at in the Epistle to the Hebrews as drawing near to God. Who could draw near unless he could bring Christ as an offering? We must have that sacrifice in order to bring us near; consequently in that case our relationship to God is measured by our need. We come near because we find we cannot do without it, and we accept that offering as needful to accomplish it.

In another way we never know the measure of God's blessing until we look on our relationship as measured by God's thoughts of us - by all that which He loves to display when He satisfies His own heart of grace with His ways of shewing it out. We never enjoy our true blessing unless we see how He thus feels and acts. My mind must rise above what I am to what God is; then it is that one is formed by the revelation of what God is. To this we are called.

We must come in by our need, as the prodigal did. Man cannot by searching find out God. There cannot be any knowledge of God in grace by man's competency to know Him. There would be no need of grace if he could know God without it. If I can claim this grace, I do not need grace at all. The way a sinner must come in must be by his need. Thus must one begin to learn grace and love. But when I have got to God, it is another thing. Then He would form our minds and hearts by what He is Himself. I come as a sinner, because I need it - just as a hungry man needs food; but when brought I have fellowship with the God who has brought me to Himself. The measure is given in this epistle - "growing up into Christ, in all things." It is a wonderful thing that God has called us into fellowship with Himself - to have the same thoughts, the same feelings as God, and to have them together! All flows down from Him, and we are brought into it by grace, and we enjoy it just so far as we are emptied of self.

312 First, He makes us partakers of the divine nature - the same nature as Himself. This gives the capacity - I do not say power. The new nature is capacity; the Holy Ghost is power. The new nature is entirely dependent and obedient. The Holy Ghost being there gives me power. In the First Epistle of John this capacity is brought out in a remarkable manner; chap. 4. Every one that loves is born of God - has this nature; and he that loves is born of God and knows God. Then being partakers of His nature, we, by virtue of the blood being sprinkled on us, have received the Holy Ghost which gives power.

In order to communion, it is plain that there must be perfect peace as regards the conscience. There is no communion in conscience. I am alone as to my conscience, and so are you. In order to communion, I must have nothing to settle with conscience: a perfectly purged conscience is the basis of communion. We must know that God has settled the whole question of sin. The moment a child of God fails, communion ceases. The Spirit then becomes a reprover to bring him back; but there is no communion. Communion is the full enjoyment of God and of divine things, when there is nothing to think of as regards oneself. God can now let flow into his heart who has a conscience purged, all that He delights in. He loves to communicate what He Himself has joy in. All that Christ is, is for us to enjoy. You are called into this place of Christ Himself - of the Head of the body; and that the delight God has in Christ should flow down into your heart. How rich then the saint must be! But he is entirely dependent on the Spirit of God for power. There is no power to enjoy anything without Him. There must be an emptying from self to enjoy what He gives. The Spirit of God has no place to act where self and imagination are in exercise. It is not the glory at the end that is so much the object of the believer's thoughts, as the source of it - God Himself. There is more happiness in the fact of being in communion with Him than in the things He communicates: and I say again, because of its importance, a soul cannot have the enjoyment of the things of God without having peace, which is connected with the conscience.

The beginning of this chapter shews how we are presented to God. It is a test, whether the judgment-seat brings any terror to your minds. Does it give you any uneasiness? How does the saint get there? Christ comes to fetch him. He said, "I will come again and receive you unto myself." Do you ever think of your coming before the judgment-seat being the effect of His having come to fetch you? Not sending for you, but coming Himself for you, because of His desire to have you with Him where He is, to be fashioned into the same image. You are to bear the image of the heavenly, as you have borne the image of the earthy. When you are there before the judgment-seat, you will be with Him, and like Him: every trace of God's unwearied hand, all His patience, here brought out. We shall be like the One who is the Judge. You will never (of course I speak to saints now) be before the judgment-seat of Christ without His coming to fetch you into the same glory in which you are to be. It is the knowledge of grace, of redemption, that leaves me at perfect liberty; and all my life should be a witness to the enjoyment of this blessedness into which we are being brought. The whole of this is through looking at Christ. He is the Firstborn among many brethren in the Father's house. We shall be with Christ and like Christ before God the Father. There will be the blessedness of being with Christ in the presence of the Father, loved as He is loved. This is what we have in this chapter - set in Christ and in the presence of God.

313 "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." We are blessed with Christ, and God is the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is "my God and your God," Christ said. There is no measure of any relationship out of Christ - nothing but condemnation out of Christ. If I have known what it is to be condemned, if I have known what sin is, and how God hates sin I know there can be no hope for me out of Christ. But God has put away sin. God does not look at my sin, but on Christ. Just as I know my condition in Adam as ruined and condemned, so I know my place in Christ as accepted. How it throws us out of self-importance, self-dependence, self-glorying! We enter into the presence of God in Him who has perfectly glorified God. He is the God as well as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is that wrought in Christ which was hidden from ages and from generations, and He has gone back in virtue of what He has done to vindicate the character of God. We enter into the blessing in Him who has done all. We shall know God in virtue of what the Father bestows upon us. The Father brings many sons unto glory, and brings them back perfect through the work of Christ - "Blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ": none can be forgotten; not an affection of God's delight is wanting. He brings us into His presence without one reserve of the affection that Christ has. We are brought back to Christ. Therefore all that Christ has we have.

314 How he goes on to unfold it! "That we should be holy and without blame before him in love." He is not content with a mere general account, but brings it out in detail that we may know it. Suppose I saw a person with an excellent character, and I felt I could never be like that person, I should not be happy. The fact of the excellency of the person, without the possibility of being like him, would make me miserable; and to have him always before me would be all the worse. But in heaven I shall be with Christ, and see Him, without the possibility of being unlike Him. What divine inventiveness of love to make us happy, infinitely happy! What God does, and is, is infinite; and it is so much the better that He will be always above us.

We shall have perfect freedom of intercourse with Him. Moses and Elias were speaking with Him of His death: by-and-by it may not be so much of His death; but there will be communion with Him in all that He has.

"Without blame." He would release me from all that would hinder my loving Him: therefore I am made; "holy and without blame." There is the proper joy of the heart - "Before him in love," but no thought of equality; "wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence." Then there is another fact - "Chosen in him before the foundation of the world." Thus we have His heart set upon us in eternity. The soul knows there is a personal love from God towards himself, and the heart delights in that. So with Christ. In Revelation 2 there is the white stone He will give - proof of personal delight. There is the individual rejoicing in the love of Christ.

How the Spirit seeks to draw out our affections by all this! He tells it all, and would have us know and enjoy it. He would have us know that we are going to heaven, and why. He would form our hearts by what He is doing, while bringing us in, "having predestinated us unto the adoption of children" - still in Christ and with Christ - "by Jesus Christ unto himself." It is through Him, and in Him, and with Him I find it. It is having my heart fixed on God and the Father, that my affections may be drawn out to Him, and all is because "accepted in the beloved." God has not blessed angels like this. We are not servants only (we should be servants, to be sure), but we are brought into the confidence of children. Ought not a child to have confidence? We have received the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry "Abba Father." Our heart should answer to God's outgoings of heart in grace, and reflect this grace, "to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved." He has done it all.

315 Remark here, that there is not a word as yet about the inheritance. I dwell on that, as shewing how the affections of the saints are formed. If I speak of the inheritance, it is something below me. All prophecy concerns the inheritance. But I am looking at what is above me, and my own blessedness is in what is above me. Subjects connected with the church, blessed as they are, as prophecy, etc., are below. He will exercise us about these things, but let me first get my relationship with my Father known. Do not talk of me, of what I have, but of what Christ is, and what He has. My soul must enjoy the love that has given it all. The love that has saved is more than the things given. It is of importance to the saints to feel this in the presence of God. It is not mental power, but the heart right - a single eye - that is the great thing. Unless a soul gets its intelligence and direction from God, it never understands the ways and affections of God. His own affections must be known and valued. If I have not known my place in the affections of my Father, I am not in a position to have the communion of His thoughts and purposes. When we were dead in sins, His heart was exercised for us. The sinner is here looked at as dead, not "living" in sin (as in Colossians) and chastening, etc., for that, but in Ephesians "dead," not a movement of life, when God comes and creates the blessing according to His own will. When our souls have known the value of Christ's sacrifice bringing us to God, we are seen not in ourselves at all but only in Christ. Then there is perfect rest.

Afterwards He can tell us about the inheritance; and then the prayer is that we may know the hope of His calling (His calling is not the inheritance). He has called us to be "before him in love" (v. 26); then verse 11 begins about the inheritance. Now I will shew you what Christ's inheritance is, and you are to have it too. I must know I am a child and have the thoughts and affections of the child before I can have to do with the inheritance. The end of the matter is that we are brought in to share the inheritance.

316 How far are your hearts confiding in God's love only for your wants, etc.? but how far is your confidence and delight in Him for Himself? The heart of the child will delight in the affections of the father. Do your thoughts about God flow from what He has revealed to you of Himself? or are you reasoning about God - will He, or will He not, do it? When it is a settled thing with me that I am a sinner, what have I to reason about? We want to be brought to this simple conviction: I am a sinner; and if I am a sinner, what am I to do? Can I look for anything from God on the ground of righteousness? No. When brought to God, I am brought to grace. What He is is the spring and source of the whole matter. We are in Christ. It could not be otherwise. We stand there now, by virtue of the atonement, in that position which makes the sin the very necessity for God to bless. Christ died for my sins, and God is "faithful and just to forgive us our sins."

God is going to take us to heaven, to be happy with Christ there: but He makes us happy out of heaven too. It is a difficult thing, but He does; and He would have the saints living up there where God is, and where we are going, and free from this present evil world.

Our Portion in Christ

Ephesians 1

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Part 1

There are two ways in which we may look at man in relation to God: first, in responsibility; second, in the counsels of God.

It is important to know the full value of the work of Christ, and our present relationship. All duties and right affections flow from relationships; the Christian lives in those new relationships into which God has brought him. We find in this chapter our relationship to the Father as children (the individual relationship has the first place in Ephesians); then comes in the unfolding of the unity of the body of Christ.

God put man originally in a certain relationship with Himself in innocence; that relationship - the claim of it - must subsist. You cannot destroy God's title by human sin, but on man's side the relationship is gone and broken. Wickedness on one side does not destroy rights or claim on the other.

As to the history of God's ways and dealings, man's responsibility has closed at the cross; it is not a time of probation now, though the individual is proved. In the same cross Christ perfectly glorified God Himself. We find the two things quite distinct: responsibility; and the intentions of God before any responsibility was in question. This epistle takes up the side of these counsels.

In Philippians we are looked at as running the race through the wilderness with our eye fixed on the glory. In Ephesians we are seen as brought completely to God and sent out into the world to shew God's character. In Romans we see the responsibility side simply, the sinfulness of man, what man is without law and under law, and the justification of a sinner. The counsels of God are only just touched on in the verse, "For whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son." Man is proved to be a sinner; the blood of Christ is that which cleanses us. There we get responsibility, as also justification - not in Ephesians. God has no need to justify the new creation.

In 2 Timothy 1: 9 we see that what was before the world began is now made manifest. We have the same thing in Titus 1. This thought of God is very distinct.

318 In Genesis we begin with the responsible man. All depended on man's responsibility; but nothing could be more complete than his fall. He distrusted God and believed Satan. Distrust of God is the essence of all sin. There is no way back to innocence. We may get divine righteousness, and may be made partakers of His holiness; but we shall never have innocence again. Christ was "the seed of the woman." All God's thoughts and counsels and plans were around the second Adam. Promises there were, and prophecies clearer and clearer; but what God was actually doing up to the cross was trying man on his responsibility.

Before the flood testimony was given; but there were no particular dealings of God. Then the world became so bad that God had to bring in the flood. When God begins again with Noah, he got drunk. The world subsequently went into idolatry.

Adam was the head of a fallen race, Abraham was the head and father of all that believe. When God had scattered the people of Babel, from among them He takes a people for Himself; then, having chosen Abraham, He gives him promises. The apostle in Galatians shews how the promises to Abraham could be neither disannulled nor added to. The law came in by the bye. To Abraham there was not a question of righteousness - no "if." The law was the perfect measure of what man ought to be. Before ever Moses came down from the mount the Israelites had made the golden calf. At last God says, "I have yet one Son," one thing more that I can do. The husbandmen cast Him out of the vineyard and slew Him.

Thus in the cross the history of responsibility (not individual responsibility) was closed. Sin had been fully brought out. Man was lawless; then, when the law came, there was the transgression of the law; and when the blessed Lord in wondrous love and grace came into the world and went about doing good, they could not stand God's presence. "Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?" Stephen gives us the summary - prophets slain, the Just One killed, the law broken, the Holy Ghost resisted. "We will not have this man to reign over us." Christ interceded for them on the cross, "They know not what they do," and the Holy Ghost in answer to this says by Peter, "I wot that through ignorance ye did it."

319 The history of Adam, the moral history, is closed; that is, what we are. In all this we have God's history of man's responsibility. I find in the cross that I am in a condition which God must reject. Christ has come to be made sin, and a work has been done according to God's holy and righteous nature. If I look up to God now, I find no sin in His presence; I go there by the work of Christ, and God cannot see the sins. Not only has Christ died for my sins, but I have died with Him, I have done with the nature. First, I find the putting away of sins, and along with that I have died with Christ. Christ did much more than this at the cross. Sin was in the world, evil was rampant, Satan reigning, God's glory in the dust, the earth full of violence (whatever the signs of wisdom). It was not merely a question of my sins; but God was compromised in a sense. Christ then was Jehovah's lot.

Suppose God had cut off Adam and Eve, there would have been righteousness, but no love. Suppose He had spared every one, there would have been no righteousness. If I look at the cross, there is righteousness against sin - never such displayed before. And there I learn the perfect love of God. At the cross I see God perfectly glorified in a Man, His own blessed Son, but still a Man. There is a man in the glory of God. Not only is there one man out of paradise, but another Man is in paradise. The work, by virtue of which He is sitting there, can never lose its value. Now the counsels of God can be brought out. If sin is cleared away, why should I be in the same glory as the Son of God? We do not get the one without the other; but nothing can be the result of that work on the cross less than the glory. There are two things: not merely are my sins cleared away, but I stand in the light as God is in the light, as He is. This we are in Christ; and we are to be "conformed to the image of his Son." Now we are brought as Christ and like Christ. He is the "firstborn among many brethren." "Tell my brethren that I ascend unto my Father and your Father, unto my God and your God." This is our present place. "Lord, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom." But, says the Lord, you need not wait till then: "to-day shalt thou be with me in paradise."

O how the things of this world are dimmed by this that we are loved as Christ is loved! What a blessed place this is! Christ has taken all on Him as man, that we may be for ever with Him. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places [a remarkable expression, in the best place, in contrast to Judaism] in Christ Jesus." There is not one possible blessing into which Christ has entered as man that we are not brought into. Christ never gives away; He brings us into enjoyment with Himself: "not as the world giveth, give I unto you." This is perfect love.

320 Have you ever thought of God's thought about you, that you are "to be conformed to the image of his Son?" "It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him." This cannot fail. The Lord presses on our hearts that He brings us into association with Himself. "Then are the children free." He "hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." God gives us His own nature, "holy and blameless before him in love." He puts us in this place answering perfectly to His nature, and with a nature to enjoy it. We are in Christ: this is God's thought. I get the place of a son with the Father. Servants would not do for Him; He takes us as sons. We are "accepted in the beloved": "in Christ" would not do here. "I was daily his delight." In this One, who was always God's eternal delight, we are accepted.

Have you the thought of God's heart about your blessing? Is the thought you have that you are loved as Christ is loved? Are you able to see God's heart as He has revealed it? Where shall I get what is in God's heart? Is it in my heart? If the angels want to know what love is, it is in us they see it. Is this the way you think of God? We soon find out what poor creatures we are. Quite true; but can you say, There is where God has set me? This is the very thing that makes us see our own utter nothingness. The reasonings of the Holy Ghost are always downward from God to us; the reasonings of conscience are always upward from us to God. "For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son: much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." The Holy Ghost reasons downward: is this the way we reason? If you are naughty, do you feel you are a naughty child? You cannot be a naughty child, sad as this may be, unless you are a child. If I am a child of God, I am bound to live like one. He expects children's affections, children's duties. Have you given up the first Adam entirely, and found your place in the second Adam, "accepted in the beloved"?

321 Part 2

I may remark that it is our positive place before God that lets us into the counsels of God. There is no real knowledge of these counsels except as we stand in our place before God. Knowledge that puffs up is always defective and sterile; it is a statue, not life. There is nothing really connected with it in the mind, when it puffs up. There is a certain place for the believer before God; into this the heart has to get. We are made partakers of the divine nature. Then all these thoughts and counsels of God come to be precious, not as knowledge, but as belonging to the glory of Christ. "I . . . beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness." Where our own souls are before God, according to God, of course there is fellowship and communion with God. Activity of course, even right activity, tends to bring self in. Take Paul: there was danger of his being puffed up; and the Lord sent a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him. When he came down from the third heaven into the ordinary activities of life, there was danger. The thorn was a hindrance to him in his ministry, that the power of Christ might be made manifest in him. The moment he finds what it was, he says, "I glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me." Christ chooses things that are weak that no flesh may glory in His presence.

Taking the general principle, if I enter into the knowledge of divine things, it must be along with God. Love is never puffed up; love likes to serve. I am thus blameless that I may have communion. We cannot have practically a more important truth than that all real divine knowledge is found by being in the presence of God; and whenever we are in the presence of God, there must be lowliness of heart and mind and spirit. God's presence is always a holy thing. There is no true knowledge, and no true communion unless the soul is in that state before Him. There is no more dangerous thing than a certain apprehension of divine things without the soul learning them with God, as we see in Balaam and in Hebrews 6, where you get all the wondrous things of Christianity poured on the mind and natural heart. This is dangerous even if there is life, and fatal if there is not. The revelation of the counsels of God is founded on knowledge of our place with God. The eye cannot bear light from God except so far as we are right with God. Having brought us into the blessed consciousness of this place, where we are at home with God, now He can unfold His counsels, as to Christ Himself. Having brought us there in grace, He can trust our hearts with all His plans. There is no real divine knowledge of the counsels of God except so far as we are personally with Him. "Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?" He reveals to Abraham what He is going to do, not with Abraham, but with Lot.

322 All flows from the soul being consciously in the place where it is set, in Christ. He can then trust us with the knowledge of His will; He can trust the sons of the family with the family affairs.

Christ was a true real man in this world: was He occupied with the interests of His family, or the interests of man? He was subject to His parents. There was in Him perfect obedience, perfect confidence, and - what is so hard for us - perfect waiting. He gave Himself for our sins; He says, "Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." This is not merely an outward thing. "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." Christ was a dying sacrifice. The Christian is to be a living sacrifice: this is to be the whole life of the Christian. We are set at liberty by the power of the life of Christ, and the Holy Ghost is in us, and then we yield ourselves to God. We cannot yield ourselves of ourselves; but the moment we are risen with Christ from the dead, we have the power of the Holy Ghost. Suppose a child is exceedingly anxious to go and see something, if his father desires him to go, there is an instance of perfect liberty and obedience also at the same time. It is a "law of liberty" to us; the new man having the mind of God, its delight is to do the will of God. We do not belong to anything in this world, but only to God. I have no duty that does not belong to a man who has died and is alive again. Blessed path of liberty it is, but a path of liberty to one who has no object but Christ! This is the Christian's place, entirely separated to God. If I am my own, I am a poor lost sinner (Christ never called Himself His own); we are bought with a price, and we belong to God. When in that case, He can open out to us all His wisdom and prudence; "we have the mind of Christ."

323 Thus I first get Christ's own place; and this is exceedingly blessed, because it puts us into our place. Our calling is what we are towards God. Remember you do not get dispensed glory, until as a first thing you get to God. Christ offers Himself up to God; you have a life to God down here, and then a death to God, before you have the glory. Our relationship to God Himself comes before any acquaintance with the dispensed counsels of God. Responsibility and the counsels of God are distinct. I was a poor sinner: but I find, through the work of Christ, that all that was against me is gone. God's counsels and plans have nothing to do with man's responsibility. When man had come to the point of positive hatred against God in killing Christ, then the counsels of God were brought out, the mystery hidden in God. All this plan and counsel of God were before ever the world was. Christ in His rejection does the work which is the foundation of everlasting righteousness.

Everything that concerned the Person of Christ was revealed before in the Old Testament, but not these counsels of God. You may find the ascension, resurrection, gifts - all that concerns the Person of Christ - but nothing of union with Him, of being members of His body, joint-heirs with Him: all these counsels were hidden. I was a poor sinner, I must have my responsibility met; but this does not say that I should be in the same glory as the Son of God. Not merely has He cleansed our sins, but He has glorified God. Man goes into the glory of God because Man (He was more than man, of course) has perfectly glorified God. We are loved as Christ is loved: the world will know it when He appears. Ah! if we only saw where the Christian is placed! It is a terrible thing to see all this rest on the surface. Are you conscious that the Father loves you as He loves Jesus?

The "fulness of times" is spoken of here, not eternity; in eternity we find God all in all. "That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ." This is the thought and purpose of God that everything He has created He will bring under Christ's moral power as Man. He created all things, we read in Colossians. He is going to reconcile the state of things: but we are reconciled. The place of the Christian is - absolutely reconciled to God in a world that is not reconciled at all. Everything in heaven and earth will be reconciled. If you want to go as Christians through the world, you must go as absolutely reconciled to God among things not reconciled. You have nothing to do with "things under the earth" here: in Philippians they bow at the name of Jesus. The scene He created He will perfectly restore. His first title is Creator; His second is Son - He is the heir of all things.

324 Actual creation is always referred to the Son and Spirit - God, of course. Man is to be set over it all, set at the head of everything in the fulness of times. As we get into Christ's place in our calling, we get into Christ's place in our inheritance. Whatever He created as God, He inherits as man.

"By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified"; the work is complete and finished for His friends, and He is waiting till His enemies be made His footstool. When that comes, He leaves the Father's throne and takes His own. He who created all things is Son and heir of all things, and He inherits them as man. We are joint-heirs with Him. In the thoughts of God, His Son having become a man, we have become completely associated with Christ. He went alone through the earth; but, the moment redemption was completed, He says, "I will declare thy name unto my brethren." How thorough is this association! Christ became a man, and in perfect love He brings us to everything He has as man. If He takes everything in heaven and earth, we are joint-heirs with Him (as Eve was with Adam), members of His body. When Mary Magdalene comes to the grave, He says, "Tell my brethren that I ascend unto my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."

God's heart is set upon me. It is the fixedness of heart on an object, but besides that I have the confidence that He never takes His eye off me. We get divine love in the nature of God, and, besides that, love set on an object. "Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." My inheritance is in Christ, because God has associated me with the Lord Jesus. See the way the apostle dwells on and repeats this word "in"!

If I have the love of Christ in my heart, can I look on a world that is under Satan's power, and not be a man of sorrows? We have joy through Christ, if you take that side. If a holy being is in a world of sin, he must suffer; if a loving person is in a world of misery, he must suffer.

325 It is not that the glory is the highest thing, for it concerns self. At the transfiguration Moses and Elijah were in the same glory as Christ; but more than that, a bright cloud overshadowed them. Jehovah was in the cloud; and a voice came out of the cloud, "This is my beloved Son." When they went into the cloud, the disciples were frightened. The cloud, so to speak, answered to the Father's house.

This chapter invariably refers to God, His calling, and His inheritance.

"That we should be to the praise of his glory who first trusted in Christ" - hoped before He appears. The world will get a portion under Him, but we a portion with Him. While we must be born of God, there is in the proper sense of the word no glad tidings in telling a man that he must be born again. The thing revealed in the gospel is, that the grace of God which brings salvation has appeared; there is remission of sins and full salvation. Have you never been in God's presence? Were you fit to be there? The veil is rent: we are just as much in God's presence as if already in heaven; we shall see it more clearly then. I have everlasting life, I have divine righteousness, because I am in Christ. I am brought into God's presence, and I am not there without being fit through the work on the cross. We have not got anything of the inheritance as yet, but we are sealed with the Holy Ghost. The blood of Christ having cleansed me from all sin, the Holy Ghost can take His place because I am clean. "Know ye not that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost?" What if the apostle were to write this to you? Being born again, I have life; when sealed, I have God dwelling in me. The Holy Ghost can take His place as a witness that in God's sight I am as white as snow. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, God dwelleth in him, and he in God." Oh! beloved, what a place the Christian is in! If you confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God is dwelling in you. How are you treating the divine guest? "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed."

It is not merely quickening, which was from the beginning: but when there is life, the Holy Ghost becomes the seal. I do not want an earnest of God's love. He loved me so perfectly that He gave His Son for me. His is a love proved in the death of Christ, and known in present consciousness. The Holy Ghost is the earnest of the inheritance. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Do not you be looking into your heart to find if He is there. Imagine a child inquiring if he is a child! Look if you are walking up to that. "We are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." Do you believe in the truth that "Jesus is the Son of God"? "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." But "they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him who died for them and rose again."

326 The apostle's prayer here is to "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ," that the saint might know what He has wrought, and would do for them.

Do you believe that Christ has put you in the same place with God as He is in Himself? We are in Him, we shall be with Him, and like Him, and He gives us the knowledge of it now.

Have your hearts gone back, when accepted, to look at this model? Have your hearts burned within you as you have seen Him, and talked with Him, and have you said "His path is mine?" Has it possessed your souls? This is a matter of daily diligence and conflict. The time will soon come when we shall say, of all that has not been Christ in our lives and ways, "That was all lost."

Growing up into Christ

Ephesians 4

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One cannot help seeing in such a passage as this the profound interest the Lord takes in blessing. There is profound love in it, as well as that it is a fact that He delights in blessing. His purpose is to bring us into the enjoyment of His own blessedness. His thoughts are blessings; and there is none anywhere else but in Him. If I speak of blessing, it must be what is in the heart of God. A father's thoughts of giving to his children are measured by his love for them. When we see what is in God's heart for us, and that all His thoughts have the form and power of blessing, what must be for us! He is bringing us to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ - this is to be the result; but it is the principle and spring of blessing that was in my mind to speak upon. He is conforming us as to His own thoughts in blessing at the end. The objects of such love, we, abject sinners, taken up by Him shew the greatness of His love. Christ is the great workman of it all. It is by Christ that He does it. When God sets about to bless, it is by the Son of His love. It is an immense foundation for us to rest upon - not only strong but wide and large and deep. "He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things." "He descended first into the lower parts of the earth." What then is to escape the power of Him, who has been borne up to the throne of God, after going down to the very lowest place of death under sin? He has been in the lowest place of misery and death, and is taken up to the highest place of glory - the throne of God - and all between is filled up by Christ. Thus nothing can escape. He went down to the place of death and sin, "made sin for us," and went up to the throne of God. There is strength for me a poor sinner, something to rest on. Yet it is not distant from us, but we have the consciousness of its being in and around us. In Revelation it is said of the heavenly city, "the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof."

The Lamb is nearer to my heart than any. He has known me better than any, better than I know myself; and this Christ who dwells in our hearts by faith is the One we shall meet there. I shall find One in heaven nearer and dearer to my heart than any one I know on earth. Nothing is so near to us as the Christ that is in us, and nothing is so near to God as Christ. Yet the world is in a man's heart. All that is agreeable and outwardly good in this world finds its echo in a man's heart, and all the evil that has come in finds its place there too. Christ was here amidst it all. He met every whit without having the evil in Him, yet He knows it all. Everything we feel, all that passes through the heart of man, Christ has gone through, not by grasping at the thing but by resisting the evil. With all the sensibilities of the heart to good or evil (and this makes the heart of man such a wonderful thing) Christ can meet all. The centre key to all this is Christ: He has power to put away the evil. If there was one thing where my heart could not rest on Christ, it would be dreadful. All have the knowledge of good and evil, even the unconverted man. Without Christ he sets about racking his heart to find any good thing that is under the sun. All the best affections of a man are the occasion of his greatest distress, because sin has come in: the heart gets pulled and torn every way, but must go through it. See a wife losing her husband, a mother her children. The instant I see Christ in all this trial, I find the perfect good God delights in. Divine sympathy is found in God Himself. I may have trial and conflict, I must have it in passing through the wilderness; but I become weaned from the thing that was a snare to me by looking to Christ in it.

328 Present confidence in Christ is needed in trial (losing a near relative, etc.), but the practical effect is that every trial a man goes through gives him (if the heart is thus trusting) to know more and more of what Christ is to meet the need, and more of Christ as possessing Him.

"I bare you on eagle's wings, and brought you unto myself"; and there we find all the unfoldings of what God is in Christ. I cannot do without Christ. I want manna in the wilderness: God gives it to me; and not only do I get all this, water, manna, etc., but I have Christ Himself in it all.

No matter what it is that exercises my heart in the knowledge of good and evil, and the need of the heart in consequence, it makes Christ more known and more enjoyed. Our natural portion as Christians is to enjoy God. Where has God planted us? In the enjoyment of an accomplished redemption; and the result is that love has not only been manifested towards us, but poured out in us. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which He has given unto us. We dwell in God; for His love is infinite, but I am in it. I dwell in it, and He dwells in me; I, a poor little thing, nothing, dwell in Him. I must learn it, as a sinner, in Christ. A proud sinner will try to prescribe to God this and that, but God will have His own way; and blessed it is that it should be so. "Builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit" - this is the "vocation." What a thought! What a bringing down, not of heaven, but something more, by special blessing bringing Him down to dwell in us. God would not dwell in angels: there is not the same want in them, but He will make Himself better known to angels through His kindness towards us by Christ Jesus. There is a great deal more for us than the bringing down heaven. "Whosoever shall confess Jesus the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God."

329 What is the first practical effect of this calling to be "the habitation of God through the Spirit"? "With all lowliness and meekness," etc. (chap. 4: 2). "A vessel of God"! All the passions of the flesh there, but having the presence of God makes us unspeakably happy: that is our portion! "In all lowliness," etc. A man who is humble needs not to be humbled. There is no safety but in being low. Then what is the consequence if self is not working and there is lowliness? Why, love works. I cannot be happy with you really, if self is working; but if self is not working, love is, and I am full of love towards you all. What a spring of blessedness in communion there is! so far as self is down, broken to pieces, there is an out-going of perfect love to the brethren. "Love is of God." His nature is at work when we love one another. The spring of the fellowship we find just now is God being here. God is our joy, and love (God's own nature) working, and God our common object. There are trials and difficulties for us all; but there is blessed joy in knowing one another thus, and seeing Christ in one another. "Receive ye one another to the glory of God." If we meet a Christian, though he may be a stranger, we can be more intimate with him than one's own family who are not. Why? Because God is there. Another thing - there is the consciousness of what this unity is. "There is one body, and one Spirit, etc., one Lord, one faith," etc. We are brought together, not only through being united, but by what we possess together, whether we be outwardly rich or poor. He has his particular trials, and I mine; but both have God.

330 "One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all and in you all." God is above the world: you cannot tell me of one thing God is not above, and therefore there is not one thing that can separate me from His love. He is "through all." You cannot find yourself in trouble and God not there; you cannot find yourself in any difficulty, perplexity, and not find God through it all. And He is "in you all"; He has come to be the spring of all happiness in us. If I know what water is, it is by drinking; if I know what sweetness is, it is by tasting it; if I know God, it is by His being in me. We can look upon one another and see God in us all. Then these light afflictions, what are they? God is come to take possession of us, and He is the spring in our hearts also. He comes to make us love, because He loves. We shall find it is fully so in heaven. If any thing is a safeguard against evil, it is that such an one dwells in us; but it is more, it is the spring in the new nature, God's nature.

The perfecting of the saints is before God and should be before us. Christ is the object of His thoughts; and He will have these loved ones like Christ: therefore what God does is to make them grow up unto Christ. In the unity of the body, and in all the communion, and through all the exercises of heart, we have the end of all. In ministering to you or you to me, it is to grow up into Christ that there may be more of Christ in us. All the flow of Christian affection, all the enjoyment we have here, is for this end. I can look at my brother and know he is going to be in heaven with me. The enjoyment of all this shuts out the world - you are not thinking of your cares and troubles now. Fellowship with the brethren is perfect deliverance from all that is of the flesh; flesh cannot enter into it; all that is of the world is gone. I am dead to all. Every bit of fellowship I have with a brother is a proof that outside things are now done with. The more we are individually full of divine things, the more this communion with each other is realised. Two together, if both are spiritual, open the sluices that all the wells in the world cannot dry up. The power of the Holy Ghost that makes me now overcome evil will make me enjoy heaven, where there is nothing but good: "they that dwell in thine house will be still praising thee." The power of evil, of the world, of Satan, is all gone. Our common joy now is in Christ, in the communion of His love; and, when we are with Him, it will be completely without alloy.

The Panoply of God

Ephesians 6

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One great thing in Christianity is, that it brings us back to God. Not only have we mercies from God, providential and the like, but we are brought to God. Towards the Jew God had a veil before His face, and He said, "I dwell in the thick darkness"; and once a year, on the day of atonement, the blood was sprinkled on the mercy-seat; but now once and for ever sin is put away by the sacrifice of Christ, and we are brought into the very presence of God. Good and evil being known, the question between good and evil had to be settled before God. The redemption of the cross brings us out of the evil - from the evil to Himself. God's Son suffered the just for the unjust to bring us to God. The consequence of this is that the whole life of the Christian is to go on with God - every day becoming better acquainted with God - everything going on in the presence of God. All our ways are elevated by this. If only a servant, he serves not only his master but Christ; and therefore, if he has a froward master, he can serve him just the same, because it is Christ he serves. All the life of the Christian is perfect liberty, because he is in the presence of God; it is liberty from sin, from fear, from wrath. Children are to obey their parents in the Lord. The commonest things in life are raised in their character through service to Christ. The parent must not allow evil in the child, but train them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; and the master to the servant must forbear threatening. In virtue of our place before God, our liberty and happiness are as perfect and blessed now as they will be hereafter; only the body will be set right then.

Then, after speaking of the common details of life, the apostle rises up to speak of the proper position of the Christian as such - free in all things; but we are to be "strong in the Lord and in the power of his might." He goes on to speak of the whole armour of God. We are supposed, though in conflict, to be in our proper position of blessing with God, standing in the power of redemption, not having to get there. The warfare is to stand when there. Satan's aim is to get us out of that place. There can be no conflict between us and God, but between us and the power of evil. There we fight as being God's army. We are naturally under Satan's power, but redemption brings us into God's army. This was the position of Israel when warring with Amalek: they were on God's side; and He said He would have war with Amalek from generation to generation.

333 Christ's conflict in Gethsemane was quite another thing. He was enduring, but He was accomplishing redemption too. We have it through Christ, and now have to stand. God can never use our flesh, but Satan always can; there is the difference. He that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not. The new nature Satan never can touch, but unjudged and undetected flesh he can, causing one to fall. The first and last thing and all through as a question of power is entire dependence. Satan will come in all manner of ways - worship, etc.; and, if the flesh is not judged, he will deceive us by it. The thing is, we want the evil of the flesh detected by the word of God and not by temptation. "The word of God is quick and powerful," etc. There is no good in the flesh. This, when I see how bad my flesh is, casts me only on God and makes me feel the need of dependence. With our Lord Jesus there was entire dependence, and this is the perfection of a man. With us how different it is! You know how many things you do of your own suggestion, not perhaps knowingly and willingly, but you are betrayed into it.

"To stand against the wiles of the devil" - that is the use of the armour of God.

Christ has overcome, and therefore we have only to resist the devil who will flee. If we resist him, he knows that he has met Christ who has all strength against him, for He has vanquished him. The devil can never touch Christ in you - only the flesh; so, if there is a fall, it is a proof you were walking in the flesh. "We wrestle not against flesh and blood," etc. The contrast here is between the conflict with men that Joshua led the children of Israel against (flesh and blood as man, not sinful flesh, is meant here). Now we are not fighting with men, but we are Christians fighting with all these mighty beings, whose subtlety we are apt not to detect because they are so elevated - "against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickednesses in the heavenlies."

Satan can easily overcome us with his wiles, if we are not found in the strength of Christ. I must have God's armour. Man's armour, intellect, or power is nothing in conflict with Satan. Satan used his wiles with Christ, but He answered him with the word of God, and there was no power against it. We must have the whole or complete armour. If I have a breastplate but no helmet for my head, I am assailable at this point. If it is only a matter of theory with me, I shall forget my helmet; but if I am in the place of dependence, I shall feel my need of it and take care to have it on. Independence makes us careless. If Satan can get a Christian to give an unchristian testimony to the world, he is satisfied. If he can dim the heavenly testimony for Christ here, his object is gained. Christ was God's testimony here. We ought to be so now; and what Satan is striving at now is to dim it. God would have us "able to withstand in the evil day," etc. All this time is an evil day. Though there is darkness in the world, we ought to be light in it. These are peculiar days of evil - heresy, infidelity, etc. So to an individual there are peculiar seasons of buffetings, tossings, exercises, evil days; but to stand is the great thing. We are sitting in unchangeable blessedness before God, but our position in this world is standing. So David sat before the Lord, yet he had to fight the battles of the Lord.

334 Our salvation is complete and perfect, for we are set down with Him who has by "one offering perfected for ever them who are sanctified"; but we are standing in conflict - just as the poor man out of whom Legion was cast was sent back to his house to tell them how great things the Lord had done for him. The world (Gadarenes) would not have him, and the world will not have us; but we are to be God's army in this world and a witness to them, though they will not have us. It is a question of struggling against Satan while having the flesh in us.

Therefore we need the "loins girt about with truth" - the affections girt up by the power of truth, and not to have all hanging loosely about. It is not merely having and knowing truth that will do. If the loins are girt about with truth, if the heavenly calling has power over you, you cannot follow the world; your affections will be in heaven, and Satan can have no power with you. The "loins" represent the inward bracing of the man's thoughts and feelings, and affections. All that is going on in the mind needs to be exercised in the truth so as to be girt with it. I can never use truth but in the presence of God, because truth is light, and light makes darkness manifest. Man on a sick bed will shew what is in his heart. There is sincerity there at last, when brought into the presence of God and abstracted from other things. There may have been much profession before, yet nothing but what is real stands before God.

335 All the perfection of divine life in man we get in Christ, and He is our example. In having on the armour of God we have on what Christ was and had (for example, the "breastplate of righteousness"). All these things which are ours in Christ should be applied to us. Take truth - Christ is the truth and the righteous One. He is my righteousness. But it is here used for conflict against Satan - not for God, but for practical power. I must have it before God first, or I shall not be able to contend with Satan. I am made righteous before God - this is a settled thing; and now I want all that Christ is and has been for my power against the enemy. If a man have a bad conscience, there can be no power against Satan. There must be the "armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left." The loins must be girt with truth first, and then a man will walk as in the presence of God. There will be a savour of Christ's ways in his character. What a difference there is between a man walking before God, and one walking before men! What a trouble there is to keep things straight for a man walking before men! While one who is walking before God, though in the presence of men, can leave things quietly to God. The real difference between a mere professor of Christ and a Christian is just this.

"Feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace" means, not only having peace with God, but walking in the spirit of peace. There is sure to be peace in the spirit of a man who is girt about with truth, and walking in the power of divine righteousness. A man who has been walking with God many years will be more gentle with others than one who has just begun to know Him; he will neither crave things, nor be irritated at evil in another, for his own soul has tasted what the peace of God is, walking with God in the power of it. Even suppose a man has all this on, there is the need of dependence. Independence is sin, and there is need therefore of always being in conflict, and having the undeviating confidence that God is for me.

The thing wanted then is the "shield of faith." Satan comes and tempts me: Is God for you? How do you know? There are of course different kinds of temptation - not lusts, but questions whether God is for me, come what will. Then the shield of faith is needed. Christ was in an agony in the garden, but He could say, Abba Father, all things are possible to Thee. On the cross, when He said, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" - "but thou art holy" - God has His place, come what will. We are not to be afraid with any amazement. If Satan succeeds in terrifying a man, he flies, and there is no armour for the back. Of Saul, David said, "the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away"(amongst the Philistines). "The shield of faith" is that by which one is able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. At Christ he threw a fiery dart when he said, "cast thyself down." Are you quite sure God is for you? Cast yourself down and try. No, says Christ; I know God is for me, I need not try. "It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." The dart is quenched by the word of God. If the dart of doubt or fear, etc., gets in, you have no power at all.

336 The moment the heart gets troubled, remember, "if God be for us, who can be against us?" If thoughts arise about yourself, "if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." God is for us through all, even chastening. If there is an Achan in the camp, God says, I will not go out with you: and they are beaten by a very little city. If God be for us, who against? The "shield of faith" is mentioned after the others, because there cannot be this lively faith (not the certainty of salvation is meant here but practical faith) if sin is allowed, and if the loins are not girt about with truth, etc. Recognising ourselves as a people connected with God, in respect to this power that is in Him, is just faith. Moses might have reckoned on God through all the murmurings of the people.

All this is defensive armour - "the helmet of salvation" also. There is not a single blow aimed by the Christian warrior yet. What is the helmet? God has saved me and will save me. "Goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell," etc. It is a general, broad, full apprehension that all through God will be with me and for me; not only faith in the particular thing, and at the particular time, but as expressed in Romans 8. Nothing can separate from the love of God: therefore I may lift up my head with joy.

337 Now I can use the word of God offensively, as "the sword of the Spirit"; now I can fight. We ought to be able to confound every enemy, not with man's wisdom, intellect, and understanding, but in the power of the Spirit. Do others not believe in it? I am not going to give up the sword of the Spirit because you do not think it will cut. I know it will cut, and therefore use it. There is a power and authority felt by the person who uses it. There must be a sense of dependence for this; and therefore prayer, the sense of dependence expressed, is needed - "praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit." Of one it was said that he laboured earnestly in prayer for the saints. This was because of the sense of the conflict from Satan going on with the saints; therefore labour needed watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. If other things come in, I have no power to turn every thing into prayer; therefore watching is needed. Give yourselves to prayer. You are in God's interests connected with all saints; therefore pray for all saints.

There is nowhere that conflict is so much felt as in prayer: that is where Satan desires to come in.

Verse 19. We should be bold for God in such a world as this. How far are you identified with Christ in the world? And are you careful to avoid everything that dishonours Christ? Whatever destroys Christ's character before men is really a fall, though it may not be positively gross sin.

________

It might seem strange at first sight that, in an epistle in which we get the greatest unfolding of the privileges we have as saints, at the same time, conflict is most brought out, where we have specially the relationship of Father and of the bride, there specially, in conflict, saints are called upon to take the whole armour of God, in order to be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. It may seem strange at first sight here to talk of armour, but just where it is needed is such a place; and we never get into conflict till we realise privilege. Mark, it is not conflict of flesh and Spirit, but warfare in heavenly places against spiritual wickedness; not the same as in Galatians, the flesh lusting against the Spirit. Here we are in the new creation, Christ having ascended on high as Head of it, having led captivity captive, and having taken us so thoroughly out of Satan's hands that He can make us vessels of His glory in this world; and that very thing brings us into conflict. If we have hold of this place, which is ours in Christ Jesus, we must reckon on having special conflict. We cannot cross the Jordan without finding the Canaanite and Perizzite in the land.

338 The wilderness on the other hand tests the heart, but it is not Canaan. There it is not wilderness exercises, it is wrestling against, not flesh and blood, but spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. The subject we had lately was our being dead with Christ and risen with Him, brought into the heavenlies in Him, a most valuable and precious truth to get hold of very distinctly. It is the place of every Christian, but not realised by many. To most one has to speak of the blood on the door-posts rather than of the Red Sea (that is, the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ having entirely delivered them out of Egypt).

The whole question of sin was settled by the cross. As man was driven out of the first paradise because sin was completed, he is brought into the second because righteousness was completed, and the whole question of sin settled by Christ, now sitting at the right hand of God in glory. Not a thing between God and the saints as to sin, but we have them passing through exercises of heart, all in them tested and tried in the wilderness.

Then is the Jordan: passed through death and risen again, they get into the land of Canaan and eat the old corn. "Blessed with all spiritual blessings," etc. It is a place that is ours in spirit now and shall be realised hereafter. It is the character of the epistle all through true as to our tide. But first we find Canaanites in the land. We are sure of our place in Him, but His enemies are not yet all put under His feet; and the very fact of our being there in Him is to put us in conflict with these spiritual enemies. When people speak of Jordan as death and Canaan as heaven, they forget that fighting characterises Canaan. As soon as Joshua comes into the land, a man meets him as captain of Jehovah's host with a drawn sword. A redeemed people are Jehovah's host, and so completely Jehovah's servants, that He uses them to execute His judgments against His enemies. How could they fight Jehovah's battles with the flesh? If He uses a people, He must have them dead as to the flesh.

339 Paul does not simply reckon himself dead to sin, but when it was a question of service, it was always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, etc. He kept all that was of Paul completely down, so that to him to live was Christ, and nothing of Paul appeared. We are delivered to death, that the life, etc. What has a dead and risen man to do with the world?

As soon as Jordan is crossed (not only dead and risen, but circumcised, putting off the body of death mortifying the flesh), the old corn of the land is eaten, the reproach of Egypt being rolled away. We never get circumcision in the wilderness. What have we as dead and risen with Christ, to do with this world? True we have to run across the wilderness to glory; but as one with Christ in heaven, we are the witness and testimony of what a heavenly Christ is in the world that rejects Him. And in maintaining this place, will Satan (do you think) let you alone? Infidelity, superstition, and worldliness, these are things by which Satan is seeking to get souls into his power. His wiles are things that puzzle (the cities walled up) - great forms of piety, without the power, as seen in this day. Then we have these instructions for putting on the whole armour of God, in order to be able to fight against spiritual wickedness. We are not to get through in our own strength, and we have to find out what this armour is which we have to be clothed with.

The loins girt with truth is the first thing. Subjection to the word points out our soul's state, and therefore it comes first. There can be no divine activity till the loins are girt about - a common figure in eastern countries, where the long garments are girded up, not to impede. So we get the soul into order through the power of the truth applied, and everything - the thoughts, and intents, and purposes of the heart tested by it. The Lord said, "Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth," John 17. We have in the word all the thoughts of God, that can judge and bless man, and Christ is the centre of all. He was the light in the world. He brought out all the darkness in it, and applied the truth to it all. He brought out all that is divine and heavenly in a man, in contrast with all in men.

People think the world is a fine place; but Satan is the prince of it - they do not believe it; but he proved himself to be so, by bringing all against Christ up to the cross, and he will head up the world against God soon. Death had not been executed up to the cross. The truth, Christ Himself, came into the world, discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart. When the truth is effectually applied, we get the loins girded, the whole condition, as it were, tucked up and not trailing, ready for the activity of service. I have to meet Satan, and carry on the Lord's battles, in conflict against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places; my heart is first to be tested, and to be brought into a heavenly world. Christ brought it there, and He says, Is heaven in your heart? I get the revelation of all in me that is against Christ, and all that is heavenly in Christ; my condition is the effect of truth. He was it, I get it from Him. I do not want armour in walking with God - I want arming against Satan.

340 Next, the breast-plate of righteousness, not righteousness with God, but taking up armour against Satan, my condition of soul and heart being right. My feet walk through the world, shod with the preparation, etc. It is the practical effect of the condition of my heart, and what a blessed condition! It is not selfishness, saying, "I must maintain my rights." But when a soul is at peace with God, he will be meek and lowly, like Christ; he goes out then in the spirit of peace, and carries through the world the character and spirit of Christ. "Peace that passeth all understanding "keeps his heart and mind. How a man full of peace subdues all around him! Christ practically had perfect restful peace; He carried it with Him in all He passed through; in Him we have the fruits of righteousness sown in peace.

First, then we have the loins girt - the truth of God applied - to bring the soul into a right condition; secondly, practical righteousness (breastplate); thirdly, the feet shod with the gospel of peace. Now, we have to take up the shield of faith. I need not be thinking of self, though it is quite right to judge myself. I am to have practical faith in God. We are not called upon to confess sin but sins, although confessing the sinfulness of my nature, but it is never to be made an excuse for sinning. If I sin, I have failed in keeping my eye on God, and so have failed in keeping sins down, and in keeping the enemy closely shut up. The shield of faith is to have the eye on God, with perfect confidence that He can keep us walking in the light, as He is in it. Satan may do what he pleases, shoot his arrows from his lurking-place; but they cannot break through the shield of faith. The victory has been attained over him by Christ as man. He not only put away sin, but through death destroyed him who has the power of death. We are exhorted to "resist the devil," etc. Flesh does not resist him, and if he is resisted, he knows he has met Christ in us and runs away. It is not a question of the power of Satan, but of faith, of looking to Christ. The fiery darts of Satan never get through the shield of confidence in God; my weakness is just what His strength is made perfect in. What so weak as death? Christ crucified through weakness. What so contemptible to man as the cross? But it is the wisdom and the power of God. When we own ourselves weak, then we have power from God to overcome Satan. He is a most subtle enemy, he knows how to deal with man, and is much cleverer than the wisest of men. Therefore when you see learned and clever men give way to folly, you must remember that Satan is behind it all; they are using his strength, and he is laughing at them. If the shield of faith is down, the fiery darts will get in.

341 How blessed to know we have Christ to go through everything with, and, having him, all the evil in the world cannot overcome us. It is not "Because I go to the Father, you shall overcome the world"; but "I have overcome it." Still we have to be overcomers in a world where Satan, as the power of evil, was never more actively employed than at present. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. Having full confidence in God, we can hold up the head, because we have for an helmet salvation. First, godliness of walk; second, peace of mind; third, confidence in God and salvation covering him. The believer can now be active. He takes the sword of the Spirit, and fights, shielded from all the attacks of Satan. Now, there can be activity in using the sword of the word.

But we do not always judge ourselves; we do not always look to see whether we are walking in a practical sense of being all for God, so that God can be all for us when in conflict. The first great thing, if we are to be active for the Lord, is being right with the Lord. Look at Paul, always self-judging, keeping under his body; always completely for the Lord, and the Lord completely for him. Ever in the secret of the Lord's presence, he got the power of God for service - the strength of God made perfect in his weakness. He was not hindered, or distracted by circumstances, whatever came; he never drew back; he had the secret of the Lord, and could go out in service, according to what His presence and glory required. Herein do I exercise myself to have a conscience void, etc.

342 "Praying always," etc. We now get the word of God and prayer. Mary sat at the feet of the Lord, and heard His word. Then, in Luke, the disciples say to Him, "Lord, teach us how to pray"; again, "Men ought to pray always and not to faint." The apostles appointed deacons to serve tables, that they might give themselves continually to prayer, etc. When the Lord was in an agony of prayer, Peter was sleeping instead of watching, and so went out and denied his Lord, whilst the Lord witnessed a good confession; and when the soldiers came to take Him, He had calm power. If you want to know what prayer is, see the Lord agonising in prayer in Gethsemane: that is prayer - no hurry or bustle, but the soul perfectly calm with God.

Has God given us to be associated with His own interests? Do I not yearn for the conversion of sinners? Do I not yearn to see a saint representing Christ more perfectly? I must go to God about it in earnest prayer and supplication, watching with all perseverance for the answer. The same word that is used for the praying of the Lord in Gethsemane is used by Paul here - agonising in prayer for saints. We get this earnestness in supplication from being in the interests of God, and knowing that His interests have to be carried on in earnest supplication and prayer, watching thereunto. I have to get with God in prayer, if preaching the gospel. Prayer is the expression of entire dependence on His power; not simply asking God about things, but agonising for the answer. People think that the apostle Paul is beyond, sailing over the heads of all others; but what is his language? "I was with you in weakness and many tears."

Faith goes with God's affairs to God, so interested with Him about them, that we make them our own. God takes the people delivered by His Son out of the hands of Satan for His own servants, saying, I want Christ to be glorified on the earth, and you are to do it. We may be poor feeble things, but we have the same interests as Christ, and His strength is made perfect in our utter weakness. What a blessed place to be in! Being made Jehovah's host, to battle against His enemies and Satan. Those in the forefront of the battle need more the whole armour, because more exposed to the fiery darts, and more in the way of the enemy's snares and dangers; those who lag behind are not in the same danger. But more strength will be given to meet and overcome everything, if there is perfect dependence on and faith in God, as in John, "This is the victory that overcometh the world, our faith," 1 John 5: 2. But in no place need one be more unceasing in prayer and watchfulness than in the forefront of the battle.

343 In bearing witness for Christ, we first have the helmet of salvation from Christ. How little we know how to watch unto prayer! Is all that you and I pass through in the day turned into prayer, and supplication in the Spirit, watching thereunto for all saints? Do you find you are continuous in prayer? Do you find your heart going up in earnest agonising supplications for the saints? Nothing I find so difficult, and nothing so tests my heart, as to the right way to think of others, as asking, Is my soul so interested in others that I can have continuous and earnest supplication going up for them? To do so, the soul must be right with God. I must think of myself else, and that stops intercession for others.

It is an amazing thing to walk with God in the light, so as to be able to take up His interests; provided with this armour, which we have to keep on, to stand against Satan. Satan has no strength against those who are faithful to Christ. It is not leaning on human wisdom. Satan is much cleverer than all the learned men down here. You will always find it is where redemption is not fully rested in that Satan plays all his tricks. If the finished work of Christ were really known, and full and complete redemption rested in, superstition and ritualism would have no ground to stand on; the foundation of it all is, that something has to be done by man to make the soul right with God. If Christ has settled the whole question for me, I do not want any of their means to settle it. The Puseyites can speak beautifully of the incarnation; but they cannot bear to hear of the finished work, or of your place with God being once and for ever settled by redemption. The sophistries of rationalism and infidelity cannot tell on a soul that knows Christ, and has Him dwelling in the heart.

Oh! beloved friends, may the Lord keep us in more entire dependence and unbroken communion with God, ever walking in the presence of God, in the light, till that blessed day, so soon coming, when Christ will rise up and take us to Himself!

Christ and His Reconciliation

Colossians 1

J. N. Darby.

<21050E> 344

Part 1

There are two ways in which we may approach the gospel of the grace of God: firstly, the conscience convicted, and seeing how God has met the condition of man, as in Romans 1-3; and, secondly, the counsels of God from which it all flows. We may trace Him up from the poor sinner in his need, or we may see the grace from Him flowing down.

In this chapter we have much of God's thoughts about Christ Himself, as in Hebrews 1, where He is presented to us as "heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds," etc., "upholding all things by the word of his power," "when he had by himself purged our sins." It begins with this wonderful counsel of God in grace coming to meet the need, notwithstanding all He was in Himself. In the chapter before us in Colossians we have the glory of this work in Christ; then its extent is shewn; and what is so precious is that when we begin at the other end (conscience and the sense of need) we reach the same point; but there is a fulness and a strength gathered in looking at the place and purpose of God from all eternity, beyond what we get from the need of the sinner being met. It is quite needful in whatever way it is brought to us, that the conscience should be reached, because God cannot reveal His glory to unawakened man. Understanding must come through the conscience, as in the case of the woman of Samaria. Her spiritual knowledge was gained through the exercise of her soul with Jesus. Where there is not a living work in the conscience, there never can be a link between the soul and the living person of the Son of God. This always is the beginning. The word of God reaches the conscience, and sets it in the presence of the living God. He has made that one step essential to the sinner. This woman heard the Lord speaking to herself. That is the all-important thing, and there can be no truth in the soul till then. What is all the Bible worth to me if my soul is a stranger to God? If we bring in all the purposes of God, then they must bear upon the conscience this way. A sense of God's love to the soul, etc., will never be truly realised till it is apprehended as flowing downwards from His glory.

345 We will look into these verses which succeed the prayer relating to the saints' growth in grace, etc. (v. 12) (for it is well for sinners to see the state of the saints, if only to know that they are not saints), "Giving thanks unto the Father," etc. Here is the certain settled knowledge of being fit for the inheritance of the saints in light. Then we are fit for heavenly glory! This made us fit for that.

(1) The extent and nature of this fitness - made light in the Lord. "Ye were darkness, but now are ye light": and there is the full consciousness of it, for there is thanksgiving. The saints themselves have that knowledge and apprehension of being fit. See the condition of the saints - "Delivered from the power of Satan, and translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son." The Christian, can say, I was darkness but am now in the place of Christ as to my standing before God.

(2) The means by which we have been brought into this condition: "Through his blood"; and not only redemption, but the sins forgiven. I was a slave, but am now a redeemed soul in the kingdom of the Son. It is accomplished between Him and the Father; a settled thing in bringing a poor lost sinner and setting him in the presence of God. Had I any part in it? No. He did it through His blood. When we simply believe, we always know it is by Christ's blood we are purged. You may not be sure you are a believer; I do not ask you if you know this: but do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? If the soul rests on Jesus, there is not a cloud; but if on yourself, you may well be uncertain, because you have got into the mud of your own hearts. But in Jesus there is nothing but blessedness: light, nothing but light; every step of His path perfect light. Faith is believing what Christ Himself is; therefore it immediately breaks out in this passage about the glorious object, "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature." There are distinct parts of Christ's glory here brought out. The Lord Jesus created all, and therefore He is the Head of all; not only as Adam having dominion, and everything brought to him to name, but "by him were all things created"; and He must be above everything and everybody: "dominions, principalities, powers," etc. Then there is another character of headship in verse 18: "Firstborn from the dead." None could go lower than death, but we see Him going down into it, and rising up from it, and He fills all things. Everything is created by Him and for Him; and, mark, He takes them as man. "What is man?" etc. (Psalm 8). Mark another thing also in this verse 18. He is Head of His body, the church; she is His helpmate, His bride.

346 The next thing is, we find His inheritance defiled - God dishonoured - the world ruined - and man guilty! The angels have not kept their first estate above, and man has not kept his state below - none have kept it. But He must be glorified in bringing it all back again, and the first thing was for God to be honoured, for He has been dishonoured; therefore He must make peace through the blood of His cross. In making atonement there were in the type two goats to be taken, one lot for the Lord, and one for the people. The goat on which the Lord's lot fell was to be offered for a sin-offering; but the goat on which the lot fell on behalf of the people had to be presented alive before the Lord, so as to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness; and that goat was to bear upon him all their iniquities into a land not inhabited; and he shall let go the goat into the wilderness. Has God been glorified then? Yes, fully glorified, God's requirements more than met. And who do I find has come in to repair the breach? It is the Son of His love. I find it all done. And where could God ever have been glorified as in the work of His Son? He glorified God. "I have glorified thee on the earth." Could Adam have so glorified Him in Paradise? Such love for a sinner could only have been shewn in the redemption of man. The mercy-seat is sprinkled with blood. God's lot, not the people's lot, is a token of perfect peace being made with God through the blood of the cross: yes, everything reconciled in heaven and in earth: it does not say under the earth, that is not mentioned here. Thus we have the basis of everything ransomed to be with God and for God for ever and ever. It can never stand on creation title; though heaven and earth will stand in the presence of God, but it will be in redemption title alone. "We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth."

"You hath he reconciled," etc. This is a thing to give thanks for now If I am to return in heart and mind to God, I must be reconciled. God saw the need, and from the fulness and perfectness of His own love He did it all. "We have known and believed," etc. Such is the condition of the Christian; and if you ask a proof of it, this is the answer - He laid down His life. "You that were sometime alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled." Not only have we a wicked nature in us ("children of wrath"), but more than this, we have done wrong, thought wrong, spoken wrong; and then, besides that, our hearts are alienated, the sure consequence of sin. Did you ever see a servant or a child do wrong, and glad to meet his master or parent afterwards? Does not the sense of having done wrong keep them away from those against whom they have sinned? Yes. Alienation of heart there is, because we do not want God to come and say to us, as to Adam, "Where art thou?" There is first, lust, then the commission of sin, then the mind turned away and at enmity. Then, in this condition, God comes to bring it back. How can He do it? Ruined, unhappy, wretched as I am, if God is for me, I can come to Him. Grace can come and make me happy. God comes in grace to win me back when thus alienated, and tells me He has dealt about my sins. This will bring me back. Law convicts, but never wins back - never. It is as though we said to God, My conscience makes me dislike you - makes me unhappy with you: take away my sins; and I will come back. This certainly is in substance what the gospel of God says to us both about our sin and about His grace.

347 And will He half reconcile? No, He has completely done it: "In the body of his flesh through death." There were you under your sins. Christ came as a real true man about these sins that are distressing you and keeping you away from God. I see Him made sin, bearing to take the dreadful cup of God's wrath: all the sins laid upon Him like the scapegoat: Jesus Christ coming in a body, not with a message that it shall be done. No, the thing is done. God has visited sinners in love. I meet God by faith there where He had met me; and I see in the body of Christ's flesh through death, He has put sin entirely away. I have nothing to do with it. Who could do anything to add to such a work? Men may wag their heads at it in derision, but the work is done fully and completely. Christ is gone up; and He is gone to present you holy, and unblamable, and unreprovable in His sight. Was there any mistake, any uncertainty? No, the soul knows and feels that God has done it. If He has me in His sight, He must have me holy and unblamable and unreprovable, and He has made me so: and when He finished the work, He sat down. "After he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God." Well then may it be said, "Giving thanks unto the Father who hath made us meet," etc. The work is done; and now God sends "to declare," as the apostle says, "his righteousness." Did you accomplish it? Did you do anything towards it? Nothing, but your sins. He has made peace. Our souls then can rest in this blessed peace. And it is not only that I have this peace: no, God has peace for me; and the nearer I get to God, the more I see the fulness and perfectness of this peace. It is God's peace, and I have peace in it. All there is according to His own perfectness. He rests in Christ's work for my sin. If He had nothing more to require, what can I require? All the ground of my connection with God is that His love has been manifested in putting away my sins; and I have peace in that. If you think you must satisfy God as a creditor, you do not know God. God is love, and He is known through the cross. If I own God as my Saviour and Lord, it marks all my character. I have new objects and new motives. I may do the same things, harmless in themselves perhaps, but I have a different motive in doing them when I know God. It is not what a man does that marks his character, but why he does it. When I know God in Christ, I go and do right things because I love God. I may be outwardly correct and moral, but the spring and motive may be all wrong at once. A child may see if you say He has translated me from the power of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son. If I have peace with God, there is nothing between Him and me. The peace is made. It is a thing accomplished.

348 Now, are you reconciled to God? Grace, and glory, and love then are brought before your soul by the Holy Ghost; and you will be changed into the same image from glory to glory, etc. If I know I am to be like Him at the day of His appearing, I shall be purifying myself, "even as he is pure" now. May the Lord work in our hearts by His own Spirit, conforming us who believe into the image of Jesus, soon to be conformed to the Firstborn in glory.

349 Part 2

Besides the Person of the Lord coming out fully in this chapter as Head of His body the church, and Creator of all things, the main subject that is developed in the epistle is life, much more in its detail than in the Ephesians, where we have rather the glories of the church of God in contrast with the previous heathen, or even Jewish, state. Here, in Colossians, it is the life of Christ in us, and does not go as far in regard to privileges. The apostle gives us the saints risen with Christ, and then takes this life and shews what it is. But in doing so he puts the Christian fully in his place with God in that life. The Christian is taken as indeed risen, but yet on the earth, just simply having life yet not sitting in heavenly places. He puts the Christian in the power of resurrection, and the life of Christ in resurrection in the Christian. But heaven is looked at still as a matter of hope: you are looking up to it - "your life is hid with Christ in God"; but you are not seated there yet; whereas in Ephesians we are there in Christ. In Colossians he looks at what the power of that life is, and the Christian as risen put in this place before God; and then he shews the power of this life in the details of daily life.

"And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." The knowledge which we have in this new life is renewed after the image of God Himself. A life has come in which has overcome the world, and I get into the new place which Christ is in as man before God. Thus we have Christ's place, but still down here; then what the power and character of that life are practically, as passing through this world just as Christ did. He was properly a heavenly man passing through the world, overcoming everything, and having all His joy in His Father, and He puts us into that life, both as to its acceptance and as to its power. (You do not get here all the privileges that flow from it.) Consequently the only proper place of one looked at as risen with Christ is the place He has before God.

You have the Head largely brought out here, the object and source of it all. "For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." In Ephesians we are the "fulness of him that filleth all in all," for we are looked at as His body. On the one side all the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him, a real man, and on the other you are complete in Him and have everything in Him. The fulness of the Godhead has been revealed in Christ, and we are complete in Him before God. He sets us in connection with Him in virtue of Christ who is at God's right hand, and we are waiting for the hope which is laid up in heaven.

350 "If ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel." Speaking of the Christian in Christ, you never get any "if." I could not say, "If I was at C-," for here I am. There is no "if" to your place in Christ, no condemnation. But there is another aspect in which we may look at the Christian; he is running a race towards glory. You have it especially in the Hebrews: the saints are viewed there as on earth, Christ the Son of God and man as in heaven; and so you do not get the truth there of their being united to Christ - the body to its Head. Whenever the Christian is looked at in his path through this world, then the "ifs" come in; only with them you get the blessed testimony to the faithfulness of God in carrying us through to heaven. With acceptance and the value of Christ's blood, there are no "ifs"; but when I am running the race, then I say I must get to heaven. When Israel was redeemed out of Egypt, there was no "if" then: so the one offering has perfected for ever them that are sanctified. I am "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation"; but why do I want to be kept? I find with this revelation that I have a need of being kept, so that I am constantly in need of being entirely dependent every instant upon this grace; but with it the positive revelation that the grace will not fail. Therefore dependence is maintained, and it is very blessed to be kept in dependence. A man has to learn his entire dependence, as the Lord says, "Without me ye can do nothing." This man does not say, but thinks he can do a great deal; and so we have to learn dependence, but at the same time the blessed truth of the unfailing faithfulness of God. "He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous"; He always has His eyes on them for blessing, though He may have to chasten them.

"Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." Why do you say that? Because the devil would pluck them out if he could. Before we come into the effect and result of all in glory, it is the wisdom of God that I should be called to lean upon Him. So He puts one through this process where one's faith is constantly exercised; and then I have to learn too that He never fails me. I have to learn myself and to learn God. It is painful to learn oneself, but then there is the blessed truth of the unspeakable condescension of God in taking notice of our state and circumstances. Interested in us every moment, as I said before, "he withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous." Intercourse with God is maintained; it is the path we have to walk in as being redeemed. Supposing we were to give up Christ and have done with Him, then we should not have life or peace or anything. Some of the Hebrews seem to have been in danger of drawing back and are warned accordingly.

351 We will see where God has set the Christian. Seeing we are risen with Christ is more than seeing we are forgiven. Forgiveness is the perfect clearing away of every spot (the first thing we need). Guilt is all gone in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, where we had no part but our sins and the wickedness that crucified Him. "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." If we were not perfected in conscience before God, Christ must have suffered often. What is to put sin away if it is not put away now? I may hate it and judge it more (that is the work of the Spirit in me), but I speak of the putting it away once for all. "Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." He came the first time to bear sin; when He comes the second time, He will have nothing to do with sin, He comes to receive us to Himself. We stand between the first coming of Christ, in which He wrought redemption on the cross and gave Himself to put away sin, and the second coming of Christ, when in virtue of that work He comes to receive believers to Himself; and the Holy Ghost is come down meanwhile to give me the full sense of what He did the first time, and the bright and blessed hope of what He will do the second time. We have nothing between, except of course the operations of the Holy Ghost, for the work of the Spirit is going on, most blessed in its place, to lead us on to grow up unto Him in all things; but, as regards the work of Christ, He sits in the presence of God because all is done. There is no progress in the value of Christ's blood, nor in the righteousness of God which we are in Christ.

The first thing then is redemption - a work which delivers us from the place we were in, and brings us into the new place that Christ is in before God as man. God takes away the sins, and gives us all Christ besides. It belongs to us as being in Christ, though in this epistle it is more Christ in us.

352 As for the glories of Christ that are to come - all things created by Him and for Him, and He taking them all up as man - we read that He is going to reconcile the whole state and order of things in heaven and earth; but you "hath he reconciled." The Christian does not wait till then. I am perfectly reconciled to God. There I was a stranger and an enemy, away from Him; and here I am, my sins entirely gone, and my heart, by this wondrous revelation of love, brought back to delight in God. I am reconciled; and a great and blessed thing it is. If I am reconciled to a person with whom I have been at enmity, there is nothing any longer between us; if there is anything, then I am not reconciled. If you have an after-thought, a misgiving, "after all I do not know whether it is all right," then you are not reconciled; the heart is not free.

But we do by faith get perfect liberty with God through the precious blood of Christ, and the power and presence of the Spirit of God giving us the consciousness of it in our souls. "You hath he reconciled." He makes this difference between us and reconciling the things around us, which will not be till the new heavens and new earth. The state of things will be reconciled, which is not so now, for the world has rejected Christ, and will never see Him in that way again; but we, believers, are reconciled to God. It is God's estimate of Christ's blood that is the measure of my acceptance with Himself; it gives me peace. I have been reconciled to God in the consciousness of the perfect love that gave Christ; but beside that I am brought into perfect favour with God, the favour which rests upon Christ. It is not merely that the old things are swept away, and my sins washed out in the blood of Christ, but the perfect love of God is revealed in doing it. I come back to God in unbounded confidence and infinite love. This is the place of the Christian. Christ, being in us, teaches us, and conducts down into our souls this love of God; and the heart is thus reconciled in blessed peace and righteousness, resting in the consciousness of His perfect grace towards us.

If you look up to God and get into His holy presence, do you feel perfect liberty with Him? Poor unworthy creatures we certainly are in ourselves (and in the light I see more how worthless I am); but God spared not His own Son. There is no doubt or cloud as to that which He is for our souls, because it has been perfectly revealed to us in the word of God, as it has been proved in Christ Himself and the cross.

353 Redemption and forgiveness is the first thing; reconciliation is the second. Then mark another thing, beloved friends: "who hath delivered us from the power of darkness." The world is blinded; where God is not known, they are in pitch darkness. They may be very clever on everything else; but this has nothing whatever to do with God. Man's mental powers may be great; he may be full of science; but the moment his breath goes forth, all that is gone. "The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not" - that is, on Christ's coming into this world. Wherever the light does come in, wherever God is known, what is the effect? It reaches the conscience. If man's mind were capable of judging what God is, or of knowing what He ought to be, then he would be master of the subject. Do you put God in that place? When God comes in, it is to put me in my place, and Himself in His place, as with the woman of Samaria in John 4. All true intelligence of God comes in by the conscience. The heart, no doubt, is attracted by His grace; but all true knowledge of Him comes in by the conscience, though it may be developed afterwards. It is not only light but unspeakable love has been revealed, and He has delivered me fully and brought me into the very place in which Christ is before God. I am "translated into the kingdom of the Son of his love." It is the operation of grace which does come in, and makes us know what we are - true moral light in the soul; but the effect is to take me out of darkness, and put me "into the kingdom of the Son of his love."

There is another thing in which many feel more difficulty. "Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." Here we are told of meetness. For what? For the inheritance of the saints in light - that is, in glory. But, as a Christian, I am not looking to get at it - He "hath made us meet." May I not say, See what a work God has done! Yea, I am to give thanks for it too. The thief was fit to be Christ's companion in paradise that day. Christ was there for him on the cross, and the value of the work of Christ was proved in taking that man straight that day to be His own companion above. Did God put him in unfit? Of course not. Fit for what? Fit to be with Christ in paradise. Exactly so am I, having "redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins," then reconciled to God, and delivered from the power of darkness, and made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. All that is done, that it may be known now by faith. By grace I do value the death of Christ; but God values it a great deal more. There is where my sin can be fully estimated: I hate it, and confess it; but after all a holy God sees it a great deal more deeply than I do, however sincere I may be. God knows all my sin, and He knows that Christ has put it away. I am left here for two things - to learn a great deal about myself, which is ever humbling; and to learn of God in Christ the unutterable patience and love and goodness of God.

354 "For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding." I have not merely, as in the law, what a man ought to be; I have now been taught of God, and know what God is, and that I am His child - brought to Him by redemption. He says that you are a partaker of His holiness; He is making you enjoy His love: now you must not do anything that would hinder your enjoying it, or that would grieve the Spirit. You are brought into the light, and everything that does not suit the light must go. It is not merely avoiding crimes and positive sins, but you are to be filled with the knowledge of His will. God has a thought, and a mind, and a path, for His children; and this is Christ's path, that we should walk in His steps. "He that saith he abideth in him, ought himself to walk even as he walked." Did you ever see Christ avenge Himself? Did you ever see selfishness working in Him? or trying to get rich, or seeking for pleasure or amusement? Then you go and walk like Him, as a person redeemed to God by the precious blood of Christ. It is a great mercy that God has a will about us and a path for us. "I am the way," says Christ. "He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." It is following His steps, walking in the spirit and mind in which He walked. "I have set the Lord always before me."

You will see how the apostle brings that out, "That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing." Here am I called to-day and to-morrow to walk worthy of the Lord - nothing that I do, say, or think, which should not be worthy of Christ Himself. Here it is all growth: I have got the life. I say to a child, "You go and walk worthy of your family "; but if he has no sense of what his family is, it is no use telling him to walk worthy of it; but if he has the sense of the integrity and standing of his family, then he knows how to walk worthy of it. "In all things behaving ourselves as the ministers of God." You get the word "worthy" in three ways. In Thessalonians, "Walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory." In Ephesians it is the same thing practically: "Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called." Here, in Colossians, it is, "Walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing." Did He ever do His own will in anything? No, He did His Father's. Are you content never to do your own will, but to take Christ's will as that which is to be the spring and motive of all you do? Then communion is not interrupted; and it is joy and blessing beyond all human thought. You say, "Am I never to do what I like?" Like! Do you like not to be always with Christ? This detects the workings of the flesh.

355 Then comes the activity, the growing acquaintance with God, "Increasing in [or rather, by] the knowledge of God." The full joy of heaven is the knowledge of God. If I am going after the world, will this be increasing by the knowledge of God? It tests what I like? Do you like to be away from God, and to do your own will sometimes? But He says, "I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart." Do you delight to do it? Oh, what a thought it is, that in this dark world God has perfectly revealed Himself in Christ, nay more that He dwells in us! "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Christ, God dwelleth in him, and he in God." There is God by His Spirit.

Now mark how this works. "Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power." I shall find plenty of difficulties in the way, and temptations of all kinds - possibly death, as has often been the case in some countries; but we are strengthened with all might. There is the strength. I have been brought into close relationship with God, and there I get this power. Unto what? "Unto all patience." This sounds a poor thing, but you will find it is just what tries you. "Let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." And again, "The signs of an apostle were wrought in me in all patience." Are you always patient? Do you not want divine power for it? I may want a setting right in the church of God, or in the Lord's work, or in a thousand things; but I must have patience. I must wait on God.

356 Supposing my will is not at work, there comes meekness and gentleness. Even things that try, I can take gently and meekly and quietly with others, and then he adds, if that is the case, my life is in full display before God, and there is the enjoyment of God. I enter into all this blessedness, I am not merely "made meet," but "giving thanks," because I am in the positive and blessed enjoyment of all. When I am walking in patience of heart and long-suffering, my soul is with God. I get the blessed enjoyment of what He is, and I grow by the knowledge of Him; "To him that hath shall be given." If I am honest, I say, "I do not know what His will is"; perhaps there is something in myself that I have not yet detected. Here I have all these exercises; but it is in the sense of the divine favour resting on me with the consciousness of a child of God. The more a child is with his father, and delights in him, of course the better he will grow up, understanding what his father likes. It is so with us before God.

Later on we are told, we "have put off the old man with his deeds"; and then it is added, "Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering" - the graces belonging to the Christian. You must have the consciousness of what you are as the elect of God, and then put them on in that blessed consciousness. It was thus Christ ever walked as man.

"Strengthened unto all patience." You will find there is nothing that tests the strength of your soul like waiting for God. We think we must do things that we think right; we must rather learn to wait. Take Saul, for example, in 1 Samuel 13. He ought to have waited, and said, I can do nothing. We have but a little while more to go through the wilderness, but it is with God.

And now, beloved, I only ask, but I earnestly ask, you, Are your souls free with God, reconciled to Him? Are you before God in virtue of the cross? or will you pretend to stand before Him as a Judge? "Enter not into judgment with thy servant," says the Psalmist, "for in thy sight shall no man living be justified." He who will be the Judge first died on the cross as the Saviour. When I appear before Him, I find the Person who Himself put away my sins, and in whom I am now resting.

357 The cross of Christ is where everything is morally perfected. There the whole question of good and evil was solved. The world despises the cross; and God meant it to be a despicable thing - a gibbet. "But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, that no flesh should glory in his presence." There, on the basest thing in the world, He has hung salvation. But the moment I am inside, I find everything in the cross - the uttermost sin of man in enmity against God, all the power of Satan, but the perfect man in Christ. "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." But, on the other side, God is there in perfect righteousness against sin, and in perfect love for the sinner; and as you go on, you find that the new heavens and the new earth - all things in short - will be perfected by the cross. There I have perfect righteousness against sin, and perfect love towards the sinner; and I find peace and rest, not merely rest but God's rest. For He rests in His love, in the blessedness of those He has brought near in Christ, and He will bring them into His rest in glory.

The Lord give you fully to see the place where He has brought you, and, in the consciousness of your relationship with God, to set it forth, and walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing. Surely we have to give "thanks unto the Father," when we see the unutterable love that is in it all: He did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. Then follows the suited Christian walk. The Lord give you to see, beloved, with the eyes of faith what God was and wrought in Christ, so that you should be before God according to it, as reconciled to Him, and then seek to walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing by the knowledge of God.

The Freshness of Faith

1 Thessalonians 1

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There is great power of walk shewn forth in this chapter. It brought persecution, but the word had power in them. The world's hatred of them was a proof that there was testimony to the truth. There was the witness of it constantly brought before others, as well as this inward life in power and suffering. There were faith, hope, charity (or love) (v. 3), these three great elements of the power of life in exercise. They were laying hold of things unseen, which was faith. They were waiting in hope for what was to come. And there was the activity of love. They were not going on listlessly, but divine energy was manifested in their everyday life. When patience was exercised, it was the "patience of hope," and what they had to do was done in faith. How strong a link this was between them and every other Christian! When the living power was seen, they were recognised as God's children: the stamp of God was upon them. We know that divine counsels and thoughts of grace were the spring of it all; but there was that which could be seen.

The word was in the Holy Ghost on hearts; it was not in word only, for there was power. There must be unhesitating confidence in the things laid hold of; then there is power. If I say merely, "I suppose these things are true," this is not assurance. But they received the gospel "in much assurance." The result was complete distinctness from the world, which became their enemies. This was not the most pleasant part. They had "much affliction"; but then there was also "joy in the Holy Ghost." To the Corinthians he says, "As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ."

These Thessalonians were living in another world after the word came to them in power. There was a divine spring in them that nothing could touch. In other places they might be getting on more quietly; but there was power here, and all they did was connected with God: all was done under God. This is what we have to seek. Then the testimony went forth, they scarcely knew how; but people saw there was this link with God. They did not trouble themselves about what was said of them. "Your faith to Godward is spread abroad so that we need not to speak anything. For they themselves shew of us," etc. That is, the world became a constant witness of what Paul's preaching was. It could be seen from the conduct of those who received it.

359 If we were all thoroughly faithful, the world would begin to talk about it, and there would be persecution, no doubt. "Let your light so shine before men," etc.; not, let your good works shine, but "your light." "Holding forth the word of life," etc. They saw not only what the Thessalonians were doing, but they took knowledge of the new truth Paul was preaching to them. They "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven."

First, there was a total break with all they were going on in before. Not only did they abandon all the wickedness the heathen were living in, but next they served "the living and true God." They had a new centre of all they did. They "turned to God," the living God. "They turned . . . from idols." The characteristic of these was something for and suited the flesh. Men were looking to that which the flesh likes, and averting what the flesh did not like. There was no connection with God, nor link for the conscience in having to do with idols; but a licence for lust, and all that is agreeable to the flesh. There are those now who look to their idols to help them to pleasure and money: where is the moral difference between stocks and stones, and what is of a more refined kind now in our day? The Thessalonians turned to God, who gave perfect present blessedness. He is a true God for the conscience as well as for the heart. The world at once sees if God is the centre of a person. The heart is not morbid, but thoroughly happy in God; it has perfect satisfaction in Him. This is what makes such a difference in life. When a man is happy - happy in that which is eternal, what he cannot be deprived of, and which prevents his desiring other things - this is the spring of all he has to do. He acts for the glory of God, whether eating or drinking, or whatever he does.

Besides this new spring and centre for the present, there is something else waited for which gives a form and character to this blessing, "waiting for his Son from heaven." A most extraordinary thing to do! Waiting for God's Son! that is, all our hopes are clean out of this world. Do not expect anything from earth, but look for something from heaven, and this God's Son Himself, "even Jesus which delivered us from the wrath to come." This forms a background in all the scene. There is a wrath to come to get out of. Not merely was man to be judged, but the whole scene is to be judged. When Christ returns to this earth, it will be to judge it; and they had nothing to say to the judgment. They were looking for Christ. They knew there was wrath coming, but they had nothing to say to it. Those who were looking for Christ were entirely delivered "from the wrath to come." This gives a very distinct position to the Christian.

360 There was of course very little depth of doctrine among the Thessalonians. They had been only just converted; and this letter was written to them directly after. But there is a great deal of the present living power of faith. "Your faith groweth exceedingly," 2 Thess. 1. Truth, when a person is walking in the spiritual joy and energy of the Holy Ghost after being newly converted, is very different from people holding dull doctrine merely. Here is the historical fact of wrath passed. At Christ's first coming He had taken up the whole question of wrath; and they had turned to God who had laid all their iniquities on another. A divine Person had taken all upon Himself - put all away entirely. All the question is totally and finally settled: sin is borne once, and He who bore it is raised from the dead. This is what proves my sin put away before God. The fact that God will judge the world, by that Man whom He hath ordained in resurrection, is what gives me the consciousness of being entirely free from it, because it proves He is risen from the dead.

This sets me in perfect freedom; and it does more, because it links me up with Christ in heaven. I know He is coming. Why? Because I know Him there. This divine Person before my soul - this Christ - the Man who, infinitely interested about my sins, died for me, He is waiting in heaven. It is now the patience of Christ. He is expecting until His enemies are made His footstool. So we are waiting. Our interests are entirely linked up with His, and thus we are waiting for Him, while He is waiting to come.

There are three ways in which Christ's coming is put before our souls in Scripture. First, it is the fulfilment of our hope. We are waiting, our bodies to be raised, when we are to see Him and be like Him. This gives a strong living link that takes the heart out of present things - one object before our souls, a living Man who is coming again. We are really waiting for something: for what? For the Person who has so loved us. This is connected with two great systems, the government of God, and the church of God.

361 Government under Christ is going to be set up. All things are to be put under His feet. This applies to the appearing of the New Testament, the day of the Lord, if you look at it as to wrath - "the brightness of his coming." I shall be happy long before that. Why then do I long for His appearing? Because Christ will then have His rights. It will be the setting up of divine power in goodness, the setting up of divine righteousness too in goodness. This will be the liberty of glory. We have the liberty of grace now, but not His glory. We wait for that. The great centre of all is Christ taking His rights. He has not these now. He has all His personal glory; but He will come in His own glory and in His Father's and of the holy angels. This is the heavenly part of the government of God, but there is that on earth also which will be the manifestation of God's power to put everything in order where Christ has been crucified and cast out.

Government also applies to the church, to the saints. Are we not under government? To be sure we are responsible. If we know to do good and do it not, we are guilty. We are to walk even as He walked. He was the display of divine life in a man. Not merely is there in Him the perfectness of a man before God, but the perfectness of God before man: therefore His example is far more than the law for us. Another thing is the Holy Ghost given. We are responsible for gifts bestowed by the Holy Ghost (as in the parable of the talents). If I have any service as a Christian, I must do it or I shall be chastened. He takes away what He has given if I do not use it. All this is connected with government. As His sons we are all alike saved; liable to judgment as regards our wrong ways, but in blessedness. The "day of the Lord" will be deliverance for all those waiting for Him. There will be the display of all previously gone through. We shall appear with Him. We always find responsibility connected with the appearing

Another, third thing, entirely distinct, is connected with the church's proper blessedness. He has taken it up and given it that same place as Himself. We are wrapped up with Christ as part of Himself - entirely outside, or rather inside, the question of His kingdom. No question of government as to that, but the outgoing of the heart of Christ - loved as Himself. It is as connected with this we are caught up to meet Him - His heart identified with mine - not a thought moving His heart that does not touch mine. This promise is given us in John 14. "I will come and receive you." There is no thought of anything to do with the world, judgment, or government there, but one single thing, "I will come and receive you unto myself." The secondary and inferior thing is the inheritance that we shall have.

362 Caught up into the Father's house first, we get the inheritance as Christ, and with Christ. "We have borne the image of the earthy," and we "shall also bear the image of the heavenly"; no question of degrees of blessedness or rewards, but all conformed to His image - He the "firstborn of many brethren." The next thing is, we come into the Father's delight, as Christ is - loved with the same love as He is (the full enjoyment in immediate presence); it is given us now in spirit - "thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me." We shall enjoy this blessedness along with Christ Himself, and be with Him forever. "So shall we ever be with the Lord," 1 Thess. 4.

There is, of course, a great inheritance, but not a word is here about that. "Comfort one another with these words." There is rest in this prospect. We cannot help resting there; and when He comes, we shall come with Him. Our joy is to be with Himself. We shall be displayed, but this is not our proper joy. The church's and saints' place (I speak of the church including all the members together, and the saints individually for themselves) is associated with Him as His body, and to be with Him when all is displayed. If we have entered into the reality of His love, and of our union with Him, it is the great joy and delight of our hearts to think of being with Him.

The consequence of all this is, that when He comes forth, the church, as the "armies which were in heaven," come with Him. They must be with Him before they come with Him. How have they got with Him? When He rises up from His present place, we shall go too. He is now hid in God, so are we. He is our life. When He shall appear, we shall also appear with Him in glory. He comes out, the Rider on the white horse, and we come with Him. We have the same portion as Himself. We are still waiting; but He is coming to take things into His hands. At His appearing everything must be in order. He cannot be in a world where all is disorder and going on in wilfulness. That will be "the day" - the display of His power; but besides and within this we have our own portion.

363 We love His appearing, but we love Himself better. Therefore we wait for Him to take us to Himself. If our hearts have known what Himself is, we cannot confound His taking us to Himself, with His appearing. We are "members of his body." "Our life is hid with Christ." He is to take us up to the Father's house, the fulness of His own blessedness - with Christ; the blessed outshining of His Father's love connects itself with the church's position. All through there is an identity of blessedness with Christ in life, hope, object, all. If this hope is let into the heart, there must be a break with the world. I cannot be waiting for God's Son from heaven if I am expecting wrath; and I cannot be waiting for God's Son from heaven if I am linked up with the world. If this world is the scene where my heart is building itself up, if I have an object in this world, Christ will spoil it all.

Suppose God said, "Tonight," etc., would you say, This is what I want? If not, there is something between your affections and Christ.

No trial can touch a person who has Christ for his all. He may have lost this or lost that; but if he has Christ, he has that which he cannot lose.

Promise of Life

Titus 1

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It is at the beginning of this chapter that the Spirit of God marks with an especial character that on which I desire to speak - the eternal thought of God towards us which we find in verses 2, 3. Evil had come in, the Spirit takes notice of it, and the effect in a most remarkable way is to throw us back on the whole mind and thought of God from the beginning. As evil progresses and corruption comes in, the apostle turns back to the origin of all, and coming from the divine nature itself (and all that could meet the evil, and convey us on, must come from that); that is, the eternal life which God who cannot lie promised before the ages of time; that which was in the mind of God as to the thing itself before the foundation of the world; that which God had in His mind, the counsel of God for us, before itself was created. It just shews us what we are, and what man is, with and apart from that eternal life.

In Ephesians we find it in connection with Christ (chap. 3: 3-7): a mystery hidden through all ages in God until Christ was raised up as Head of the body, the bride. It is not on this I would dwell. I am not going to speak about the church, but would turn back to what the life is and would dwell on this thought, the promise of life in the mind of God before the world began. Before that, I say, this life existed in a Person, Christ, the One who was in the beginning with God and was God; that is the Christ with whom my life is hidden with the Father. Being in Himself life, He came into the world as the life and manifested the life. The thing was embodied in the Person of the Lord as Man, and there it was, the life of man, not of angels: that which was specially God's divine thought towards man is shewn out when Christ becomes Man, and this life is communicated to us, the instrument used being the preached word of truth. This divine life had been manifested here in a man - the Lord Jesus. He having given it to us, it is now manifested in our bodies. It has the character of godliness in its manifestation. It tells you what you are. It is in a poor vessel and where there is a wretched will, but it tells you what you are and what the world is; it throws out an additional light to shew what man is, as a creature totally departed from God.

365 Morally speaking, the world has grown up in departure from God: that is, this world we live in - all that we see around - has sprung up from the creature having got away from God, but the life we have existed before the creation of the world, and this portion of Scripture is very full of the simple, quiet blessedness of what that life is, practically manifested and given in Christ. A great deal of evil had come in. Satan was corrupting the truth by the wild reasoning of man's mind. The apostle specially warns Timothy and Titus, and throws them back, not on common Christian profession, but on the faith of God's elect, the acknowledging the truth which is after godliness. They were to be as those who knew what were the thoughts and mind of God and were cast on Him. If I have got divine teaching, I can say, I know the Shepherd's voice, and if it is not His, I shall know that too. The truth which is after godliness is not only acknowledged, but is marked and stamped as of God by a man living to and for God. Godliness is what a man would do if instigated by God; and what a man would not do if God were close by him, it is clear, would certainly not be for God. A man daily taught by the knowledge of God how to be living for God would do everything to manifest the ways of godliness, knowing those ways because of knowing God. I speak not of doing right instead of wrong or of conscientiousness. A believer clearly ought to be righteous with regard to others; but I speak of godliness. You never can be for God without knowing what God is. I cannot walk worthy of God if I do not know Him. I cannot walk with God without that, though I may walk uprightly with man. Here it is walking worthy of God, the loins being girded (affections tucked up). This applies to all revealed to us in Christ. A believer, as to his motives and life, has Christ's mind revealed to him, to shew him how to guide himself through all circumstances. Christ was always Himself, never guided by circumstances. Sorrow could draw out His heart in divine love, but in motives and all circumstances He was always Himself (perfect, of course). It is the mind of Christ that believers are to have.

What a wonderful place we have got! Only as we are taught of God can we get hold of this, that is, the hope of eternal life promised by God before the world began, mark that; for as to the Adam life, it never could be that, but a divine life in those who are saved, a life for heaven; we have got it now, and we shall be there on account of it; there will be its full manifestation, everything there, every word, and all praise will be according to the presence of God; as participators of the divine nature we shall be in fullest blessedness, there where nothing inconsistent with the divine nature can exist, but everything will be in accordance with that life and ourselves as possessors of it in the highest and most blessed perfection. We belong to that place now, whilst our bodies are down here; the life we have got came down from thence, and has its only full sphere of blessing there.

366 The promise of God before the world began, this life was in the mind of God for us before ever the world existed. I do not speak now of predestination, but of the thing itself in the mind of God, before ever the world existed. If we turn to 1 John 1, we see how this life came down (v. 1-3) - "What our hands have handled, of the Word of life." It is a real man. The life which was with the Father was manifested down here in the Person of Christ. In many you will find great vagueness of thought in connection with this life. It is Christ Himself. "When he who is our life," etc. Before He speaks of the communication of life, He speaks of its manifestation. John could see what it was down here, amongst friends and enemies; he says, "We have looked upon, and our hands," etc. The life which was with the Father is the life promised before the world began. I get what it is perfectly displayed. I see this life in One who, in due time, fully manifested it as man. The second Adam is the Man in whom its perfection is seen; a Man in this world, in all points tempted like us; a perfect Man, without sin, walking in the world in meekness and holiness, a pattern set before us to follow.

2 Timothy 1: 9 shews the way it was given us in Christ. God connects the two things here: saved by Christ according to His own purpose and grace given us in Him before the world began. In this life we see a thing that has its display in heaven. We have got it now, and in a place where it is hindered. It leads my thoughts and feelings to be ever in heaven, where it is as before the world began. Though displayed in all perfection down here by Him who has abolished death, and has brought life and immortality to light, the life was in heaven before it was manifested here. Wonderful truth!

For in the power of this life Christ has gone through death and annulled it. Death is an abolished thing for saints. It takes us out of all the misery of the first Adam. It was not so with saints in the Old Testament; they could not say, "Absent from the body, present with the Lord." It was all death to them. Elijah was taken away for a testimony without passing through death, but Christ passed through it and annulled it rose and went up to heaven, and life and immortality are thus brought to light. Turn to John 1: 1, "In him was life." You never could say that of a saint. God gave us to have that life in His Son; if in ourselves we might lose it, but if He is my life, I cannot. "He that hath the Son hath life."

367 He is the life and light of men, not of angels. This is an unutterably humbling truth for us. If God was exercising life-giving power, it was to be manifested in a man, and therefore the Son of His love becomes man. God displayed it by the incarnation of the Word - the eternal Son. He was given in promise to us before the world existed; and He came into the world personally. The Word, made flesh, dwelt among men in all the circumstances in which we walk. He goes down into the death of the first Adam, and abolishes death brings life and incorruptibility to light, and goes up to the right hand of God, as the display of this life in a man up there, What a thought! That eternal life in this world - a man, a poor man, a carpenter, one who had not where to lay His head. The life, promised before the world began, now has been made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and in due time manifested to those who believe, through preaching. Christ Himself is the great firstfruits of the life that we, as saved ones, have in Him - He the firstfruits of the great harvest of God. I repeat, this life, given in promise before the world was, was manifested by the Christ, who in the power of it passed through death; and in heaven it is now manifested in the risen Man Christ Jesus, while down here it is manifested in those who believe through preaching.

That is how we get it. It is preached in the world now and what does the world make of it? That is the solemn thing for your consciences. If we take the world, we get not the second Adam but the first. Turn back to the garden of Eden, and you get the clue to the present state of the world and how it began. Man, created in responsibility to keep his first estate, was commanded not to eat the fruit of a certain tree; he eats it, doing his own will, and is cast out of paradise; and the world begins where paradise ends; and that is the world we live in, only it is a thousand times worse, because it has rejected Christ. Yes! the world around us sprang up when man was driven from paradise; a man, in a state of responsibility, departed from God, made the world what it is; and what a world! Solemn as is the responsibility of man in it, for us who have life it is only by the bye; true, we have to go through it, but it has nothing to do with the eternal life we have except as being the place where the eternal life has been manifested and brought to us. I would ask, What is man, departed from God, about? Making the world a scene of delights for himself by cultivating the arts and sciences. (You will find amongst the heathen the most beautiful exhibition of the arts and sciences.) I repeat man is making a scene for developing and displaying faculties that have nothing to do with God (the best as well as the worst have nothing to do with Him). Well, it is in this world that the eternal life has been and is manifested now. Is it by first mending and reforming man, by setting the world right, that God gives eternal life? Is life to be got by reforming the world, by modifying the evil of the ways and the tastes of man away from God, by improving man first without God?

368 What is man? A responsible being that has never been lost? A responsible being, I repeat, away from God, and in departure from God, he has built up for himself a world without God. Bring God into all the fine things that man is doing, and what would be the effect? Most of us know it as a matter of fact, that this world, with all its pleasures, and things delightful to the flesh, does not let God in, nor Christ, who is the eternal life; and I get it as a thing that comes in between. Eternal life has come down here, and I have it in a world that has all its life from the first man; in a world entirely departed and alienated from God; a world that had its origin in man having been turned out of paradise; a world that when Christ, in divine beauty and grace, was in it, spat in His face and turned Him out. That is the world I am in now.

But where does my heart go to out of the world? To that blessed life I have in Christ. I may have got it but yesterday, but the thing I have received was up there for me before the foundation of the world. I have got Christ as my life - the life I live is "by faith of the Son of God"; and it was in God's mind to give me this life before the world was. "He that hath the Son hath life" - a life not of man at all; and having got it I am to shew what is the effect of it, and from whence I got it. What is the life I got from the first Adam? All sin; if put under law, not subject to it; a life with lusts and a will of its own. I judge it altogether. When Christ was here, the tree being bad, had judgment pronounced against it. The flesh is a judged thing: I find only sin and condemnation in connection with it, but I get God dealing with this sin in the flesh - "What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

369 Mark, it is not only sins remitted but sin condemned. Oh! I say, sin is in the flesh, I have got it, and I hate it. It is lusting in me, making me dislike what Christ likes whilst my heart is set on Christ. But I find God has dealt in judgment with it, and put it away on the cross. He condemned it where it was put away, and that is where I find I am. I have sin, but I am not to be judged for it - Christ was made sin for me, etc. He, in grace, has taken it. My soul in the power of this truth gets perfect peace. I have no more conscience of sins; I am no longer dreading God's judgment because I am forgiven: all has merged into the deliverance Christ has given. I have perfect liberty; sin has not dominion. I judge this flesh of mine and all its lusts and will entirely, because it is a judged thing - I am crucified with Christ. I stand in a new condition. I have eternal life in me, Christ being my life; I have liberty and joy, by His going through death. I have died and am risen with Him. This is where I am brought.

I have not only a life of him that departed from God, but as a believer the life of Him who came into the place where I was away from God, to bring me back to God. I belong to Him - I am risen with Him, where the eternal life is to be displayed. In spirit I am up there now, whilst in the body waiting for Him to come. I am in a world that is merely by the bye to me, only a thing I have to pass through - not of it, even as Christ was not. He passed through it, and left us an example that we should follow, walking in His footsteps. I am to reckon myself dead. "As we have borne the image of the earthy, even so," etc. A believer does not belong to the first Adam, but to the Second. The life of Christ is his, and that is all he owns as his life - that life so blessed, so divine, that the world would not have it, and shrunk from it because it was so perfect, and God took it up and put it on His throne as the only place fitted for it.

370 Christ down here displayed everything that characterises this life. I should like to mark one or two traits of it: one is that quiet confidence with God that springs from, and is the fruit of, divine love, that which can trust God and is capable of enjoying blessed communion with God, enabling one through all things and circumstances here to walk on confiding in God. One could not have had that confidence if Christ had not died to put away sin and brought me into relationship with God. Having a purged conscience, I can delight in God, and as regards my walk through this world, Christ is my life, my all. I am consciously dependent on Him. As we pass on through the world we have to overcome. How? This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Life has this especial character. It avoids evil and walks in grace through the world. If I have the life of Christ, I am to walk down here as He walked, in practical life, "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord," etc., with the consciousness that it came from God, promised before the world was.

We shall most surely find defectiveness in this from not having self judged and the spirit free to enjoy Christ. We have to watch that things of this world do not narrow up the life that is to be made manifest. Do we not continually find that we get under the power of circumstances, by which the heart is often narrowed? How often we have to say, I did not think of that at the right moment! But if always bearing about the dying of the Lord, it would be always easy to manifest His life. If the heart be full of Christ, it will be always ready for Christ. The tendency of saints is to have the heart narrowed up - never ready for God and their neighbour. It would not be so if we could only get the heart exercised under a deep consciousness of what the life we have got is, and what the world is, what a poor little wretched thing it is. Having hearts exercised to discern good and evil whilst down here, we should pass through this world as pilgrims and strangers, having cleansed consciences able to judge the flesh as being only the old thing. Life being given, the world (grown up from man rejecting God) is the place where this life is to be exercised, and we get various exercises. See what Paul passed through, "We who live are always delivered unto death," etc. He gloried in tribulation and in infirmities if only the life might be manifested. I desire that your hearts should get hold of what this eternal life is, so to live in the power of it, that you should see how it came into the world, revealed in Christ.

371 Seeing all its blessedness and beauty in Christ, the heart clings round it. In Him the life was the light of men. What a thing - in the place where Satan rules to have God's own life given to us in His Son, and that we live in Christ only, but ever remember that this life has no affinity with the world! We have to manifest the light of life in the midst of the world that will not have Christ; and, alas! how constantly everything tends to make us live by sight instead of by faith! But whatever we fail in we shall certainly find that God has given us everything in Christ.

Oh, may He give us to know more and more what that eternal life is which was promised in Him before the world began.

The Saving Grace of God

Titus 2

J. N. Darby.

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The more we study the word, the more we see how it takes us out of the present world, and how it associates us with all things that are of God. When we come to what is Christian, it is not what the law was (that is righteous claim), but the revelation of God's grace and God's mind to give what takes our hearts from this world, and associates us with a revealed scene that is not this world at all, but outside it all. This is Christianity in its practical character; it is an association completely of our hearts with things not seen. When we walk right, we walk by faith.

"Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Servants are not to purloin. Why? "That they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things." Paul was so full of Christ Himself that he could not speak without bringing Christ in. He cannot say, "Husbands, love your wives" without saying what Christ was Himself, "even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it." It is no mere morality, nor a question of results.

The Christian is a person whose mind has got hold of the revelation of God by the power of the Holy Ghost. "He that is of the earth is earthly and speaketh of the earth; he that cometh from heaven is above all." The Lord says, "No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." He comes and brings from heaven the full revelation of what He knew. This is the reason that no one received His testimony. He brings in these heavenly things: all His words were the expression of what He was, at the same time perfectly adapted to man down here, while all the fulness of the Godhead was in Him. We find in Christ that which is entirely divine and perfectly human. It is the bringing down of these heavenly things perfectly adapted to what man was on the earth; and now He sets us to walk through the world according to that which has been revealed to us. So with the servant: it is the motive power. If one say, You will be killed if you do that, my answer is, If I die, I shall only go to heaven. Earth loses its power and so does lust. "Not purloining": the commonest duties are connected with motives which take the heart above everything here.

373 There is no difficulty in the world that this principle does not rise above. You can never take a person entirely out of everything that surrounds him without a motive above them all: you may take him out of one thing or another, but not out of everything. Then the motive is everything done for Christ; and everything else is advanced and elevated because the motive is elevated. If the things in this world cease to be motives (of duties there are plenty), in the commonest things you get the soul lifted out of the world; the governing motives are above it. The Christian is thus unassailable. If men try him by pleasant and natural things, he is kept; for they are not Christ, and for him "to live is Christ."

The law brought in the authority of God, and of course it ought to have been obeyed. The law took up the relationship in which men stood with God and with one another, and said, You must walk according to these words. Duties were there, and God took man according to the way he ought to act, keeping the relationships as they stood; but there was no revelation of Himself. God's authority was there in claim, but this was not a revelation of love. Law told them what they ought to be as the means of finding out what they were. Christianity is a different thing; it is God revealed in grace, coming amongst men. What the law told was this, on the contrary: that God did not yet come out to man; and that man could not go in to God. Christianity, while fully upholding the authority of the law, is just the opposite: God did come out; and man is gone in.

The law was not an arbitrary thing, but the commandment was holy, just and good. The apostle, as touching the righteousness which is in the law, was "blameless"; but the moment the law added this, "Thou shalt not lust," to the perfect rule from God for a man where he was, it might as well have said, You must not be a man, for man was already fallen and a sinner. God added that to the rule of ordinary relationships, and it reaches the conscience.

But Christianity tests man in another way, namely by the very revelation of God. God did come out in blessed perfect grace and unutterable goodness; His Son became a man. Still it was the revelation of God, and men would not have God, but they rejected and crucified Him. Now the condition of man is proved; the judgment of the world is pronounced. "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin." "Now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father."

374 Man was thus fully tested. A nation was taken up to try thorough agriculture of the human heart; but it brought forth sour grapes. Then God said, I have yet one Son, it may be they will reverence Him when they see Him. But said they, "This is the heir, come let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours."

Christianity is the testimony that man is lost. You have thus the rejection of Christ bringing in the condition of the whole world before God. Not only is man out of paradise; but he has turned God out of the world. In the cross, in which man shewed his enmity to God, the blessed work of redemption was wrought, the sacrifice put away sin was accomplished, and man has gone into glory. As the law was the testing of man as a child of Adam, so in the gospel I have now got the "Second man" - much more than a man, of course - gone into glory. The more we meditate on the cross, the more we see the place where sin above all was manifested, the place where obedience was perfected. Sin was at the highest point, and there was the absolute perfection of obedience; I see sin where obedience is perfected. Christ was there glorifying God in the place of sin. There was the absolute perfection of obedience, and the absolute completion of man's sin. Where was judgment shewn in its fullest character? Not in the condition of the sinner, but in Christ made sin for us. The perfect love of God was shewn there; what man is, was shewn there, what Christ was, what God was also in judgment against sin.

But the consequence of the cross is that man is in glory, and believers are justified and cleansed through Christ's blood, all cleared and cleansed. Then the Holy Ghost comes down, dwells in them, and connects them with the Man in glory. Paul first sees Christ in the glory; he did not lose Him in the clouds like the others, but he saw Him first in the glory beyond the clouds. "Delivering thee," in Acts 26: 17, means taking thee out from among "the people and from the Gentiles": he was neither Jew nor Gentile; he was completely associated with Christ in glory. The gospel went out to every creature, coming out from heaven on the ground that Christ is in heaven.

375 The Spirit takes of the things of Christ and shews them to you. All your relationships as a Christian are in heaven. Thus is where the Christian is in these verses in Titus. He has the Holy Ghost to go according to the heavenly Christ; he looks back to what I have been speaking of; he stands between the first coming and the second, having a clear apprehension of the effect of the first and also of the second. This is not prophecy at all, which foretells things coming on the earth: there is no prophecy of heaven. Prophecy refers to the government of this world. Hence John the Baptist says, that he was talking of things on the earth. When Christ came He told them heavenly things, and, having been sacrificed to put away sin, by the baptism of the Holy Ghost associates with Himself there.

The Christian is a person who has the Holy Ghost and who stands between the first coming and the second. Israel is a witness of God's dealings on the earth; the Christian is a witness of His sovereign grace that gives man a place in heaven. Prophecy told of a day of darkness coming on the earth. "We have also the word of prophecy more sure whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a candle that shineth in a dark place." A candle is a very useful thing. What do you get in the Revelation? Trumpets, seals, vials, all judgment; but this prophecy is my candle, and I see where all evil will end. It is all very useful as a warning; but when Christ as the day star dawns in my heart, it is attracted out, it is of the place. "I will come and receive you unto myself - that is in heaven! The Lord teaches us to look for Him in affection: we are converted to this - "to wait for his Son from heaven"; we are not converted to prophecy Grace has appeared, and it teaches us to look for the glory of His appearing. Compare verse 11 with 13.

It is hard for us first to feel, "In me, that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing," and next, to know that the world is judged.

The gospel is grace addressed to the lost, not probation to see how I shall turn out. It has turned out that I loved every vanity better than Christ, that is, in short, that I am lost.

The flowers of human nature are often no less pretty: the blossoms on the crab are as pretty as those of the apple. Character is not the question, but motive. A cross man may be breaking his heart about his temper (there is the same difference in dogs; of course an amiable dog is much pleasanter to meet than a cross dog). It is conscience, not character at its best, which shews I have had to do with God. In the gospel I find what I am, and what God is; I have found a grace which has met man in this state. The gospel turns me from what I am right over to what God is to the lost. I am guilty by what I have done; I am lost by what I am. The fullest grace comes in; but grace connects me with the fullest salvation. The Saviour has come to deliver me out of the condition I am in. All I have done, all my condition as a child of Adam, I am completely done with; I have got to the end of myself. Salvation is a big word. I have my place in the Man that is gone into paradise above, not in the man that was turned out of paradise on earth. That is the way grace appears: it is not help; it is salvation, the blood of Christ the ground of it. I get sins sent away, the conscience made perfect, and Christ always appearing in the presence of God for me: there is not an instant of my life as a believer that Christ is not before God for me. I am now a man saved, justified, cleansed, made the temple of the Holy Ghost. There I stand in that Man in glory.

376 Now the Christian is taught by grace - "Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world." I am redeemed out of the world, but I have got to walk through it. How did the present world come? God never made this world or age (of course I do not mean the physical world), He made paradise. Sin and the devil made this world; for morally speaking God did not make it. Cain goes out from the presence of Jehovah; he settles, when a vagabond, in the land of his vagabondage, and builds a city. Next, the city must be a pleasant place; what harm was there in brass and iron? None whatever; but there was a great deal of harm in going out of the presence of Jehovah. What harm was there in the trees of the garden? If you bring in God and Christ in speaking to the men of the world, they will turn you out; they say, It is not the time for it. Well, it may not be; but it is never the time with man to bring Christ in. The world is all built up away from God; man will not have God come into it.

You have the whole life of the Christian practically summed up in three words, "soberly, righteously, and godly": "soberly" with self-restraint; "righteously" as regards others; "godly" with God. In this new place, with new motives, he is to live in the power of his new life; he has an object out of the world.

377 Faith, human faith, is always the spring by which anything in this world is done; God gives me what is divine. A man is always what his object is; if Christ is a man's object, he is a Christian. "That I may win Christ," this was Paul's object He had found the blessed Son of God willing to become a man to save him; he is looking for Him; he wants to see the One that loved him.

I am not speaking of doctrine, of an item of knowledge, but of what I am converted to; it is the thing for which a man is converted, the object. As I have borne the image of the earthy, I am going to bear the image of the heavenly. I am going to be with Him, and I want to be like Him. You will find this strikingly as the hope of the Christian; and so the Lord never says a word that goes beyond the present life; He takes care not to put His coming in a shape to make it necessarily more distant. The virgins that fall asleep are the same virgins that awake; this is the principle. The servants the lord gave the talents to are the same servants with whom he reckons. That in the seven churches we have history I do not doubt; but does He give it as history? No, He takes care to give seven churches then before Him; He will never sanction the heart making a delay. You are to live as you would live if you were expecting Him every day. Whether changed or raised, then we shall be with Christ and like Christ. Christ will be satisfied; so shall I. The thought and purpose of God is to have us like Himself and with Himself. He is still gathering out souls. But on the other hand we are to be as men that wait for their Lord." If a mother is expecting her son from America, she is always expecting him, for she loves him. When a person is really waiting for Christ, he has the room of his heart ready for Him. He has given Himself to have us for Himself, with hearts united, gathered up, to Him; a peculiar people, a people of possession, manifesting the character of God in grace till He display it in glory.

Now, beloved brethren, where are we? Can we say, "This present evil world," not in hardness as if we did not once belong to it, but as the world that has rejected Christ, and of which Satan is the prince? The world is not only a sinful world outside the earthly paradise, but a world that rejected Christ when He came into it.

378 The things I shall have in heaven are to form my heart now. Our hearts are so dim to see these heavenly things, but it is God's thought to reveal them to us. "Now we see through a glass darkly" - true, but we see the same things. 1 Corinthians 2, often quoted to prove I cannot know them, really proves I can. "But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." Christianity says He has revealed them all. Quite true, it has not entered into the heart of man to conceive them. In the Old Testament they did not know them (of course not); but the Holy Ghost has come down to reveal them to us. The veil is rent, the way into the holiest of all is manifest. There is a perfect contrast as to the condition of the saint now. I am associated with Him now; I know I shall be like Him then. He has become a man for the very purpose to have me with Him in glory. I know that righteousness is there, and through the Spirit I am waiting for the hope of righteousness by faith (that is, for glory), for Him to bring me actually there. I am so identified with Christ that, when He appears, I shall appear with Him in glory.

Has this power over our hearts? Are your hearts settled as to the perfectness of His work? Is there such love to Him that you wait for Him who loves you?

The Lord give us in these last days to have hearts thus watching, taking His word, and clinging to it. This gives us what is heavenly, and perfectly suited to us while here.

The Suffering Son of Man

Hebrews 2

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After the first four verses, which belong to chapter 1, we get a statement of the position of our Lord: all things are not yet put under Him, but He is crowned with glory and honour. In chapter 1 the apostle had spoken fully of the divinity of the Lord: in chapter 2 after the first four verses, we have His humiliation, and then the thought of God with respect to us in His becoming man. In chapter 2 we get what fits Him to be the Apostle and High Priest of our profession; then in the close of chapter 4 he takes up His priesthood.

It is a wonderful thing that "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," and that He is gone up, as Man, to sit on the right hand of the Majesty on high. He is sitting there as having finished and accomplished the work which He came to do: "when he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." He is still there in His service as Priest.

"For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak. But one in a certain place 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 hand." In Psalm 8 we get the purpose of God as to man: in Psalm 2 we get the dealings of God with Israel, and the rejection of Christ. "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee," Psalm 2: 7. Christ has this double character: He is King in Zion, and as born in this world, He is the Son of God according to Psalm 2. Accordingly in John 1 Nathanael so owns Him Son of God; thou art the King of Israel," John 1: 49. The Lord says to him, "Henceforth ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man," John 1: 51. He takes that other title, that larger wider character that was purposed of God as declared in Psalm 8. It is not there that He is the Son of God and King in Zion, but that He is the Son of man. So in Daniel 7: 13, 14: "One like the Son of man came to the Ancient of Days . . . . And there was given him dominion and glory and a kingdom; that all people, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed." He is the heir of all God's purposes as to man: all that He had created as God He was to possess as man, but (sin and evil having come in) He comes and takes the redemption title. Psalm 8 is quoted in Ephesians 1: 22, and also in 1 Corinthians 15: 27, where resurrection is spoken of, and here in Hebrews very definitely and distinctly. We are joint-heirs with Christ: the thoughts and purposes of God are all in man. "For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come." "My delights were with the sons of men," Prov. 8: 31. Therefore when the blessed Lord becomes a man and the angels celebrate His birth, they say, "On earth peace, good pleasure in men," Luke 2: 14. Then when He is rejected by His people as Son of God and King of Israel, He takes this wider title as Son of man, having charged His disciples strictly not to speak of Him as the Christ. As the Son of man He takes the wider title, but then He must suffer to accomplish redemption.

380 1 Corinthians 15 puts in a still stronger way His dominion over all things. "But when he saith, All things are put under him it is manifest that he is excepted which did put all things under him." Then what is said in our chapter is that that is not yet accomplished: He is sitting on His Father's throne, not on His own at all. "But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus . . . crowned with glory and honour": we see part of the Psalm fulfilled, that part in which He is personally crowned with glory and honour, but all things are not put under Him. It is this that makes our new place. Therefore we find in this whole epistle that it looks at us entirely as walking on the earth; it is not union with Christ in heaven here, the church being only once mentioned in a general way. If I take the mystery then I get union with Christ, one spirit with Him; but this is not where the saint is seen here, but as a pilgrim and stranger in the world.

"This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God." It is not like Aaron standing there, "offering oftentimes the same sacrifices which can never take away sins"; the apostle contrasts that distinctly in Hebrews 10. Christ is glorified in heaven, but the things are not under Him yet. There is far more of contrast than of comparison in Hebrews. Take Aaron's priesthood, and you find a constant repetition of these sacrifices in contrast to Christ's own sacrifice: you get many priests, whereas Christ has an unchangeable priesthood. The veil shewed "that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest"; now "we have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus"; and, instead of a high priest not going in lest he should die, we find Christ seated at the right hand of God. Christ did not sit down till that work was completely finished; the Holy Ghost insists upon it in connection with the perfect purging of our conscience. You have in Hebrews the testimony of the Holy Ghost, but not His operation in us, nor do you get the Father; because it is a question of our standing with God as such. The question is, Does the sacrifice of Christ make the comers thereunto perfect? This part of the Epistle says it does: it is a conclusion drawn in chapter 10, having been largely reasoned out in chapter 9.

381 Now "the worshippers once purged" have "no more conscience of sins." Christ purged our sins by His work, and the divine testimony by the Holy Ghost purges the conscience. If the "one sacrifice" did not make perfect those coming to God by it, they could not be made perfect at all. "Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others, for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world; but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." If He did not suffer for sins, He could not put them away. He must drink the cup at the dreadful moment. It was not a mere form of suffering that Christ went through, but suffering such as we cannot fathom. If the work was not done in that one offering, it never could be done, "for then must he often have suffered," and He is now in glory. As regards our approach to God the conscience is purged and perfected for ever; the worshippers once purged" have "no more conscience of sins." These priests were always standing ("standeth" is the emphatic word in verse 11), "offering oftentimes the same sacrifice which can never take away sins; but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God" (He did not sit till He had finished His work), "from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool." He has finished the work for His friends - believers, I mean; they have no more conscience of sins, "for by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." It is not a question of the work done in us; He appears in the presence of God for us, He is in glory, sitting there because His work is finished, giving the testimony that we are clean and our conscience is purged, besides that He has obtained this glory. "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified."

382 "For ever" is a very strong word in this passage, it expresses a thing that is continuous and uninterrupted. As He sits there continuously, so we are perfected continuously. We are always there before God according to the value of the work of the Lord Jesus. In Hebrews 10 you get not only the goodwill of God ("Then said he, Lo I come to do thy will, O God"), but the work done divinely, and the testimony of the Holy Ghost that it is done. I have got God's will and thought towards me; then by the offering of Jesus Christ I have got the work done, and I have got His testimony, "Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us . . . and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more."

Whenever I know really by faith the value of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, I cannot go to God with the thought that He imputes anything to me: I may be in the dust before Him if I have sinned, but I know He cannot impute it to me. The thing is done once for all; as those priests were standing because it was not done, so Christ is sitting because it is done. "Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light," Col. 1: 12. Do not suppose that it is a light thing, having our conscience thus perfect before God; if we fail, we cannot be exercised about it too deeply; but let us be exercised ever so deeply, the question when I come before God is, not what I have done, but what Christ has done. If I go on the ground of what I have done, I can look for nothing but judgment. "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified."

The value of what I have done is that I am perfectly lost; but what is the value of what Christ has done? If I go to God really, I find Christ in the presence of God for me, the perfect witness in God's sight that sin cannot be imputed to me. I cannot walk with God otherwise. Can I, if I am a criminal, talk of walking with a judge? Suppose a child has been disobedient and naughty, he cannot feel free and happy when he sees his father. You cannot have blessed and holy affection without a conscience that is perfect. You must get a clear conscience to have a free heart. In order to lead me to walk in fellowship with God, He makes my conscience perfect because Christ bore my sins, and He is now sitting at the right hand of God. He, "when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." He did not sit down till He had finished the work, till He had blotted out our sins, all our sins. If that work has not been completed and finished, so that He has no more to do, it cannot be done at all. It is the contrast of Christ's work with the Jewish way of going on that we get here. Therefore do we thank the Father, "which hath made us meet," etc.

383 There is where I see Christ. I see Him sitting at the right hand of God as our Priest, and by His work, finished before He sat down, my conscience is perfected for ever. We are now between this work of the Lord and His coming again. "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many: and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation."

The question for us all is, not whether we own Christ, but whether we own Him as our Saviour, or own Him as Judge and then have to answer for all our sins. Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, all things are not yet under Him; but the work has been perfectly accomplished which gives us boldness to enter into the holiest. There is no veil now. The veil has been rent.

If I look back, I see that the first paradise - the garden of Eden - is over; this world is not paradise, I am sure. Well, what is the state of things? We see in the world sinfulness, corruption, misery, wars: Christ is hid in God, but there is another paradise, and Christ is there, though we are not there yet. Meanwhile, "being justified by faith we have peace with God" - not joy merely, but peace. A very great word is "peace." There is not a single thing between God and us except Christ as the testimony that the work is done.

It is interesting to see the four things in this chapter (Heb. 2) which made it necessary that Christ should suffer.

The angels - witnesses of God's glorious power in creation - are in a certain sense passed over, but there is no jealousy in these blessed creatures, and when the Lord becomes man, they say, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men." The first thing that caused the blessed Son of God to become man was the glory of God. Nothing but the cross maintains the glory of God. The more we look at it, the more we see that the cross stands alone in the history of eternity. "For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." If the blessed Lord undertakes the work, He must go through it really. If we sinners are to be received to glory, Christ must suffer. It is only through the cross, morally speaking, that perfect righteousness and holiness and perfect love are reconciled. If God had cut off Adam and Eve when they sinned, where would have been His love? If sin had been passed over, there would be no righteousness in that; but the moment I get the cross, I get the fullest and most terrible testimony of God's righteousness against sin. The more you look at it, the more you see how all good and evil were brought to a complete climax there. You get sin and wickedness at their height at the cross. It draws out the complete absolute enmity of man against God. Then I get another thing, the full power of Satan. I see in the cross of Christ man's perfectness as well as man's absolute sinfulness; I see His perfect obedience to the Father and His perfect love where He was made sin for us; and I see God's perfect righteousness against sin. All that man was in wickedness; all Satan's power; all that God is in righteousness and love was brought out at the cross. "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" The whole thing has been settled, and Christ is sitting down at the right hand of God because it is settled.

384 I get another thing too in this chapter - Satan's power destroyed; "that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil." His power is destroyed, though its effects are not yet gone. "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you," James 4: 7. We may listen to his wiles, but his power is destroyed. Satan put forth his whole power against Christ, and he was allowed to succeed apparently, but his power was broken in resurrection. "Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive," Psalm 68: 18. The results are not produced yet, but the work is done that will produce them.

385 Then I get a third thing. Christ came "to make reconciliation for the sins of the people." You get the double character of Christ's work in Scripture. The blood presented to God gives us the propitiation side, while the scape-goat gives us the substitution side. The blood is the perpetual witness before God. The scape-goat has borne away all my sins, not some of them, not my sins up to August 10th, 1874, but all my sins. I cannot think of sinning to-morrow, and I can feel only the sins that are on my conscience (conscience deals with past sins); but when I look at the work of Christ He did not bear my sins merely up to a given day, but "once for all." The scape-goat has carried them to a land not inhabited. I get this double character of the work: the blood under God's eye, the perpetual testimony there; then, if through grace I do come, I find that Christ has been substituted for me, and so the whole thing is settled. I get God's glory requiring this sacrifice; I get Satan's power destroyed; I get the precious blood before God, and Christ bearing my sins in His own body on the tree. It gives me boldness.

There is a fourth thing in this chapter. Christ suffered that He should know how to succour them that are tempted. "For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted." The believer is looked at as a poor weak creature always in Hebrews. The priesthood of Christ in Hebrews is not about our sins (it could not be, because we "have no more conscience of sins"), but about our weakness. When faith has got hold of the fact, in the power of the Holy Ghost, that Christ has borne my sins, and I come to God by Him, I come in virtue of the work that has purged my conscience. What I do get in Hebrews is, that Christ can enter into all my temptations. I find temptations every moment, the world is a snare; if I want to live godly, I need His sympathy. Christ found none in this world. He, the most accessible and gracious of men, sympathised with everybody, but there was no one to sympathise with Him. He can understand the nature of all these trials and temptations of mine. He knows them a thousand times better than I can, because He has suffered a thousand times more.

There were then these four reasons for Christ becoming a man: -

(1) For the glory of God.

(2) To destroy death which was the power of Satan.

(3) As regards sins, "to make reconciliation [atonement] for the sins of the people."

(4) To be "able to succour those that are tempted."

386 As to our walk through this world with all its trials and difficulties, He can enter into all, feel it all, sympathise with it all. Christ having accomplished the work, He could take His people straight to heaven (therefore the thief could go at once to Paradise); but in an ordinary way He leaves them to pass through the world where they need His help in their weakness.

When it comes to sins, I get (in the Epistle of John) "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." Righteousness is not touched: the value of the propitiation cannot be shaken. In virtue of this propitiation instead of imputing sin, the advocacy of Christ is brought out for me. It is not a question of imputing sins, because Christ has already borne them, and God must despise that blood before He can impute sin to me.

You find in John's Epistles that he does not speak of access to God but of communion with the Father. Communion with the Father and the Son is totally destroyed for the time by an idle thought. Perhaps I may have been in a state of carelessness, and the effect of Christ's advocacy is to make me conscious of this. Whatever the flesh produces in my nature God can have no fellowship with. But grace is at work: it is not a question of imputation because Jesus Christ the righteous is there, the Advocate is there to restore my soul. The effect of my failing is that He intercedes for me, and the Spirit of God brings home the word to my conscience, "How can you who are sanctified to God act thus?" I may get outward chastening too, if needed. "He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous," and there in Job He is speaking of chastening. There is not an instant that the high and holy God is not thinking of me a poor worm - not an instant.

"He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet," John 13: 10. The Lord is speaking of water there, not of blood. You are picking up dirt in your walk: I cannot stay with you down here, but I am not going to give you up." Where was He going? To God. Through the Spirit and the word they really were washed, and He washes the feet. Everything inconsistent that has come into my ways or heart, He cleanses the heart from it. This is not the subject here in Hebrews, but the ground and character of our approach to God.

387 If I fail through carelessness or want of prayer, I get grace working to restore my soul, as in 1 John 2: 1. Never be content if your communion is interrupted; whenever you get into the presence of God, if the light of His countenance is hindered in any way, do not you be content.

There is no perfection for the Christian till he is like Christ and with Christ in glory. "And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly"; there is no other perfection for the Christian. We are "predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son"; it is looking at this that leads us on in practical holiness. When I know I shall be perfectly conformed to Christ in glory, then "he that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." If anything hinders my being positively in the light of God's countenance, let me judge it; as we go on with the Lord, we shall learn to see better what hinders us. There is growth in this surely, but there is no growth in the value of His blood, no growth in the value of His work. If we fail, grace is there to restore the soul to communion; and coming to God we find it out.

"For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one" - one set, as it were, in glory (the expression is a very abstract one) - "for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren." This is not forgiveness merely. What a thought it is! It is God's revelation to act on our affections. What unutterable grace it is! How thoroughly we see these are divine thoughts!

The moment, beloved friends, God is shewing "the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us through Christ Jesus," we cannot wonder at anything. When the angels themselves see the thief on the cross, the woman that was a sinner, one of us, in the same glory with Christ, and like Him, they will know the exceeding riches of His grace. The moment I see the blessed Son of God come down here, and die on the cross, what can be too much to expect? The most wonderful thing of all is the cross: after this no glory is too great. That which we have to desire is hearts that own the unspeakable fulness of the work of Christ, and in everything down here to glorify Him. We need the abiding sense of dependence so as to look for that strength which is made perfect in weakness, the care of Christ, the grace and mercy of God in passing through this world.

388 The Lord give you, beloved friends, to see the full efficacy of His finished work, and then to keep in the sense of entire dependence, seeking continual grace from Him. It is death to mere nature of course, but "it is joy unspeakable and full of glory."

Purged with Blood

Hebrews 9

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"And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission."

In the latter part of this text we find an exclusive and distinct proposition - that without shedding of blood there is no remission.

In the flaming sword placed in the garden of Eden, after man's disobedience, we find his positive exclusion from the presence of God; in our being out of paradise, we see the existing fact, that we are in a state of exclusion from God. And the question now is, have we any access to God - to that which is far above paradise?

It is not only that we are out of paradise, but that we stand in all the accumulation of our transgressions. In the first act of sin we find that the will of man is disobedience to God; and every act of his since has been treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath.

When our conscience is awakened, we learn how productive of fruit our evil nature is, and whenever we see that all is gone (for innocence once lost is lost for ever), then we find there is no competency in us to enter into association with God. That which was man's privilege in paradise has been lost, and we find ourselves not only evil, but daily accumulating transgressions. And can we then enter into the place of God's holiness? This is the only true question. Let me ask you - Is there nothing your consciences own as needing remission? Murder and theft, etc., which are the consequences of the condition man is in, through transgression, are owned by all as evil. The natural man may see the blessing of moral conduct as giving happiness on earth, but can discern nothing beyond. But when we look within the veil, it is altogether another thing. Our not wronging our neighbour may produce temporal happiness: but the revelation of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ awakens the mind to a new inquiry - its fitness for the presence of such holiness; and this question is soon settled: we find it utterly impossible. It is not fitting us for happiness in the world as it is (that is not the question); but making us competent to be associated with Christ in the glory He is in when He appears. Does the world know anything about it? Is this what they look for? Do they not rather say it is presumption to think any can have association and fellowship with God? The world is a witness to itself that it presumes no such thing.

390 God's testimony is, "There are none righteous, none understand, and none seek after God." But suppose we have received an understanding to know Him that is true, then still the question is - How are we to stand in the presence of the glory? Can one in a sinful condition abide in His presence? Can we say we are fit to be partakers of the glory? There is nothing in the world fit for this. It is vain to plead the highest morality, or the most refined amiability; they are not the things to qualify us for heaven. We may find the character of evil all around: all are guilty, for all come short of the glory of God. The evil of the root from which it springs may be easily discerned in the fruits.

Now there must not only be a renewing, but a complete purging of the conscience. And I plead this, that without the shedding of blood there is no remission: all other ways are the efforts of man to depreciate the righteousness of God - the substitution of something instead of God's way of salvation, which is most presumptuous and subversive of the great testimony of God, that without the shedding of blood there is no remission. The accumulated sins of our evil nature must be put away. The Spirit of God can have no part but bringing us to the knowledge of the hatefulness of sin, and the necessity of the blood shed; and whenever the soul is awakened to what sin is in God's sight, there cannot be peace until the Spirit which shews the necessity of holiness, and reveals that of God, thus teaches us that nothing but God's own efficient act can put away, by the shedding of the blood of Jesus, that which God testifies against.

The shedding the blood brings it to the actual power of death - the taking away of the life of him whose life is given; and why? Because there is the forfeiture of life, and therefore the necessity of the life being given, the blood shed, to blot out the sin; and here we find Christ stepping in, and all the believer has entirely shut up in Christ, in whom we have a new nature whereby we can delight in God, and not forgiveness only; and this the consequence of the work of Christ alone, shedding His blood before God, offering His life as a ransom to God, presenting that which was adequate for the purpose, but without which there is no escaping the consequences of sin. "It pleased the Lord to bruise him." The blood was shed, but it is manifested as His own voluntary act. At the same time His side is pierced that we might know the act complete. This is presented to our faith as a thing requisite, and which could be done in no other way. Christ had no associate, no companion; but once alone and for ever the thing was done; and the revelation of it by God to the soul is salvation. This is a transaction between God and the Son; the thing done is the ground of remission of sins to every one who believes.

391 I have not peace in anything in which I take a part, but peace in that in which Christ acted alone. Man's part in it was only stretching out the sinful hands which crucified Him, and this is all he had to do with it. Is it, I ask, by any act to be done now that peace is obtained? No; it is simply by the blood which has been shed, the putting away of sin by the sacrifice of His death, which can give peace through faith.

If once we see ourselves morally dead in trespasses and sins, and that without the full forfeit of life there is no remission, we shall see, as regards the cleansing of the conscience, there is nothing but the blood for us. But who did this? It is the act of God to provide Himself a Lamb, by the shedding of whose blood the conscience of those admitted into the holy presence of God is effectually purged.

Can you say paradise is lost, and disobedience and sin are here, and yet I shall force my way back to God? What hope can those have who are not washed in the blood, taking a worse ground than that which excluded them from paradise (with thus accumulated sin upon them), treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath, and despising that blood which cleanses from all sin, counting it an unholy thing? He who seeks God's holiness and passes by Jesus, going to God in his sins, passes by the blood, rejects the testimony of God, and despises Jesus.

The Will of God, the Work of Christ, and the Witness of the Holy Ghost

Hebrews 10

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The basis of the argument of the apostle in this chapter lies more in the contrast than in the comparison between the law and the good things to come. The law, he says, had only a shadow, not the very image of things. For example, under the law the priests ministered in infirmity; now Christ ministers in glory. They offered oftentimes the same sacrifices, which could never take away sins; He one sacrifice - once for all. Then there was a veil; now there is none. Then the priests could not enter into the Holiest; now we have boldness to enter in by the blood of Jesus. The law had a shadow of good things to come, not the very image. It was a mere figurative witness of the things that were to be spoken after. Just as the shadow of a man gives some general indistinct idea of him, but does not present a single feature clearly; so it was with the law. It could never make the comers thereunto perfect, as the repetition of its sacrifices shewed. Now the unity of the sacrifice proves its perfection; and the present position of the worshippers gives the most complete contrast possible to that under the law, though there is a certain measure of analogy.

There are three things brought out in this scripture: firstly, the source from which all blessing springs; secondly, the means by which it is accomplished; and, thirdly, the testimony by which it is known.

This last is a most necessary part of the matter, in order to our communion; because, unless we know sin to be all put away, it would be absolute madness to attempt to enter into the presence of God: a Jew even would not have thought of such a thing, much less a Christian. If I am not as clean as an angel, the presence of God is no place for me; and the attempt to appear in it would be to follow the example of Cain, who thought to stand before God as a worshipper without blood. We may cry to Him from the depths, of course, and He will ever hear; but if the conscience be not perfect, we cannot go into His presence to worship.

With the Jews this perfection was of course only ceremonial; with us it is real: with them the veil hid God; now that it is gone, and that we enter into the holiest of all, there is the greater need of perfection of conscience. This is why the apostle insists so strongly on the word "once." Indeed all the reasoning of the chapter depends on it. "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." "Once, in the end of the world, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." "We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." If those sacrifices could have wrought perfection of conscience, would they not have ceased to be offered? Christ was once offered, thereby proving the perfect result of His word; it needed no repetition. That is why he says, elsewhere in this epistle, that, if this be rejected, "there remaineth no more offering for sin." If that has not made perfect, there is no hope. If that be rejected, there is only "a fearful looking for of judgment." In the repetition of sacrifice there was a remembrance made of sins. It was not God's saying, Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Christians now have often a mind to be in the same place still, and call their unbelief humility. With the Jews, of course, it must have been so, because it was not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats could take away sins. Therefore God changes the whole thing. "He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second."

393 This brings out the first principle to which I alluded, namely, the source of all blessing. It originates in the divine will. "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." It originates in the will of God, and not in the will of man: this is only sin. As a creature, man should have no will of his own, just as Christ had none. The principle of His obedience was not a controlling power, hindering the operation of His own will; but, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God!" This was perfect obedience as a man. God's will was His; and that will alone brought salvation and life, where man's will had only brought sin and death. This gives stability and perfection to everything, to find its source and origin in the will of God. If it had been the result of my will, all would have been vacillating and changing as man's will is; and, moreover, if we had earned heaven by our own will, there would have been no love of God in the matter, and we should lose the sweetness of holding everything as the fruit of divine love.

This will of God is not presented to man to do; it is the Son of God who says, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God!" Men could never have done the will of God; the second Adam does it. As belonging to the first Adam, our place is to confess that we have not done, and that we never could do, the will of God. When brought back to Him, of course we have nothing else to do, for we are sanctified unto obedience; but, as regards acceptance, it is the result of the work of another. "By the obedience of One shall many be made righteous." God does all for us in grace, and leaves man out in both the will and work. Salvation is the result of God's will and Christ's work. And it gives quietness and confidence in this work, to see that it was not a work done to turn God towards us, as it were, but that from all eternity it was counselled by Himself. We have the source of all in the unchangeable purpose of God.

394 Secondly, we have the work itself. It is a wonderful thing for us to be thus let into what passed between the Father and the Son before the world was; and most blessed to see the freewill offering of Christ. If it were God's will to be the author of our salvation, it was equally Christ's to be the instrument of it; and whilst He, in order to be so, makes Himself a servant, His divine power is still evinced in the very expression, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God!" That could be said by none but by one competent to execute any command of God. Supposing that command had been to make a world, instead of to save one, Christ was the only one who could do such a will; and in fact, both divine power and divine love were evinced in redemption and resurrection, in a higher degree than in creation.

In verse 5, where the quotation is from Psalm 40, the verbal difference is considerable, but the sense identical. "A body hast thou prepared me," and "Mine ears hast thou opened," or "digged," are both expressions of assuming the form of a servant. The ear receives commands, and the boring of the ear was making one a servant for ever. So when a body was prepared for Christ, He took on Him the form of a servant. Thus far we have the will of God working in grace, and Christ undertaking to accomplish it.

Then in verse 11 we have the contrast between the priest standing, and Christ sitting. His work is finished - there is nothing further to do; and He sits down till His foes be made His footstool. "For ever," in verse 12, means "continually" or "constantly," not that Christ will never rise again; but as regards His sacrifice for sins He will never have to rise again to do anything more. Having offered one sacrifice for sins, He sits down till His foes be made His footstool. As regards His friends, all is done - not as to intercession of course - but as to acceptance and perfecting the conscience. But He has still to deal with His enemies; therefore is He waiting, still retaining His servant character, until God makes His foes His footstool. We too are expecting, till Christ rises up from the throne and judges His enemies. This is not done yet: else wickedness would be purged from the earth; and it explains the call for vengeance in the Psalms, which sometimes puzzles people, "Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered," etc.; and, "Of thy mercy cut off mine enemies." These surely are not the cries of the church. She does not want to see her enemies judged but saved. She goes to meet the Lord in the air. Not so the Jewish remnant. It passes through great tribulation; and "except those days were shortened, no flesh should be saved." So they call earnestly enough for deliverance. But such is not our part at all; we are associated with Christ while expecting; in grace now, and in glory by-and-by, but not in judgment.

395 In verse 12 we have seen that Christ's one sacrifice was such that He has sat down for ever; so in verse 14 we read; that "by one offering he hath perfected for ever" - or "continually" - "them that are sanctified." Thus we are continually perfect; not practically here - though the Spirit sanctifies the heart and affections as far as this goes - but here the work of Christ makes the conscience constantly perfect. "The worshippers, once purged, should have no more conscience of sins." Thus we are brought into the presence of God, never to have any more conscience of sins. "For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." We are called so to know Christ's work, as to see that it is quite impossible for us to have sin on us before God. Sin cannot be in God's presence. There is nothing but perfection there; and we are there because perfected forever by the one offering of Jesus. We are in God's presence because we are clean, as clean as He could wish us to be. "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." It is quite true we have to keep a conscience void of offence, and not to grieve the Spirit; but we are sealed of God unto the day of redemption; and there can be no mistake. The Holy Ghost could not dwell in us unless cleansed by the blood of Christ; and then He is the witness, not to the fruits, but to the virtue of that blood. The fruits could not be produced unless He were there of course, because they are "the fruits of the Spirit"; and when produced, the order is, first, the internal ones, then all the rest. "Love, joy, peace," precede the outward manifestations of the Spirit's presence.

396 The Christian ought to keep himself in the present communion of his known place before God, because then, besides the joy, the Holy Ghost has its full flow in using him as a vessel to others, in God's service; whereas otherwise He must occupy us with ourselves. I have not only communion, but power, only as thus in immediate intercourse with God in His presence.

We now come to the third point. Having seen the source of all in the divine will, and the accomplishment of all in the divine work, we get the testimony to it all in the divine witness. "Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us; for after that he had said before, This is the covenant," etc., then He said, "And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." And here is the secret of settled peace. If I think that God will ever remember sin, I am denying the will, the work, and the testimony of God. In short, if a believer in Jesus, it comes to being a sin to have the least thought of God's ever imputing a sin to me. It is just as much a work of the flesh as to commit the sin. He does not now impute sin, and He never will. "Where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin," sweeps away every refuge of lies, and lays the blessed foundation for full confidence. "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest, by the blood of Jesus," shews that the very way we enter into God's presence proves that the thing which shut us out is gone for ever.

"Our bodies washed with pure water," refers to the priests, who were washed with water, sprinkled with blood, and anointed with oil. The latter is not mentioned here. After they were once washed, the priests needed only to wash their hands and feet. The anointing with blood of the ear, the thumb, and the toe, was the application of the work of Christ to the whole moral man. The work of Christ is always set first, then follows the work of the Spirit. In Ephesians it is said, "Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word." Therefore in the tabernacle the first thing you meet is not the laver, but the altar. As a sinner, I must first meet the blood; then I am fitted for service, by the removal of all that is contrary to God: but I cannot skip the altar to reach the laver; I must there own myself a sinner first; then I can delight in the holiness of God, and understand it, too.

397 The apostle then goes on, "Consider one another to provoke unto love," etc., that is, having got to God in grace, we must be diligent in acting towards others in grace. He introduces "Not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together," to meet the tendency there was to avoid public testimony, and to think that private faith would do in times of persecution such as these were. This was their natural tendency; and, whether it be persecution or reproach, it is the same thing. The latter is perhaps our snare. "And so much the more as ye see the day approaching"; for judgment is surely coming. If the power of evil increases there is the more need to cling closely to Christ. And we must not suppose that the world is improving because the Spirit is working; on the contrary, this is just the proof that judgment is nearing. The more rapidly souls are gathered in, the more reason have we for believing the coming of the Lord to be at hand. Whilst the long-suffering of God is salvation, the hope should ever be a present one to the church. It was the wicked servant who said, "My lord delayeth his coming"; yet He did delay it.

Then, in verse 26, it is as though he said, If you do not hold fast - if you will give up, and abandon this perfect sacrifice, then there remains nothing further; there is no year of atonement to come round again with a new offering; but just as those who believe are eternally perfect, so he who refuses is left remediless. It was he who despised Moses' law who died without mercy, and not he who broke it; so it is he who counts the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, and does despite to the Spirit of grace, that shall be counted worthy of a sorer punishment; not he who fails. "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins"; such is the gracious provision for failure through infirmity - advocacy, righteousness, and propitiation. But if a man, after having seen all the grace and fulness that are in Christ, deliberately choose sin as his portion; and, rejecting the blood of the new covenant as insufficient, turns back again, then he must take the consequence. God's grace is His last resource, so to speak, for winning man. If that does not suffice, judgment must take its course; and "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." On this ground the position is at once that of "adversaries," and we know Him that hath said, "Vengeance is mine, I will recompense." "Let us, therefore, hold fast our confidence, which hath great recompense of reward"; and let us remember that we shall "have need of patience; but yet a little while, and he that shall come, will come, and will not tarry."

[END OF EVANGELIC - VOL. 2]